Is the first split of ranked irrelevant now?

Hello everyone. New poster here. Like a lot of other people, I was shocked to see I only got rewards for the second split of season 20. I grinded to Plat first split, didn't feel like playing the second split because of cheaters, teamers etc. So I got reset to silver at the start of split 2 then didn't play at all and I got an animated silver badge lol. At least the Plat and Silver badge look kind of similar if you squint from really far away.

So is the first split of ranked irrelevant now?? What's the point of playing it at all if we're only getting rewards for the second? For some weird reason Respawn also decided to reset everyone to bronze again??? Why? Already decided I'm just not going to play the first split, especially if I'm not getting rewards for it. People have told me this was changed in season 21 and once again we'll receive rewards for our highest rank achieved during the season but I don't remember Respawn saying this.

For now I'm just going to play Solo's and pubs and I'll play ranked during the second split from now on if we're not getting rewards for the first.