What Will Blast Bitcoin To The Moon In 2021?
Has Bitcoin already gone to the moon? Many will argue its dramatic rise has to end soon, surely the Bitcoin price can’t keep rising, can it?
2020 was a remarkable year for Bitcoin. We saw the price plummet over 50% to $4,583 in March before going on a relentless climb to reach a new all time high of $29,007 on 31 December.
And 2021 has kept going where 2020 left off. Since the highs of $29,007 on the last day of the year, Bitcoin has surged another 25%, reaching another all-time high of $41,400.
The bullish rise for Bitcoin has been down to a several developments, such as the Bitcoin halving, where the newly minted supply was cut in half.
Added with Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy making Bitcoin the number one asset on its balance sheet.
This no doubt triggered many other CEOs into considering Bitcoin, and then Wall Street legends Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller announcing to the world that they had Bitcoin.
It’s all added fuel for Bitcoin’s rise to the moon. But does it have the legs to keep going? And what will make the Bitcoin price rise higher?
Here we look at five things that will blast Bitcoin to the moon and beyond in 2021.
Institutional FOMO
Institutions are already FOMOing into Bitcoin, and as with everything else with Bitcoin the reason for the FOMO can’t be put down to any one thing.
However, as already mentioned: MicroStrategy adopting a Bitcoin Standard legitimatized it, and made Bitcoin the topic of discussion in every boardroom across the world.
To date, MicroStrategy has invested $1.125 billion buying about 70,470 bitcoins, which is currently valued at $2.7 billion.
Every other CEO, fund manager, and family office is watching this and is probably in talks with their legal teams to iron out the regulatory hurdles in their way.
The likes of Square Inc., MassMutual and Guggenheim Investments have already declared their move into the Bitcoin space.
Compared to MicroStrategy, they are just dipping their toes, but that has to be expected. No institution wanted to be first, but definitely nobody wants to be last to get exposure to Bitcoin.
Some have started buying, but most can’t yet. That said, it’s clear the institutional herd is on its way, and they will send Bitcoin to the moon and beyond.
Government Printing Press
Bitcoin adoption is inevitable. An honest, sound money that is built into the most secure network, it’s programmable, and anyone with a smartphone can get access to it.
It’s easily divided, can be sent anywhere at any time, and nobody can stop it. No central entity controls it and nobody can manipulate it.
Bitcoin is everything government fiat money isn’t.
Whatever the excuse the government used it doesn’t really matter, because the fact is the Federal Reserve printed 22% of all the circulating supply of the US dollar, last year alone.
In June 2020, the Federal Reserve printed more money than in the first two centuries after its founding. All this “free money” is fuel for Bitcoin. And it’s only just starting.
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to ask Congress to quickly get money into American’s hands and is drawing up plans for a $3 trillion stimulus as soon as he gets into office.
It’s not only in the US either. Europe, Japan, the UK are all desperately printing as much as they can to “oversee the covid-19 lockdowns” so they say. But the truth is, the quantitative easing and stimulus cheques are here to stay, and they’re only going to get bigger.
Money printing is fuel for the Bitcoin price, and is arguably the main catalyst for its meteoric rise in the last 10 months. And as the printers keep going brrr, it will simply stimulate Bitcoin’s journey to the moon faster.
New Bitcoin Price All-Time Highs
There’s nothing more bullish for Bitcoin than new all-time highs. When Bitcoin almost reached $20,000 in December 2017, that was the very peak of the cycle, and the price quickly dropped away.
We went through a year bear market in 2018 before a relatively bullish but accumulative 2019. 2020 was something else, as we finally saw $20,000 smashed for the first time ever on 16 December.
That moment was symbolic in many ways because it proved the doubters wrong that Bitcoin wasn’t a Tulip mania, and it wasn’t a ponzi scheme and all that, bla bla bla.
When Bitcoin broke $20,000 just over three weeks ago, the whole investing world woke up to it, and realized if they hadn’t already got exposure, they’d better hurry up.
Since then, institutions have been scooping it up, and arguably over the Christmas period retail took over, leading Bitcoin to higher highs of $30,000 and then today $41,400..
Many analysts have predicted this for a long time, and PlanB’s Stock-to-Flow model, which predicts a $288,000 price at the peak of this cycle, is playing out perfectly as he determined almost 18 months ago.
Will we reach $288,000, who knows? But we should expect a few drawbacks especially during times of parabola. That said, the institutional FOMO is licking up every 10-15% drawback and anyone waiting for big corrections before getting in, might miss out.
Whatever price Bitcoin reaches during this bull cycle, it will not be going up vertical, but nobody should think it’s stopping here.
PayPal Rolls Out Its Bitcoin Service Globally
PayPal launched its Bitcoin service last October, and that has had a dramatic effect on the Bitcoin price.
Since the payments giant announced it would be offering its Bitcoin service to its 350 million users on 21 October, the Bitcoin price has more than trebled.
PayPal said at the time it intended to significantly increase Bitcoin’s utility by making it available for payments with its 26 million merchants worldwide, which it hasn’t even launched yet.
Since then, it’s believed that PayPal has been buying most of the newly minted bitcoins that are added to the market, just to meet demand.
And the best thing is, that is just for its American users. PayPal has so far only launched its Bitcoin service for its US users, and while it is by far its biggest market, the US makes up less than half PayPal’s customers.
The rest of the world makes up around 57% of PayPal’s users, and once PayPal rolls its Bitcoin service out globally the desire for easily accessible bitcoins, especially in unstable countries, will likely dwarf the recent demand.
Not forgetting PayPal hasn’t even rolled out its spending option yet. Later this year, PayPal will allow its users to spend BTC at any of its 26 million merchants, which will have a significant increase in utility.
Strike Global Payments App
Luckily for PayPal it has a huge lead in the fintech payment applications, and it knows that it had to adopt Bitcoin, or eventually die of insignificance.
But here’s the thing: PayPal is going to have to quickly evolve its Bitcoin service too, because new startup Strike is going to revolutionize the payments and financial industry at large.
Just this week, CEO Jack Mallers announced the company’s payment application, which fully utilizes Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.
Strike allows users to send any currency from pretty much any location, and the receiver will receive it in the currency of their choice. The best thing is the transaction takes less than a second and is free of charge.
Here’s how Strike Global payments work:
Say Amy in San Francisco wants to send money to her friend Jack in London, but Jack wants to receive British pounds. Amy sends the dollars from her Strike wallet, which Strike immediately converts to Bitcoin, before sending it across the pond and into Jack’s Strike wallet, converted into pounds. It takes less than a second and there’s no charge.
Western Union and other legacy remittance companies have been doing this for decades, and they have been charging a pretty penny and taking forever to complete transactions, as well.
Strike takes out the middleman, the hefty cost and does it all in a split second.
Strike already has a deal with VISA, and it has other products it aims to release this year. And as it does the ‘Bitcoin is digital gold’ narrative will be joined by the ‘P2P Money’ narrative again.
It’s believed that 7% of the US-Mexico remittance payments is already done using Bitcoin, and that’s with Bitcoin relatively slow and expensive. Imagine when it’s lightning fast and free. And imagine the world using it.
Bitcoin Price Is Going To The Moon
The Bitcoin price action has been phenomenal since March, 2020. Since dropping under $5,000 the price has risen more than 800% in just 10 months.
Many investors and doubters who aren’t familiar with the macro or infrastructure being built around Bitcoin are likely thinking the price is going to slow down and crash again.
But this bull cycle has more legs to it, and the way the governments are printing money, every savvy investor knows they need a hedge.
Bonds are low and negative yielding, so who wants them? Gold is attractive, but Bitcoin is much more attractive, and the institutions are clearly buying up bitcoins at a rate never seen before.
We are hitting new all-time highs regularly now, and as Bitcoin becomes much more accessible and easier to use to the rest of the world, it can only mean one thing.
Is the Bitcoin price going to the moon? Why stop there?
