Analysis: Bitcoin price continued to soar for the third straight week, and is hovering around $23,500 ($18K USD). All coins that Bitbuy supports saw strong gains throughout the week except BCH, which had a tumultuous week because of the contentious hard fork. Litecoin lead the way, exploding more than 36% in the 7-day period.
BTC Is Only ~15% From 2017 All-Time Price Highs, Interest And Search Statistics, However, Are Miles Away From Those Levels 3-Years Ago
With this recent price action, BTC touched on its highest levels since early December 2017. In fact, BTC has only traded above these levels for about 2-weeks of its entire history. In 2017, BTC effectively saw parabolic action for 3-months before reaching these levels while this time the coin has been only rallying for just over a month after a consolidation in the range of USD 10,000.
That said, metrics around interest levels are nowhere near those seen in 2017. Google searches (chart) for ‘bitcoin,’ ‘crypto,’ ‘BTC,’ and other related terms are a fraction of what they were 3-years ago.
The same can be said for Wikipedia searches for similar terms. Furthermore, volumes on major exchanges are also wildly reduced. While platforms such as Bitfinex would frequently see over USD 2B equivalent in volume in the last major bull-run, we are yet to see such levels in the last few weeks.
Takeaway: There are several intuitive justifications around why the recent price action has not kicked off the same kind of search and interest frenzy that it did in mid/late-2017. First is clearly the broader macro environment.
While crypto performance appears to have benefitted from the dynamics emerging from COVID, there is certainly plenty else to google from a health, political, social and even market perspective with many retail darling stocks showing impressive performance in similar periods.
Additionally, this time around, there is less of a need for the public to educate themselves as in 2017, many were even hearing about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency for the first time.
Finally, the psychology of the price action in 2017, where cryptocurrencies were making new all-time highs for the better part of a year is yet to happen for almost every major coin which conceivably has impacted investors’ ‘Fear of Missing Out’ (FOMO).
If this current cycle gets to a point where coins are trading above their all-time highs consistently, Google searches may again increase exponentially.
Mexico’s third-richest person, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, stated in a Twitter post that he has ‘10% of [his] liquid portfolio invested [BTC].’ Pliego has a reported net worth of USD 11.8B, writes Bloomberg. – link – @Bloomberg
IPO documents submitted by Airbnb claim that the firm’s future success will depend on its ability to adapt to emerging tech ‘such as tokenization, cryptocurrencies, new authentication technologies.’ The reference to crypto is made under the section ‘Risk Factors’ and discusses the need to ‘adapt to changes in technology and the evolving demands of hosts and guests…’ – link – @SEC.Gov
Senator-elect from Wyoming Cynthia Lummis gave an interview in which she described her ‘hope to bring Bitcoin into the national conversation.’ Lummis, described as the first Senator to hold BTC, said she has ‘confidence that [BTC] will be an important player in store of value for a long time to come.’ Lummis made the remarks in an interview where she discusses broader US politics. – link – @CoinTelegraph
Privacy-focused crypto Zcash has undergone a mining reward halving and network upgrade. Zcash’s upgrade, dubbed Canopy, introduces a new distribution of 20% of the miner’s reward between entities dedicated to the coin’s development, such as the Zcash Foundation. – link – @CoinDesk
Disclaimer: The opinions and analysis expressed in this newsletter are those of the writer, and not of Bitbuy. Nothing in this note should be considered investment advice.
