Making ruthlessly short work of the gap between $6,000 and $7,000, Bitcoin is poised to top yet another historic milestone. Having just celebrated its ninth birthday with a bang, the digital currency has shown no signs of a hangover on the day after. It’s been on an absolute rampage since and doesn’t seem to be stopping just yet.
The uncertainty surrounding the August hard fork, and potential Chinese ban seem a distant memory as the price has to continued to rise of late. At the time of writing, the cost of a single Bitcoin is a staggering $6,852 – an all-time high for the digital currency-cum-commodity. Potentially positive news from China, and the tease of institutional cash pouring in via the CME future’s market poised to launch by the end of the year seems to be driving the price ever-closer to the psychological milestone of $7,000.
This has year has, without doubt, been Bitcoin’s. However, Satoshi Nakamoto’s experiment has had to face more than its fair share of challenges since the start of 2017. Early rejections by the US Securities and Exchange Commission cast its Wall Street adoption in doubt in March and rising transaction fees across the network began to severely limit BTC’s use in business. Bitcoin entered the summer dogged by infighting amongst its developers and the threat of being overshadowed by Ethereum was real.
Then came the insanity of August. The hard fork. The sell off and immediate rebound. The hottest investment of 2017 just couldn’t be stopped. The market rallied and the original Bitcoin remained on top. The fear and uncertainty provoked by malicious hard forks seemed silly with new highs being set most weeks of August. The market had spoken. It had chosen Bitcoin.
Then there was the China blip. The eastern power managed to end Bitcoin’s parabolic summer growth with one legislative stoke. However, it wouldn’t be for long. The price quickly rebounded as good news poured in from elsewhere alongside the dawning realisation that Bitcoin was made to ruffle some feathers. It shouldn’t be surprising that authoritarian regimes didn’t get it. That was literally the point.
In the wake of the response to the Chinese crackdown of September, the anti-fragility showed us a new beast; a tougher, more weathered Bitcoin. A seasoned rider who’d seen the worst and remained resolute on their quest. Now, with institutional money poised to pour in from the prospect of crypto future’s markets and the an influx of cash from those flogging off their various coin-split dividends, it seems likely that we’ll be posting plenty more generic, teary-eyed “look how far we’ve come” posts in the near future.
