2020 in Review: Reflecting on a Year of Deep Valleys and High Peaks

In 1914, the Morton Salt company of the USA came up with the idiom “when it rains it pours.” The meaning behind this idiom implies that when one thing goes wrong, it’s usually followed by several other bad events in close succession. 

106 years later, 2020 definitely falls under the “when it rains it pours” category. A variety of stressful events played out over the course of 365 days but if one reads between the lines, there is a great deal of positivity that came from this year and it’s not one we should rush to forget. For YouHodler, 2020 was an iconic year to be forever remembered.  So much happened in regards to the development of our company that it’s easy to lose track of. So that’s why we invite you to join us in a brief year in review of our most notable events.

What strategies or developments provided maximum growth for YouHodler?

For YouHodler and the crypto market in general, 2020 was a year of growth. Can we trace this growth to one specific event? Not exactly. Instead, it was more of a series of events broken down into ones we created, and ones that were natural. 

In terms of strategies that YouHodler developed, it’s safe to say the YouHodler 2.0 “Affinity” update was the largest catalyst for growth in 2020. Affinity was the first major update to the platform since YouHodler’s initial debut. It was mostly inspired by client feedback and from there, our talented developers took those comments and made it their own. Affinity updates included:

New “limitless” savings accounts - Clients can earn interest over the max limit of $100,000 EUR by opening up a Multi HODL and earning interest on the entire value of the Multi HODL deal + whatever is in their savings accounts.

All-in-one-wallets - With Affinity, users can now earn interest, HODL crypto, and multiply crypto all in one, convenient wallet. No more jumping around the app. Simply click the icons in the coin’s wallet to explore all the great tools there for you. 

New improvements to Multi HODL - New charts, featuring line and candlestick varieties we created in addition to hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, 90 day and yearly data sets. Furthermore, the Multi HODL page is more advanced, yet simple, allowing users to easily choose their own Margin Call and Take Profit Levels. 

On the topic, Alex Vinny, Head of Product stated that

“In addition to Affinity, YouHodler made several technical and aesthetic adjustments that made the platform faster, more user friendly, and more efficient than ever. Along with that, we’ve added several new coins, tokens, and stablecoins to the platform that helped us attract loyal HODLers of those assets to explore our famous crypto wallets, loans, and multiplication features.“

What natural events produced maximum growth for YouHodler?

In terms of events that were out of YouHodler’s control, there was plenty to get excited about this past year. 2020 started with an initial disappointment in regards to BTC Halving. The overhyped event did not deliver, at least not immediately. Instead, the price of BTC after halving more or less created a stagnant market that proved BTC’s stable potential. However, that was all about to change. 

Once Covid-19 kicked in and the governments around the world started printing money at rapid rates, a new Bitcoin wave began to form. Everyone from the “average joe” investor to large financial institutions began to see the value in the finite Bitcoin as the new “digital hedge” next to gold. Confidence in central banks continues to decline and the price of Bitcoin has benefited greatly from it. 

Add to those facts the big news regarding PayPal’s embrace of cryptocurrency, Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust having a record breaking year and in general, an optimistic perception of cryptocurrency in the media and you have a perfect storm of a bull run we are still seeing right now. 

Some other notable events in 2020 that benefited YouHodler were the Chainlink (LINK) bull run and Ethereum 2.0. Not many people predicted LINK to take off the way it did but YouHodler was ready for it. We already had the popular ERC-20 token on our platform for crypto-backed loans, savings accounts, and Multi HODL. So we were set up perfectly for the new army of Chainlink Marines to come and enjoy our services. 

In addition, Ethereum 2.0 also provided a very nice boost to the Ethereum blockchain that has made our platform more efficient as well as providing our clients with more volatility to profit from in features like Multi HODL and Turbocharge. As Ethereum 2.0 continues to roll out and improve, we will likely see popular DeFi platforms using the Ethereum blockchain improve their functionality as well which will bring more active users to the industry and also to YouHodler.

How did we overcome setbacks and challenges in 2020?

For the whole world, 2020 was a year of challenges and at YouHodler, that was also the case. For example, the pandemic’s global travel restrictions made it harder than usual for us to have our annual team meetup but in a way, it strengthened our ability to work remotely as a team. We are now more efficient than ever and we can say the pandemic helped us refine those “work from home” qualities. By the way, we still managed to have our annual team meetup  (following all Covid-19 testing protocols of course).

2020 was also the year of attempted hacks all over the industry. Nearly every week, we caught someone attempting to breach our platform but they were never successful. Chief Technology Officer Renat Gafarov had this to say regarding security:

‍“It was certainly a challenge for our developers to fend off these attacks but also, it was great practice in the continuous journey to strengthen our defense systems. We can confidently say our platform is stronger and more secure than it ever has been and safety is something we take great pride in. We are fortunate to have such an amazing tech team on our side to help us with such challenges.”

Furthermore, business development was a challenge for us last year and one that we overcame gracefully. We made some great connections with industry leaders like CoinMarketCap and Cointelegraph. Where before, establishing relationships with these organizations was difficult, we find it’s getting easier as time goes on. A large part of that has to do with our reputation in the industry. The longer we are around and the more positive comments we get from our community, the more people want to work with us. 

We can also thank our team for adapting to new strategies and making long-lasting connections. Obstacles are a fantastic way to learn and grow. If something doesn’t work, we often go back to the drawing board to create improvements to our approach. This sort of adaptability was a large part of our success in 2020 and we hope to keep it up. 

What were the team’s biggest accomplishments?

There were dozens of small accomplishments throughout the year that deserve honorable mention. For example, we listed several new popular coins/tokens (UNI, COMP, MKR, etc), added a fully functional crypto/fiat exchange service, made good progress on our YouHodler Swiss entity, and more, but if we want to keep it simple, the biggest accomplishments were our client growth and profitability.

For the first year in our young history, YouHodler reached a level of profitability through our services. That went hand in hand with our community growth. We exceeded our yearly KPIs in terms of total active customers and leads meaning more people are finding YouHodler through our various marketing tactics and word of mouth.

Andrew Alekseev, Chief Marketing Officer of YouHodler stated that

“It was a huge year for us. YouHodler had almost 4.5 million unique visitors on our website and we've opened almost 137, 000 new accounts. On top of that, we increased the number of monthly active users by 20 times.

We’re proud to say our iOS App reached the top-10 rank in the “Finance” category 12 times in both the Apple App Store and in Google Play. We also had a few top-1 and top 2 rankings in “Finance” as well.

In 2021, we will continue to market YouHodler aggressively in an effort to not only become a true competitor in the industry but a top leader. We will keep expanding throughout Europe and the rest of the world. This will help us not only attract new clients but give us the necessary funds to keep improving the platform and implementing the many client requests many of you have suggested. 

Last but not least, the expansion of our global team is a major accomplishment for our young organization. As of right now, we have 20 official YouHodler employees with more coming soon. We prefer to keep things as efficient as possible, with all employees sharing the load and working together as a cohesive unit. That beings said, more growth requires more time and expertise, which is why we are adding more teammates each year. At YouHodler, everyone is family and we were proud to watch that family grow this year and into the next. 

2020 and Beyond: The Final Word

To wrap up our 2020 year in review, YouHodler CEO Ilya Volkov had a few words to share:

“As I always say: there is no need for TV shows if you work in the crypto industry. Every day brings something new and very exciting. 2020 was full of exhilarating market news supported by our developments. I’m sure 2021 will bring us even more. Global crypto inclusion is just around the corner and we will do our best to bring our customers as much value as possible.”

On that note, let us take a moment to thank you, the customers. Without you, YouHodler would never have been possible and we thank you all for your loyalty this past year. As Ilya just mentioned, plenty of great improvements are on the way and we are thrilled to unveil them to you. So for now, we’ll get back to work on developing the greatest crypto platform we can.

We hope you all had a good 2020 and we look forward to sharing the next year with you.