Despite calls for its imminent demise, bitcoin has printed higher lows almost every year since it was born. Here are four reasons why the leading cryptocurrency is just getting started. | Image: shutterstock.com
- Bitcoin delivered investors the highest return on investment (ROI) of any security in any asset class in the 2010s.
- Jack Dorsey’s Square Crypto says, “This decade was just bitcoin warming up.”
- Here are four reasons to expect even more from bitcoin in the 2020s.
Square Crypto, the bitcoin division of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s Square Payments, rang in the new decade with a prediction.
Source: Twitter
Here are four reasons why Square Crypto’s assessment holds true.
Now why should you take any of these reasons seriously? Before you read this list, you may want to review this article I wrote in Feb 2019…
The headline was, “10 Reasons Bitcoin Will Party Like 2017 for a Massive Bull Run in 2019,” and in it I correctly predicted the 2019 bitcoin bull market.
The bitcoin price on Jan 1, 2019 was $3760. On Feb 21st, when the article was published, bitcoin was trading at $3893. As of New Year’s Day 2020, that figure is $7222.
I told you this was likely to happen, and I told you why.
1. The Bitcoin Price Floor Is Rising Exponentially
Bitcoin skeptics howl with glee every time the price swings wildly downward.
But the statement “bitcoin is down,” begs the question, “Since when?” And over its one decade-long existence, you don’t have to go back far to find that, “bitcoin is up.”
As popular crypto YouTuber Carl The Moon pointed out last August:
Source: Twitter
(Carl’s was one of the channels that got swept up in YouTube’s apparently coordinated attack against crypto YouTube creators in December for posting “harmful or dangerous” content.)
This multi-year trend of rising key support (fancy word that means something like “price floor”) for bitcoin’s price looks doggone near exponential to me.
2. Bitcoin Hasn’t Hit The Fattest Part of the Fish
Product Adoption Curve: Crazy Egg
And there’s more than plenty of room left for that trend to continue. This innovative fintech product has hardly reached market saturation in 2020. In fact, the opposite is the case.
It’s still in the early stage of market adoption.
An Oct 2019 Crypto Radar survey (of 5,000 U.S. adults aged 18 – 65) found that only 6.2% of Americans own bitcoin. The results suggest that number is about to double, as 7.3% of respondents say they plan to own bitcoin.
The U.S. Census estimates the 18-64 population in 2020 at 202,621,000. So the survey finds roughly 12.5 million American adults own bitcoin.
By way of comparison, Facebook’s average monthly users crossed 100 million in 2008. That was four years before its IPO. Bitcoin is just getting started.
3. Institutional Finance Is Bringing in the Big Guns
The biggest finance companies are taking bitcoin seriously. | Source: AFP PHOTO/Stan HONDA
At the beginning of the decade, bitcoin’s rise was fueled by the “Lunatic Fringe” of earliest market adopters. Back then, only cryptography developers, crazed libertarians, and get rich quick schemers were on the bandwagon.
As we enter the 2020s, high finance is on board with BTC. Massive capitalization by institutional investors drove the 2019 BTC bull market.
Nasdaq launched BTC and ETH indexes.
The New York Stock Exchange launched a digital assets exchange, Bakkt.
Fidelity’s $7 trillion investment arm launched bitcoin custody products.
4. Second Layer Blockchain Tech Will Speed Adoption
In the above video, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer leads the audience in a chant of “Developers, Developers, Developers!” at the Microsoft 25th anniversary event conference.
Steve Ballmer understood the crucial importance of third party developers to build thriving ecosystems around major tech platforms.
Bitcoin was designed to be an intensely deflationary currency with a limited supply and limited space for transactions. That’s helped BTC hold and grow value, but stood in the way of scaling. Developers are rapidly solving that problem.
Second layer technologies like Lightning Network are building the capillaries to meet demand for greater liquidity. In the 2010s, bitcoin will be as easy to use as Apple Pay to buy your cup of coffee. That’s when it really gets hot.
Disclaimer: The above should not be considered trading advice from CCN.
This article was edited by Sam Bourgi.
Last modified: January 2, 2020 12:42 AM UTC
The post appeared first on CCN
