Bitcoin is currently trading in the $9,900 range, though it did hit $10,000 briefly during yesterday’s early morning hours, suggesting that for a brief period, the world’s number one cryptocurrency by market cap managed to regain all its losses of the past three months.
Bitcoin Is On the Verge of Striking It Big
Bitcoin has been on a serious roller coaster ride since late February. At that time, the currency was trading for well above $10K, though by the time early March rolled in, the asset had lost more than $1,000 and was trading in the high $8,000 range. As bad as this looked, crypto enthusiasts had no idea just how rough things would get in the coming months, and bitcoin would continue to fall and topple and eventually reach the high $3,000 range, dropping close to 70 percent within just a matter of weeks.
The coronavirus pandemic is widely blamed for bitcoin’s bearish behavior, but it’s also labeled as the culprit behind its reversal. Many people saw fiat and traditional money as dangerous, scary or prone to inflation after countries like the U.S. began initiating heavy stimulus packages that required additional (and wide) money printing. The stimulus package approved in late March saw more than $1 trillion released back into Americans’ pockets and the country’s economy.
This ultimately caused many people to turn back to bitcoin as a means of securing their wealth and fighting the potential for inflation. This has seemed to work in BTC’s favor, as the world’s biggest digital asset has ultimately said goodbye to all its previous losses.
Billionaire investor Paul Tudor-Jones commented on bitcoin’s sudden meteoric rise, claiming in an interview:
We are witnessing the Great Monetary Inflation – an unprecedented expansion of every form of money unlike anything the developed world has ever seen… The best profit-maximizing strategy is to own the fastest horse… If I am forced to forecast, my bet is it will be bitcoin.
Bitcoin’s latest jumps are likely in anticipation of the upcoming halving, which is set to occur three days from now on May 12. The mining industry is set to deal with heavy cuts as block rewards for extracting new coins will be dropped from 12.5 BTC down to 6.25 BTC. Back in 2009, when bitcoin will still considerably newer, miners received as much as 50 individual units for extracting new bitcoin blocks.
The Hour Has Come!
This will be bitcoin’s third official halving – the second one having taken place in 2016 – and is considered by many analysts to be a pivotal point in the currency’s limited, yet significant history.
Back in mid-April, the currency spent several weeks hovering between $6,600 and $7,000. From there, however, the asset began spiking by as much as $500 to $1,000 per day until finally reaching its present price.