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Bitcoin in 2019 Vs. Bitcoin in 2020

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@khaleelkazi
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Over the course of 2019, Bitcoin saw some volatile swings. We started the year around $4,000 and reached a peak of $12,500 around July. Since then, the price has come back down and found some stability around the $7k-$8k price range.

I’m not one for technical analysis, so I’ll leave that to people who are more experienced in that area. What I tend to look at are the fundamentals of a technology and the overall developments and sentiment from a macro perspective.

What I saw happening with Bitcoin (and all of crypto, for that matter) in 2019 was a period of technological innovation and brand solidification. In the end, the adoption of crypto relies heavily on two factors:

  1. Brand
  2. Usability

The branding of crypto is essential to the adoption of crypto. Right now, the majority of people still view crypto and BTC as some sort of weird scam. They’re not really sure what to make of this industry and the continual stream of news stories that outline crypto scams, hacks and Ponzi schemes surely doesn’t help the case for crypto as a revolutionary technology.

Anyone who is deeply entrenched in the technology of crypto knows that there is way more to it than making money. Sure, price swings are nice and a rising price of BTC has made many people in crypto rich… but there’s more to all of this than that. It’s a technological revolution in the most pure sense of the word.

The usability of BTC and other cryptos has slowly been getting better. As we see more adoption and innovation in the hardware wallet and software UI/UX technologies, we are seeing a better way for newbies to get into crypto and learn how to secure their funds. As this continually gets easier and easier, the adoption of crypto will seep deeper and deeper into the roots of society.

Fidelity Digital Assets put out a report recently which outlined their 2019 retrospective for BTC. In it, they discuss many of the things that happened in 2019 and the fundamental developments that indicate growth in this space.

Four of their main points for the growth and development of Bitcoin are the following:

  1. "Trading and investment on incumbent, regulated platforms is growing
  2. Value transferred over Bitcoin is competitive with incumbent value transfer systems
  3. Key performance indicators, such as hash rate and addresses, reached all-time high
  4. Cumulative miner revenue and fee revenue surpassed $15 billion and $1 billion, respectively"

These points along with many of the other data points discussed in the article show just how BTC has evolved over the course of 2019. It shows some of the technological developments, but it also shows a lot of healthy growth in terms of usage of the network. Most people look to price as the main indicator for the health and status of crypto, but looking at these findings tell a much more important story.

These indicators show that Bitcoin and the usage of cryptocurrencies are growing on a global scale. More and more people are creating wallet addresses and making their first transactions and also making small investments into the space.

As we move into 2020, many people are speculating on the halvening — where BTC miner rewards are cut in half and thus, half as many new Bitcoin are brought into existence every 10 minutes.

Some speculate that it’s already priced in. Others speculate that it’s not. Either way, the fundamentals of BTC tell the only story that I really care about:

The usage of crypto grew significantly in 2019 and is continuing this trend of growth going into 2020.

Posted via Steemleo | A Decentralized Community for Investors