After its 2017 first price rise to $5,000, Bitcoin’s latest price surge has seen it cross the $5,000 mark again. This was after a sudden spike on April 2, 2019. The current price situation should not be mistaken for a repeat of 2017. However, the market reaction is positive and bitcoin currently sits at $5214 at the time this writing. This could indicate that recent developments in crypto space could make today’s shift different from 2017.
Investors
The number of people joining the crypto community via the likes of r/Bitcoin has increased, from active bitcoin hypixel skyblock coins wallets to those joining through the likes o/Bitcoin’s subreddit. Many new investors have joined bitcoin in 2017 because of the price rise above $5,000. It is difficult to say if seeing bitcoin at $5,000 for the first-time after a year of slowdown would trigger that 2017 effect. Bitcoin’s price support has reached over $3,000. This is after more than a year of a bear market.
Segregated Witness (SegWit).
On March 30, 2019, the daily median transaction per block (excluding Coinbase activity for SegWit transactions) was over 1,000. The SegWit scaling upgrade was activated for Bitcoin in August 2017 (on Litecoin May 2017). It is meant to change the way data on the network is stored. SegWit was proposed as a solution for the scaling problem. It would allow Bitcoin to process more transactions without changing the block size. SegWit has not yet been implemented on major exchanges, so it is slow to gain traction. According to BitcoinVisuals the 294 highest number of SegWit transactions at the end 2017 was the highest. More about Hypixel Skyblock Coins For Sale
Lightning Network (LN)
It has been hailed as one of the most important skyblock bazaar developments in cryptocurrency today, particularly since Q1 2019. Lightning Network is an offchain scaling solution for Bitcoin. It uses smart contract functionality from the blockchain to allow instant micropayments across a large network of participants. Lightning transactions now exceed $5 million in volume according to real-time statistics. Its widespread use is expected to increase bitcoin adoption, especially for merchants that accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. The Lightning Network was unavailable in the space in 2017 as well.
Institutional Interest
Since 2017, institutional interest has increased in the ecosystem from applications for bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to traditional investment firms. Fidelity and Bakkt, as well as Facebook, have indicated plans to enter the crypto space in the future. As next year’s Bitcoin block rewards halving draws near, their entry is expected to improve the state of crypto market and attract more mainstream investors.
Uptake shifts from China to South America
Contrary to 2017, when all the shots were being called from China’s side, today’s difficult economic conditions in South American countries are causing people to become more interested in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. As access to cryptocurrencies has become easier, crypto adoption has grown in these countries.
The demand for bitcoin is growing despite the fact that there is less infrastructure to support it. The use of bitcoin in South American countries such as Venezuela, Colombia and Peru has been organically growing.
Through a variety of measures, the People’s Bank of China attempted to reduce bitcoin trading below 1% of global levels. This included banning direct trading. The Chinese participation in bitcoin trading has been greatly reduced, but mining remains a key advantage.