Bitcoin

The Stories We Tell: Analyzing the Narratives Around Bitcoin

From the 2017 "Block Size Wars" to the rise of PayFi in 2025, discover the evolving narratives that have defined Bitcoin’s history.

Did you know that Satoshi Nakamoto never explicitly used the term "Digital Gold," but instead described a theoretical "boring grey metal" to explain Bitcoin's scarcity? Or that in 2017, the crypto community essentially fought a civil war over the size of a digital block?

Bitcoin’s journey has been anything but a straight line. For over a decade and a half, the industry has morphed fueled by shifting narratives that dictate market cycles. Let's take a look!

A Timeline of Major Crypto Narratives

Among the many narratives characterizing the history of the crypto industry, several key developments specifically relating to Bitcoin stand out:

2017: Bitcoin Forks

Whenever 2017 is mentioned to the crypto community, and in particular that of Bitcoin, one thing comes to mind: 'the block size wars'. This was a period when Bitcoin was looking to address its scalability problems caused by its initial 1MB block size limit.

Out of this came two camps: one which proposed increasing the block size to large portions and another which proposed a solution without altering the 1MB limit.

As a result of this dispute, two major Bitcoin forks were born in 2017: Bitcoin Cash, which was a hard fork meaning it caused a split in the network, and SegWit, implemented as a soft fork, meaning it was compatible with the existing rules.

To capture more of this period and the history of other Bitcoin forks, read our article here. 👇

2017: Bitcoin as Digital Gold

The 'narrative' of Bitcoin as digital gold is rooted in its properties that directly mirror those of physical gold: limited supply (a maximum of 21 million coins), resistance to inflation.

The roots of this narrative can be traced back to as early as 2010 when Satoshi wrote about it on Bitcointalk.org:

“As a thought experiment, imagine there was a base metal as scarce as gold but with the following properties: boring grey in colour, not a good conductor of electricity, not particularly strong, but not ductile or easily malleable either, not useful for any practical or ornamental purpose, and one special, magical property can be transported over a communications channel.”

Well, this was a metaphor was used to compare Bitcoin with gold, but they did not directly term it 'digital gold'. From then on, the narrative has become part of the crypto language, supported by the community and many prominent figures such as Michael Saylor and Jack Dorsey.

2020: Bitcoin as a Macro Play

'Bitcoin as a macro play' refers to the view and use of Bitcoin as a hedge against major global economic trends, policies, and events (macroeconomics).

The narrative gained attention during and after the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), a period when governments were spending heavily and central banks were creating a lot of new money to support the economy.

In response to the concerns regarding inflation of fiat currencies and long-term inflation, people begin treating it as a macro asset and analysts track its price correlation to factors like inflation, interest-rate shifts, and the strength of the U.S. dollar.

2023: Ordinals

As one of the core narratives, Ordinals are a numbering scheme that introduced a way to 'inscribe' data such as text, images, or other files to specific satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin).

This way, it enabled the creation of Bitcoin-native digital artifacts similar to NFTs, as explained in the article below.

Its launch in January 2023 by Casey Rodarmor attracted many users who saw a new use case in the oldest blockchain: Bitcoin.

Within its first three months, it had over one million inscriptions although activities are not as they were in the early days, as of November 2025, the protocol moved to over millions inscriptions.

On top of that, Ordinals, through the 'numbering scheme,' paved the way for Runes, a token standard on Bitcoin that allows the creation, minting, and transfer of fungible assets directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.

2024: Layer 2 Scaling

As we know, Layer 2 solutions (L2) are protocols built on top of an existing blockchain. In Bitcoin, different approaches are taken when developing these protocols, and therefore they come under different categories.

The common ones include sidechains, roll-ups (either optimistic or zero-knowledge), state channels, and payment channels.

Although Bitcoin's Layer 2 journey began in 2018 with early networks like Lightning, 2024 was the year these solutions truly took off, with many new launches like our very own Bitfinity.

This surge was fuelled by factors such as increased activities and experimentation on the Bitcoin blockchain, which led to congestion and high fees in the network.

2024: ETFs

In this same year, the crypto community was met with the of the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US for 11 companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Just to recap, an ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a collection of cryptocurrency assets bundled together into a fund that can be traded on stock exchanges.

For context, the SEC was not the first to approve cryptocurrency ETFs. Several other jurisdictions, such as Canada and Brazil, had already done so as early as 2021.

2024: BTCFi

Also in the same year, Bitcoin witnessed an increase in DeFi activities, which are what we term BTCFi, short for Bitcoin DeFi.

2025: Regulatory Clarity

In the year 2025 a lot has changed in terms of regulatory clarity on cryptocurrencies.

In general, regulatory clarity means that the rules and laws governing a particular industry, activity, or product are clear, specific, and consistently applied by government agencies.

Notable examples of these crypto regulations seen across the globe in 2025 are:

EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA): It became fully operational in late 2024 and created a single set of rules for crypto companies across all 27 EU countries. In 2025, it has been active in implementation, licensing, and enforcement.
The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Clarity on Bank Fees: On November 18, the OCC confirmed that national banks are authorized to hold certain crypto assets like Bitcoin as principal to pay network fees.

In early 2025, Tether announced its integration with the Lightning Network to facilitate efficient cross-border transactions. later that August, the company expanded its Bitcoin ecosystem presence by launching on the RGB protocol. These additions join a growing list of stablecoin projects built on Bitcoin.

Conclusion

Bitcoin and the entire crypto industry have had a remarkable journey, one divided into phases of narratives and cycles. In each phase, whether sparked by upgrades, market events, or new ideas, these narratives and cycles have played a role in pushing them forward.

While some of these narratives have faded and others continue to evolve, new ones are already taking shape. We are interested in how the story of Bitcoin will unfold next...

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The Stories We Tell: Analyzing the Narratives Around Bitcoin