We’re back for another installment in the Chasing Bitcoin series! Bitcoin has remained in a range for quite some time. The hope from our analysts is that tax-loss selling has stopped and January will be a great month for Bitcoin and equities (as it usually is). We predict that $46,000 represents a local low in BTC and the asset will rally from there.
We are almost up to the present-day in the Bitcoin story. Last week, we talked about how the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a crash in BTC prices in March 2020. But the asset showed resilience and proved it could hang with the “big boys” of other asset classes.
In May of that same year, the Bitcoin network underwent its third halving event shining a ray of hope to investors and signifying the start of the 2020-21 bull run. Traders were likely disappointed by the short-term price impact of the halving, but halvings are long-term macro events whose effects aren’t priced in until long after mining rewards are cut in half.
Bitcoin slowly but surely ascended in price through the latter half of 2020 and eventually broke the critical psychological level of $20,000 in December. While we still sit in the bull market triggered by the May 2020 halving event, it’s hard to summarize the impact of this halving, but it could easily go down as the most influential halving in Bitcoin history.
Perhaps the biggest culture shift when it comes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies during this bull run is the corporate and institutional appreciation we’ve seen for our nascent asset class. The most significant announcement of corporate involvement in Bitcoin came when PayPal announced that it would allow its users to buy and sell Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
The announcement came in October and meant PayPal’s 346 million users would now be able to pay with crypto at the 26 million merchants using their service. A payments company like PayPal adopting technologies that are its natural competitor shows its belief in Bitcoin and the necessity of companies to either join the movement or “die.”
PayPal buying into crypto coupled with MicroStrategy buying over $400 million in BTC from its corporate treasury in 2020 displayed strong corporate faith in the asset that bled into 2021 and will hopefully continue in 2022.
