BITCOIN

Bitcoin Roaring in the 20s

Bitcoin continued its steady ascent and hit another all-time high on Wednesday, trading around $28,775.  A lot has already happened with Bitcoin in 2020, but we are closing out the year with a lot more stuff still happening.
 
Here are the latest developments:

  • Bold.  Russell Okung, the Carolina Panthers offensive lineman agreed to have about $6M of his $13M salary diverted to Strike, a mobile payments company, to buy bitcoin on his behalf.  This could also inspire other NFL players to follow suit and buy as well.
     
    • Legendary quote:  "Money is more than currency; it's power," said Okung in a statement. "The way money is handled from creation to dissemination is part of that power. Getting paid in bitcoin is the first step of opting out of the corrupt, manipulated economy we all inhabit."
  • Bitcoin liquidity crisis.  According to analysts at Glassnode, more long term and institutional investors are holding on to their Bitcoin and not selling.  Since there are a fixed number of Bitcoin which cannot be increased, that means less are in ‘circulation.’
     
    • “Bitcoin liquidity is defined as the average ratio of received and spent BTC across entities. We show that currently 14.5M BTC are classified as illiquid, leaving only 4.2M BTC in constant circulation that are available for buying and selling.”
  • Credit card rewards in bitcoin.  There is a new debit card company called Fold which is being used by a few thousand people and growing.  It offers small fractions of Bitcoin in its rewards program.  This is interesting both because Bitcoin is being used as a reward and also because it changes rewards theoretically from something you spend to something you want to save.
  • 2020 seems different from 2017.  The main difference is that this year’s gain has been apparently fueled by Institutional buying and not retail investors:
     
    • Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire hedge fund investor
    • Michael Saylor from Microstrategy
    • PayPal getting in the game
    • Square’s $50M dollar Bitcoin buy

Whether Bitcoin can continue its meteoric rise in the (20)20s is anybody’s guess.

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