Aren’t You Proud to Keep Your Bitcoin? Don’t Sell It.

Aren’t you glad you kept that Bitcoin? I know I am.

Even with the recent decline of its highs, approaching $ 20,000, investors have been bullish. Does it go to $ 50,000? Nope. It goes to $ 500,000, some on the Street have told me (hint: she runs a large, innovative ETF). These are the wild speculative prognostications that make Bitcoin what it is. But keep it. Even if it goes to $ 5,000 again. We’ve seen that what comes around goes around.

It took over 1,000 days since Bitcoin hit its previous all-time high, recorded in December 2017.

“We are buyers for this price as we believe Bitcoin will appreciate over the short, medium and long term,” said Daniel Wolfe, a fund manager at Simoleon’s Long Term Value Cryptocurrency Fund, which he runs in partnership with SPRING, and a Moscow Investment Company. “Taking a three to five year look and the average cost of a dollar to a position that represents about 5% of your portfolio is prudent today.”

Okay, but are we in the lift yet? You know, that Bitcoin Moon thing.

“The next nine months will bring significant appreciation to Bitcoin,” Wolfe thinks. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see $ 50,000 next summer. Within four years, we expect the capitalization of all cryptoassets to grow five times, with Bitcoin at $ 100,000, ”he told me last week.

There are several factors driving Bitcoin’s stellar rise this year. Microstrategy

MSTR
and Square

SQ
, for example, have been buyers. Big investors like Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller are in.

The availability of infrastructure at an institutional level has eased their access: Fidelity’s custody solution is one example. Secondly, halving the so-called BTC award (since May 11 each block has a 6.25 BTC prize instead of the 12.5 BTC award before halving) means that more of the new open market demand must be met by that miners cannot keep up.

Historically, the halving has led to a new peak in the price of BTC 13-15 months after the reduction in the BTC award.

Buying and holding BTC has become easier for retail investors. PayPal

PYPL
now allowing its 350 million users to buy and hold Bitcoin using their existing accounts, something that Robinhood and other fintech companies also now allow.

“I think the reason behind the growth is the dollar we are forecast to weaken against other reserves. Any fixed assets and properties respectively are the most attractive investment, ”says Nikita Zuborev, head of marketing at 13-year-old BestChange.com, a free Russian exchange aggregator.

“The market for cryptocurrencies has changed,” said Zuborev. Many derivatives, futures and options trading have launched in recent years. Bitcoin has gained a significant share of the crypto trading market. “Despite the ‘DeFi fever’ it occupies a prominent position in contrast to 2017 trends when the previous price record was set,” he said.

“DeFi” means decentralized, or peer-to-peer funding made over a blockchain ledger that eliminates the middle man – usually banks and brokers.

Bitcoin’s incredible run this year is also due to new money coming in, says Benjamin Duval, CEO of 4C-Trading and UpBots, a Swiss trading interface for cryptocurrencies, DeFi, forex and Zug-based commodities , Switzerland. “There is a more stable market with more advanced projects … with long-term solutions being offered by DeFi for example,” he said. The growth of this segment of crypto, or rather – its promise – is attracting investors to keep their capital invested instead of selling it for hard money.

“Three years ago, in November and December, Bitcoin grew to $ 20,000 – and that’s because of human greed. The technology was not widely applied which could justify that growth, ”said Gapporov Behkzod, CEO of Okschain, a new generation decentralized financial service using crypto. “People were looking to go fast and lose a lot in the panic,” he said of those glittering days in 2017.

“Bitcoin is still at the beginning of its story,” said Behkzod. “More growth and corrections are to come. I won’t try to make a prediction, but we will probably see a $ 1,000,000 Bitcoin price – and that’s not an end. Many of our colleagues who work with extensive volumes every day are already talking about this, ”he said. “These are the men with the vision.”

Regulations are also moving forward. That has always been a sticking point for those who wanted to make cryptocurrency a real industry. They wanted more transparency and new that was a sticking point before more money would jump in.

All the elements are assembling now, says Duval of Switzerland. “Even if the price falls over the next few weeks, 2021 should see a new peak for virtual currencies and it would not be surprising to see Bitcoin hit the $ 50,000 to $ 80,000 mark,” he said.

In some ways, the pandemic has emphasized the need for market-resistant investment opportunities in 2021. What started as a demand for inflation-beating interest rates has now become a deeper need for growth and security.

“People want to diversify into alternative investments and cryptocurrencies offer everything from collateral-backed lending to value-store security to forex trading,” said Chris Roper, head of communications for alternative finance startup, MyConstant. They matched $ 16.6 million in crypto-backed loans – their core business – in the third quarter of this year. It was a top quarter for them.

Paypal will make Bitcoin a household name, Roper said. “You will find a new generation of investors in the crypto-ecosystem seeking growth in challenging economic times.”

If Bitcoin looks too expensive, there are always two other crypto worlds – Ripple XRP and Ethereum, priced at $ 0.51 and around $ 571, respectively.

“Alternative coins usually follow the Bitcoin price movement, but the difference is that they are easier to speculate on – so sometimes we see inconsistency in the charts,” said Oleg Fakeev, a well-known crypto investor and founder of Kit Investments , a crypto investment community. “The excellence in capitalizing Bitcoin over other coins is one of the few factors that protects it from being constantly manipulated by major players,” he said.

Ethereum’s creator, the Russian-born Vitalik Buterin, has redone the smart contracts used by Ethereum, but clarifying that is well above my pay grade. Investors in crypto got excited about it. Even Tim Pool was talking about this weekend on his YouTube broadcast.

“There is undoubtedly growing interest,” Fakeev said of cryptocurrencies in general, not just Bitcoin. “Markets are swapping audiences – those who have just invested in cryptocurrencies have gone to the stock market, and investors in the stock market, having made Bitcoin survive the ‘test of time,’ are beginning to invest in cryptocurrencies . ”

Behkzod believes the crypto man of the year, however, is Buterin’s fellow Russian.

“Without Ethereum smart contracts, I think there would be a decline in supply and demand (crypto),” he said. “Ethereum will develop more in the future. It’s going to grow, ”he said. “I’m pursuing the same goals as Buterin in Okschain,” he said, hoping that some of this rising crypto pixie dust can rub on and what appears to be a rash of new investors rediscovering what was almost dead.

The “crypto winter” seems to be over, “said Roper. “It’s an exciting time with Square and Paypal access. The industry is maturing. ”