Today January 3, 2020, marks the completion of 11 years since Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto created the Genesis Block on the Bitcoin network. Also called ‘Block 0’, the Genesis Block was the first-ever block available on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Six days later on January 9, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first Bitcoin software client. Thus, the crypto community often celebrates January 9 as the birthday of Bitcoin when Block 1 was mined.
Although the usual block time on the Bitcoin network is 10 minutes, Block 1 came six days after the Genesis Block. This shows that the Genesis Block didn’t arrive through mining. Rather, it was hardcoded in the original Bitcoin blockchain software having a pre-computed key value. Thus, the Genesis Block served as an anchor for Block 1 which contained the first Bitcoins.
With the 11th birthday of the Genesis Block, the Bitcoin price has surged by 2% today. After a massive crypto winter in 2018, Bitcoin ended the 2019 year with almost 100% price gains. Now that we are just into 2020, the Bitcoin community has big expectations ahead.
Bitcoin Projected Growth for 2020
We have some key events lined-up this year for Bitcoin. Everyone is looking ahead for the Bitcoin halving event scheduled in mid-2020. The Bitcoin halving refers to an event wherein the mining rewards are reduced to half. This is a process built-in within the Bitcoin algorithm that occurs every four years.
Currently, the BTC miners get 12.5 BTC as rewards for adding new blocks to the Bitcoin network. After the Bitcoin halving, the block rewards will reduce to 6.25 BTC. Historically, the Bitcoin halving results into BTC price rally due to projected crunch in BTC rewards after mining. Thus, this economics of a negative supply on the BTC supply-demand favors the BTC price surge.
However, many analysts are using different parameters for the projected growth of Bitcoin in 2020. The popular crypto analyst Plan B does the math by considering the stock-to-flow model. This model relates Bitcoin’s market cap to the scarcity of the digital asset. Plan B thinks that the halving is already priced-in.
#Bitcoin halving .. 4 months to go 🚀
IMO halving is priced in correctly and markets are efficient, in the sense that few people (10%) know, understand and believe S2F model, and most people (90%) don’t know S2F, don’t understand stats&math behind it, think demand is missing etc pic.twitter.com/Z9nBPmRBvK
— PlanB [Jan/3➞🔑] (@100trillionUSD) January 1, 2020
Plan B predicts that after the 2020 BTC halving, its price will be around $50,000 instead of $100,000. Another popular analyst Willy Woo said that by the next decade, almost half of the global population will use Bitcoin.
Data points: @mrauchs did the most in-depth adoption study with 35m user accounts on Coinbase which is the lower bound. That was a year ago, BTC adoption does a 2x per year as a baseline. 4x in bull markets. I did a study showing 2x growth per year also using Google Analytics.
— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 2, 2020
The latest research from Blockchain Capital predicts that Bitcoin will climb its all-time high of $20,000 by the end of 2020.
Geopolitical Factors Affecting Bitcoin Price
On the other hand, geopolitical concerns can have a major impact on the Bitcoin price movement. In 2019, many expected that Bitcoin price will surge on the fears of U.S.-China trade war. However, the traditional markets have outperformed to everyone’s surprise.
Earlier today, Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was declared dead in a US Drone Strike. This might possibly escalate tensions between the two hostile nations to a new level. Iran leaders have already declared that they will take countermeasures against the US on the killing of Soleimani.
A war with #Iran – which is what the US murder of #Soleimani may trigger – will leave millions of innocents dead and displaced not only within Iranian borders, but across the Middle East.
Nobody benefits from such a catastrophe except Israel and its neocon auxiliaries in the US.
— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) January 3, 2020
A war-like situation can result in a drop in the traditional market and can likely provide a positive trigger for Bitcoin.
Bhushan is a FinTech enthusiast and holds a good flair in understanding financial markets. His interest in economics and finance draw his attention towards the new emerging Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency markets. He is continuously in a learning process and keeps himself motivated by sharing his acquired knowledge. In free time he reads thriller fictions novels and sometimes explore his culinary skills.
