You can find lots of analytics regarding the future of Bitcoin and its price prediction. The proposition is to get a set of facts and trends inside Bitcoin and the crypto industry in order to create your own individual vision – to get a clear understanding, fix your disposition, and act accordingly. The position of believer is not the most profitable; that’s more about gambling. But the crypto world (and Bitcoin in particular) is a beautiful creature to observe and proceed with modeling and forecasting. The crypto world is about science and art, not gambling.
Please find the model you are more than welcome to upgrade – crowd-data-sourcing at work. This model will provide you with multiple pieces to construct your handmade decision. It is important to be an investigator, not just a believer and consumer.
Let’s take a look inside and around of this great crypto-theater.
Basic Snapshot
There are several fundamentals we must pay attention to at the beginning of our Bitcoin trip. These fundamentals give us a quick view of our current position in terms of Bitcoin.
Market Dominance
So, who’s the boss?
Dominance level shows us where money is anchored. Dominance means a currency’s support level, its stability.
Volatility
BTC volatility is one of the biggest pains for mass adoption, but a huge income source for professionals. The good news is that Bitcoin volatility has a strong downward trend toward its historical minimum:
With quite strong characteristics to date (November 2nd):
This is not only about low trading volume, but also maturity and pragmatic attitudes on the market (which caused the low turnover). That doesn’t mean there is a lack of resources, however:
The downward trend on the chart above is about stopping money rain, which was powered by an almost $20,000 splash at the end of 2017. If we had no splash, we would not have such a flow of resources into the market. This flow serves the industry as a whole when:
- we are able to see a big number of projects to estimate the potential of new tech, like DLT, AI, and IoT.
- we meet poor-quality projects and teach ourselves to spend financial resources wisely – money has been getting smarter.
There is no doubt that ICO must (and will) be revised in terms of mechanics as well as project and team preparedness for using the tool. It is about maturity!
Limited Supply vs. Unlimited Demand
21,000,000 BTC is the supply limit we all know about – it is fixed in the code, and we all can read at anytime. Do you agree that demand has been growing for over the last 10 years?
There is a strong upward trend in demand. Bitcoin is not a mysterious geek toy, but a well-known asset. I would focus your attention not on the volume of trading, but the number of people (and organizations) who are taking their first steps towards Bitcoin as a flagship of the industry. The mass user will more likely step into the BTC arena rather than the altcoin arena. Bitcoin is the gate to the crypto world. And the crypto world is growing permanently. This growth attracts institutional players — a great opportunity for Bitcoin and the industry as a whole.
Let’s move further into the fundamental factors, the most important being the institutional investor.
Institutional Investor
According to a brand-new report by Morgan Stanley (please find the June 2018 version also), crypto has been turning into an institutional asset class out of drug dealers’ means of payment – institutional investors are increasingly getting involved in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Can you imagine this happening 3-5 years ago? It is about development, demand, and growth.
It should be noted that institutional investors are not only asset users/consumers, but also technology investigators. For instance, a wide range of blockchain consortiums are exploring and using DLT-based solutions inside real businesses. This brings more fame to blockchain and Bitcoin among the masses. Just put together all the clients of BMW, JP Morgan Chase, IBM, SAP, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Cargill, etc. – this is more than just a good client base. The individual investor receives proof that Bitcoin and its technology represent a serious event in the history of mankind. That creates the perfect informational background for corporations, which have been starting to look behind Bitcoin’s functions and investigate its technology background, develop real life use cases. This has the cumulative effect of bringing the institutional investor into the asset arena due to the hype around crypto.
BlackRock
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and the largest provider of exchange-traded-funds (ETF), with $6,317,000,000,000 under management. BlackRock set up a working group in July 2018. The target is to investigate the possibilities of DLT in general, and Bitcoin in particular. The group had contact to develop crypto-direction with a potential partner: Coinbase. Traditional managers are seeking strictly-focused competence, while alternative finance representatives are hunting for resources. It’s about a win-win collaboration that is only just beginning to take place, and it is about to skyrocket.
Coinbase was not a random choice to partner with. Please let me go a little bit deeper in terms of institutional investor penetration into the crypto industry. Coinbase is one of the oldest (since 2012) crypto exchanges, with a 100% strong compliance backbone and a U.S.-market focus. The team has just gotten Series E funding recently: $300 million, at a valuation of over $8 billion (the valuation was $1.6 million during a previous funding round in August 2017). Investors are developing the ecosystem they are going to enter.
Fidelity Investments
Fidelity Investments is the next heavyweight to mark 2018 as the beginning of its activity in the crypto space. They launched Fidelity Digital Assets, the limited liability corporation, and will soon provide customers with a cryptocurrency trading platform, enterprise-grade custody solutions (key focus), and advisory services for institutional clients. One of the biggest providers of 401(k) services and other retirement products for Americans delivers financial services for $7.2 trillion in customer assets and keeps 13,000 institutional advisory firms and brokers as its clients – network effect will take place, without a doubt.
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs, a $863 billion assets company and leader in global investment banking, securities, and investment management with 150 years of history, is entering crypto, too. It started to register clients for its new Bitcoin trading desk to gain access to Bitcoin-based derivatives. It took a year to turn the Goldman Sachs “maybe” into reality here and now.
Bitcoin derivatives are not new to the market. They are available on several regulated U.S. trading platforms, including options exchanges like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). Both companies offer cash-settled Bitcoin futures contracts.
Bakkt
Additionally, there is the rather promising Bakkt project,announced in August 2018: a crypto startup launched by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. It is co-backed by Microsoft, Starbucks, Boston Consulting Group, Fortress Investment Group, Eagle Seven, and Susquehanna International Group. The team is preparing to launch its first Bitcoin futures product, which is scheduled to begin trading on December 12.
Unlike the contracts available on CME and CBOE, Bakkt’s Bitcoin future will be physically settled, meaning that actual Bitcoins will change hands when the contracts expire. Even more importantly, Bakkt will offer a federally regulated market for Bitcoin, which is a crucial characteristic for an institutional investor. The contract will be traded on ICE’s electronic trading platform, which is regulated by the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – SEC has nothing to say.
It’s very interesting that Bakkt’s feature follows its structure, which includes a clearing house (there are 6 clearinghouses within the ICE group of companies), and the nature of the future contract (one-day futures). That means that BTC can be traded instantly, with no need for broadcasting data into Bitcoin’s blockchain. All buy/sell operations, balances are kept and managed within the Bakkt ecosystem.
The ecosystem is going to be enough liquid taking into consideration the institutional nature of the platform. It is about leveling Bitcoin’s transaction speed disadvantage. This kind of sidechain attitude (and technology similar to Lightning Network and Raiden) brings one of the core keys to opening institutional doors.
And last but not least: Bakkt is more than just an exchange. Its long-run strategy is put into several sentences from the press release:
Bakkt is designed to serve as a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant, and consumer participation in digital assets…
The new company is working…to create an integrated platform that enables consumers and institutions to buy, sell, store, and spend digital assets on a seamless global network.
Bakkt is hunting a huge market: consumers worldwide are paying credit-card or online-shopping fees on $25 trillion a year in annual purchases. Americans only charge $8 trillion in goods and services every year — over 40% of the GDP — on credit and debit cards, and through digital portals like PayPal. Third parties that accept those cards pay 2% to 3% to around six intermediaries, including Visa, MasterCard, and the banks issuing the cards. And Starbucks is a good partner to team up with to disrupt cards as a mean of payment. It has made several successful attempts to turn the smartphone into a card.
Microsoft is more than a good partner, as its Azure cloud business serves an incredible base of retailers, handling back-office tasks from invoice processing to e-commerce. Bitcoin is welcoming a $25 trillion turnover as a huge positive factor for growth.
It is important to take companies like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Goldman Sachs not just as financial resource owners. It is a group that includes and provides the world with top-tier human resources while keeping strong connections with its alumni. For example, Gary Cohn (11th Director of the U.S. National Economic Council) and Mario Draghi (President of the European Central Bank) have their roots inside Goldman Sachs. It makes ex-employers well-informed due to a direct contact and, perhaps, brings the possibility of a certain level of influence (of course, an indirect one). It would be fair to state that there is an opposite trend of hosting ex-public servants as top-managers in crypto companies.
ETF
The crypto community hopes the “human resources” factor will play a positive role in the ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) soap opera. Trump made his appointment and brought in Elad Roisman as a new SEC Commissioner (September 2018). The ex-NYSE (what a “surprise”) team member is known for his positive opinion regarding cryptocurrency and the ETF.
For years, the SEC has been keeping the crypto world in permanent expectation of a miracle: ETF approval. The ETF will bring tons of money into the market (including the top funds mentioned above). The gate is kept closed while market leaders develop its internal and external infrastructures, and while the market is stabilizing and getting its rules from officials. Nine requests from market players were put on the SEC table, and none received positive feedback, including that of Winklevoss, which was submitted more than five years ago. There is, however, dialog between business and government; thus, there is a to-do-list to pass SEC requirements and get approval as soon as possible (more likely in Q1, 2019).
By the way, key SEC concerns regarding ETF launch are the Bitcoin futures market’s low liquidity, limited investor protective measures, and a lack of anti-money-laundering procedures. Bakkt’s launch (see above) in the crypto arena could bring better liquidity, legitimacy, and credibility to the industry, which could cause a positive domino effect to turn Bitcoin’s ETF dream into reality. The flood of institutional buying and selling would take the terror out of Bitcoin by smoothing its wild swings in price. The domino effect would bring tectonic movement into the retail/private sector, too. Growing Bitcoin turnover would bring huge profits to crypto-ecosystem service companies, like exchanges. The prediction is not a new one; thus, the landscape has been changing already.
Exchanges
BTC is the base pair for ~1/3 of global crypto assets trading. So BTC is about exchanges like nothing else.
There are several examples of acquisitions, investment, and restructuring on the market. These examples provide you with proof of real activity from both the internal participants’ side as well as that of external one: investors, governments.
Restructuring (Huobi)
The first trigger event is a restructuring example. It is about “must-have” steps to remain an industry leader.
Huobi Exchange:
- #3 (Coinmarketcap)-6 (Coingecko) worldwide
- 5 years old
- $400-600 million in daily operations
- fixed fee maker/taker = 0.2%
- rough daily income = 0.002*2*500M = 2M (USD)
Restructuring through acquisition: the company acquired a controlling stake in Hong Kong-based Pantronics Holdings, Ltd. through a backdoor listing deal. The deal is also known as a reverse takeover or reverse Initial Public Offering (IPO). It allows a privately-held company (which Huobi was) to purchase a publicly traded company (which Huobi now is), avoiding due diligence, the public offering process, and regulatory issues. After the deal, the buyer is listed on the stock exchange – the current market cap of Pantronics Holdings, Ltd. is $154 million (which is twice as much as the Huobi token cap).
The company went public; that is part of the strategy to save leading positions. This step can attract global partners and heavyweight investors. It is the only possibility for developing a business with a minimum of the friction caused by governmental regulations.
Huobi has entered the Japanese market, as well, through acquisition of a majority stake in Japan’s BitTrade — one of only sixteen regulated crypto exchanges in the country. Japan is a very interesting market in terms of regulation and its dramatic Gox history. The government has just approved self-regulation for its crypto industry (October 2018). This will boost growth and provide a great precedent for other countries to follow.
Huobi is not only about the exchange. This is a group of companies, and it includes mining, investment, R&D, and education. While its exchange business is many-sided – this is also part of the strategy to keep the leader’s position in an extremely competitive environment. This includes Huobi Pro, Huobi OTC, and its latest initiative, Huobi Cloud. The new platform allows its users to build digital-asset exchanges on top of Huobi’s existing platform. It is just a brilliant example of what can happen when competition turns to cooperation! Is it about altruistic intentions or understanding that the tsunami is coming, and there is no other way but to cooperate and catch more golden rain by sharing together (but not alone and dead for a year or two). You will definitely find the answer on your own.
In the meantime, the team has been reinforced: Randi Zuckerberg, the elder sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has joined the advisory board of the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi. The assignment is a good tool for analyzing the direction the company and industry will follow. Randi hardly seems to be a saboteur, but is, instead, a professional to enhance growth and keep an eye on the evolving industry and the company from the inside (to get a managerial position within an acquired company soon; the company that went public recently – what a coincidence).
Acquisition (Bitstamp, Poloniex)
The second trigger event is acquisition. It is about saving time and getting the right position on a booming market.
The Bitstamp company was the subject of rumors regarding its sale deal back in March of this year. The exchange was at the 11th position in terms of daily trade volume. A South Korean investor was going to pay $400 million. The rumors were confirmed at the end of October 2018 – the company had been acquired by the Belgium-based investment firm NXMH (EUR 2 billion assets under management), which is a European subsidy of NXC, a South Korean venture with a key focus on gaming and digital technologies. 1 million active users, #57 (Coinmarketcap) at the beginning of November 2018 – the assumption is that the deal is not targeting success and volume, but instead the technology and team, which have stood the test of time for the last seven years.
$400 million is more than enough of a resource to build your own trading platform from scratch, but what about time? NXC does not have it. That’s FOMO at work, well-backed FOMO.
$400 million seems to be a standard in the industry. Poloniex got its valuation on that level, too, at the moment of acquisition by Circle (backed by Goldman Sachs in 2015 and Bitmain in 2018). This example is interesting because of the fact that the exchange business is a part of global Circle project, which includes Circle Invest, Circle Pay, and Circle Trade. The last project is one of the biggest OTC trading desks for crypto, and manages $2+ billion per month in transactions. Circle holds a BitLicense, and is going to register the new entity with the SEC, FINRA as a broker/dealer, and in turn as a licensed ATS (electronic trading marketplace). This brings the huge advantage of a win-win cooperation between the Circle and Poloniex teams, and makes Coinbase and Gemini a little bit nervous.
So, we have one more example with an urgent need for an exchange component to get ready for something big nowadays with no postponement or delays. Just nowadays!
The U.S. market is an excellent example to show the upward growth trend in the exchange business and its expectations as it is one of the most regulated while the most desired, and most liquid (in terms of the trading pair to BTC).
In spite of regulatory resistance, Bitcoin is attracting more and more local participants as well as companies from abroad, like Bithumb. It is the #1 (CoinGecko) exchange from Korea that got its $880 million evaluation at the beginning of October 2018 during a deal (sold 38% @ $350 million) with BK Global Consortium (a blockchain investment team formed by BK Global, a plastic surgery group from Singapore). It is entering the U.S. market and launching a compliant security token exchange as soon as all approvals from the SEC and FINRA have been finalized. No time to wait – the right place and time are right here, right now.
Investment (Seed CX)
The third trigger event is an investment example. It is about the option to develop everything from scratch while adding a creative feature to attract clients as quickly as possible.
Seed CX is a case that is less about money and more about creativity, which is used to cherry-pick in the crypto industry. The team raised $15 million in a Series B round, and received $25 million in total funding. The core idea of the exchange is to offer trading and settlement services for spot markets (and other derivatives regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission).
That sets Seed CX apart other Bitcoin futures initiatives, and illustrates the size of its intention to get a piece of the institutional pie. Of course, the exchange has applied for a BitLicense through the New York Department of Financial Services and a broker-dealer registration through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. There are no other options to play on U.S. territory, and business seems to have adopted the rule.
Coming back to human resources, several other facts should also be mentioned. One of the most recognized appointments is Cynthia Meyn, a former special assistant to the president of the United States, and ex-Credit Suisse Chief economist. Seed CX’s swaps execution facility subsidiary has added new directors: John D’Agostino and Bob Paul. Mr. D’Agostino is chair of the U.S. Asset Management Working Group, which operates in the U.S. Department for International Trade. Bob Paul is a former General Counsel for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This stands as the next evidence of government and business interpenetration, which means the state is preparing to open the gate for crypto world – for Bitcoin.
Crypto Geopolitics and the Mining Issue
China has stepped away from crypto over last two years. Check out the bitcoin_fiat_trade_composition chart above to see the dynamics of the exit. At their peak, during the period between November 2016 and November 2017, transactions in Chinese Yuan accounted for more than 90 percent of global Bitcoin trading volume (according to Morgan Stanley research). A month after the crackdown, in October 2017, that figure was down to less than 5 percent. But…
Here is the problem:
Almost 4/5 of the hashpower is still under the control of pools from China. This is a great theme to explore, but there is no doubt that the most well-known DLT creature is centralized in an incredible way (please find great stuff on the topic). And the country behind the mining industry is not the best partner for the USA. Let’s keep in mind that the majority of institutional resources we have been analyzing are concentrated squarely within the United States. Let’s put together all the facts:
- a boom of institutional activity is coming to the USA
- China keeps control over the mining industry
- the USA and China are involved in a trade war.
There is a lot of Chinese money in the industry. There are huge stakes inside the mining industry, and it would be too hard to convince mining business to kill its milking cow. This is about both miners and mining equipment producers, like Bitmain. The Beijing-based cryptocurrency mining giant has officially filed an application to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. According to the filing, the firm made a total of $2,517,719,000 in revenue, and gross profits of $1,212,750,000 in 2017. The team has raised three funding rounds from investors in Asia, in the U.S., and the list too long – $872 million in total.
But who cares somebody’s loses or who is going to convince whom (but not order) when we speak about confrontation between two leading economies. There is no prediction as yet, but it is quite clear that we have a strong threat to keep an eye on, and must change the situation as soon as possible.
Stablecoin
Bitcoin volatility and an absence of collateral result in a negative effect on mass adoption (and the price rocketing). The volatility challenge will finally be solved as soon as institutional money visits the market and brings a certain stability through volume.
But there are companies that have caught the market opportunity and are providing worldwide customers with fiat-backed cryptocurrency (fiat = stable). The product – stablecoin – has must have near-zero price fluctuation, and has must have fiat deposits equivalent to the total value of the product. This brings a brilliant tool to switch to in case of a drop in other cryptos (to freeze the value of your assets), and keeps traders/investors confident of getting appropriate fiat volume when requested.
Actually, stablecoin is backed by nothing but fiat, which is backed by nothing but…nothing! Still, it is in great demand in the case of traders and crypto adherents who do not use a fiat pair to trade, or perhaps cannot even use this type of instrument, which includes a fiat component.
Stablecoin is extremely relevant in the context of decentralization in general (its core idea), and the decentralization of exchanges, in particular. The centralized model of exchange is more in demand nowadays – there is no other option to switch to in terms of institutional flow. But there are lots of users (present and potential) who are looking for a less regulated trading market, and mechanics to interact with each other. That brings a new wave of solutions into the exchange industry – decentralized exchanges.
This type of “no host” service company will have a positive effect on Bitcoin, too. It can provide anybody with the ability to trade assets with no identification or minimal identification. It is hard to estimate the black/grey area of crypto (and its potential), but there is no doubt it is a very big one which is getting appropriate infrastructure (exchanges) and tools (stablecoin) now.
However, it would be fair to state that stablecoin will be about decentralization as soon as almost every top-layer centralized exchange uses the tool while avoiding fiat (USD). No fiat = no specific regulation and additional internal infrastructure which fiat brings as a “bonus”. Stablecoin mixes fiat and crypto features while offering a universal tool to boost Bitcoin, too.
TrueUSD, Tether, Gemini Dollar, Paxos, U.S. dollar coins of Circle, and many others out of 57 projects are struggling to win the market (according to Blockchain’s report). Stablecoin could possibly damage Bitcoin’s dominance level over the short to middle term, as the value of stablecoins has $3 billion already on its starting line. Strategically, however, key cryptocurrency will gain from this type of market evolution due to market volume growth. Evolution brings a real solution, which is far more suitable for managing the value of your assets than lock accounts or futures. Meanwhile, crypto is becoming more and more user-friendly – more users to join! Keep in mind who is the crypto boss and the key crypto port of entry: Bitcoin.
Technology
Bitcoin is less scalable than we all want it to be, but please realize that each creation has strict functions to follow. The laptop is okay for cracking nuts, but we prefer other tools for doing that. So why should the Bitcoin blockchain be an appropriate tool to support a one-cup-of-coffee transaction? Bitcoin inspires us to be creative, and lets us do what we want. This isn’t necessarily about debit cards, which support crypto but a real technology should be put behind the transaction to make it user-friendly and instant.
The sidechain is the solution. There is a lack of practical examples at the moment, but this sub-industry has reached its critical moment of breakthrough. Blockstream’s Liquid and the Lightning Network !!LINK!! (LN) are doing their best to cut the scalability threat and provide Bitcoin and other crypto-asset users with almost instant transaction mechanics with near-zero fees.
Liquid
Liquid maintains a corporate side. It is a permissioned, federated blockchain that is ideal for high volumes and large transactions. It is pretty obvious that the project is targeting large financial institutions. Thus, 23 crypto-industry members (exchange operators, mostly, which cover 50-60% of total transaction volume) have entered the initial client pool to utilize the sidechain technology benefits. Basically, Liquid provides the infrastructure to process transactions between its service participants (remember Bakkt?). In spite of all the criticism about not being the true one, the project was launched in September 2018. Despite all the negativity, Liquid is bringing more speed and liquidity to the industry. It has provided a solution, no matter which decentralization level it is about.
Lightning Network
LN is a true decentralized one – decentralized micropayment solution. Its target market includes exchanges, too, but the private user also gains a lot. It features a peer-to-peer system for making micropayments in Bitcoin and other digital cryptocurrencies through a network of bidirectional payment channels.
It is important to note that there is no delegation of custody of funds during a transaction. Lightning Network implementation simplifies atomic swaps. It has limited capacity, but it is an attempt to mitigate risk to users but not create bottlenecks. From April 2018 to August 2018, the Bitcoin Lightning Network had a monthly growth rate of about 15 percent. The number of nodes increased from 1,500 to 3,000, and the number of channels increased from 4,000 to 11,000. Nice dynamics, aren’t they?
Bitcoin and the technology behind it let us be creative and find layer solutions while broadcasting them through the industry. For example, Stellar announced that its Stellar Network would be implementing a protocol inspired by LN developments. Meanwhile, individual developers like Alex Bosworth have proposed additional solutions to enhance the ecosystem: submarine swaps, which allow users to make trustless transactions between LN addresses and on-chain addresses in either direction. The open-source nature of the crypto world puts heavy armor into its arsenal. The community is a key component of developing the ecosystem, as the crypto ecosystem is a crowdsourced one and that pays back.
Conclusion
There are no conclusions – it’s all up to you. Just put the puzzle together and find the additional pieces to enhance your full picture of the current state of Bitcoin.
For example, the regulatory factor was not covered internationally – it is important, but the fact is, the major play takes place in the U.S. And we gained an understanding of the direction that both business and the state follow – business takes rules and plays a legitimate way. The core target behind legitimization is to get institutional money, which puts the liquidity of the market on a new level (after the price jump) and restructures it totally. Thus, India’s potential ban or the pseudo-positive reaction of Malta, which welcomes crypto business but keeps it difficult to open a bank account in practice, don’t play a critical role or determine the global direction of the market.
China’s domination in mining is not the only issue for Bitcoin. There are a lot of obstacles and risks, like the recent code breach CVE-2018-17144, which allowed a miner to execute a distant DoS attack by copying transaction input. That was a really huge threat for the whole network! But we have the community, and that could be a separate article. The community is a strong tool to resist issues and cut risks.
Domination in mining is a real threat, but it is not the first time the community has faced the problem. There is a precedent: when ghash.io mining pool hit a 51 percent hash rate in 2014, and miners left the pool in order to avoid a critical level of centralization. There are Chinese pools that keep leading positions, but the truth is, these pools consist of thousands of individual miners mostly. Miners are the community, which acts accordingly in case of a threat or if somebody starts acting maliciously.
Moreover, the developers’ part of the community proposed a code upgrade to optimize mining in favor of decentralization principles: the BetterHash proposal (of June 2018) by Matt Corallo (TheBlueMatt, Bitcoin Core developer) allows individual miners to keep a greater level of control over the transactions they’re mining, thus stripping pools of some of their centralized characteristics.
The last DoS-bug was discovered by Awemany (man, thanks a lot!!!), a developer of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Unlimited projects – and a regular user in the community. The bug was fixed nearly instantly, which is evidence of quality teamwork: to find the bug, to inform the core dev team, to fix the bug, to inform infrastructure participants, and to implement a network update.
The only conclusion is as follows: the industry is maturing, and Bitcoin is maturing, as well. This material excludes technical analysis intentionally. A technical analysis is used locally in pre-set circumstances, and is based upon a fundamental background. This article is about factors that are moving the market on a fundamental level.
It is important to know that we have consolidation on the market today, while a strong BTC-price support level is fixed near the $6,000 level (which was intensively checked during 2018 and even hcracked at the time of writing), but this is about the present time. Our task is not only to get short-term profits due to a $20,000 or $100,000 burst, but to gain an understanding of Bitcoin’s future, the industry’s future – our future.
