Nonetheless, crypto enthusiasts certainly want to see the results of the’ halving’ of Bitcoin later this year, but other enthusiasts seem to be joining the fray. The question is whether 2020 is the year in which Bitcoin reaches new heights and the increase in awareness might well be much higher than the $20,000 mark it achieved in 2017… Otherwise. Or not.
Most people are interested in seeing what the cryptocurrency industry is going to offer in 2020. Arcane Research points out how Google is searching for related keywords this month, perhaps because on 20 May 2020, the third’ halving’ of Bitcoin will happen.
This means that the pace at which new Bitcoins are produced will be reduced by 50 percent. Bitcoin is a deflationary coin limited to 21 million units, the latest being mined in 2140.
In the past, “halved incidents” have increased Bitcoin’s price by a certain amount, thus growing rewards for miners who solve transaction “blocks.” The new reward block is 12.5 BTC and is carried every 10 minutes, but is decreased to 6.25 BTC in May. Take a moment to consider the current price of 1 BTC that is ~$9,000, giving or taking a couple of hundred dollars, as written.
If history will repeat itself, it could take Bitcoin up to nearly $20,000 already, if you believe some excited German bankers, potentially as high as $90,000. If this seems unlikely, it should be remembered that some who purchased the token for pennies near its beginning did not really believe that it would become so valuable over time, and even nowadays even the cynical investor does not see it falling short of $5,000 in the foreseeable future.
Firstly you have people like Kraken CEO Jesse Powell, who claim that even though it exceeded $100,000, Bitcoin would still be undervalued. And with the sudden growth of public awareness, it is not difficult to imagine people rushing to buy Bitcoin in the expectation of quick returns if it occurs over night.
On the other hand, you have skeptics who assume that the Bitcoin halving might already be allocated, so it doesn’t really matter if your savings are invested in cryptocurrencies. There is also the possibility that investors and companies will deal primarily in derivatives instead of speculating on bitcoin.
There is enough proof however that the newly created Bitcoins are most likely consumed by the Bitcoin buying service of Square and the Bitcoin Trust of Grayscal. In addition to this, some 30 million Coinbase customers and people using trade applications such as eToro and RobinHood, and many variables have an impact on the value of Bitcoin.
Yet forget about a minute’s halving. The best investment in the last decade, if you jumped into the boat at a relatively early age, was Bitcoin. Some even managed to drive through the recent wave of miners, who purchased every graphic card on the market with the intention of profiting. Now you should own a large mining operation in places like China where electricity costs are just a few cents per kWh, with specialized equipment somewhere in the cold.
Bitcoin is slowly being adopting as a payment method by companies such as Starbucks and AT&T while others such as Apple could never integrate it into their services. Many people will quickly oppose it because of the sluggish transactions and not at all energy efficiency but approaches backed by technology administrators such as Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, are on the way to solving this in the near future.
If that happens, then the value of Bitcoin will increase because it can provide the 1,2 trillion people in places like Africa that can’t depend on the banking system with low-cost financial services.
Governments don’t like the idea of highly volatile and speculative assets like Bitcoin, but they are much more open to the notion of “stable coins” that are borne in terms of currency. After the 2020 halve, much of the effort previously devoted to mining must be directed towards greater adoption.
In every case, expect more companies to follow Facebook’s footsteps, launching their own cryptocurrencies that are known to cause price increases for Bitcoin as soon as an ads are made. If anything, the cryptocurrency year 2020 will hit the mainstream and governments will begin to take it more seriously.