Many have said the 2020s will be the decade of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies but a few days into the new year and the bears are still in control .The bitcoin price has been on a steep downward trend over the last six-months with bitcoin today dropping under the psychological $7,000 mark to trade as low as $6,900 per bitcoin on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
[Update: 12.09am EST 01/03/2020] The bitcoin price has bounced from its earlier lows following news the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force, general Qasem Soleimani, has been killed by U.S.forces in Iraq.
The bitcoin price leaped around 4% to back over $7,000 per bitcoin and was seen trading at $7,265 on the Bitstamp exchange before falling back slightly.
Global oil prices have also soared, up by some 3%, in the wake of the air strike at Baghdad’s airport ordered by U.S.President Donald Trump.
The bitcoin price slipped earlier in the new year, dragging down the price of the wider bitcoin and …[+] cryptocurrency market.
LightRocket via Getty Images Bitcoin and cryptocurrency watchers were quick to link the U.S.airstrike with the bitcoin rally, with Matthew Graham, chief executive of Sino Global Capital, asking if bitcoin has begun “moving in reaction to geopolitical risk.”
Ahead of bitcoin’s bounce higher, those in the crypto industry were contemplating the decade ahead.
“We stand before the dawn of a new decade.As we look ahead, there is little doubt that the next one—the 2020s—will be the decade of crypto,” the cofounder of the U.S.-based Gemini bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Tyler Winklevoss boldly proclaimed on New Year’s Eve.
Bitcoin was one of the best performing assets in 2019 , with many bitcoin bulls feeling emboldened by bitcoin’s performance over the past 12-months despite its huge downturn the year before .
Bitcoin was up 90% for 2019 while iPhone-maker Apple’s share price climbed 85% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 35%.
“We’re at a critical stage in bitcoin’s price trajectory,” George McDonaugh, co-founder and managing director at KR1, a cryptocurrency and blockchain venture capital investment firm told financial newswire Bloomberg following the new year downturn but predicted the bitcoin price will likely soon rebound to around $7,500 before climbing through to the middle of the year.
McDonaugh pointed to “strong fundamentals and the creation of new bitcoin wallets, among other things,” as the reason for his bullish stance .
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency watchers are this year looking forward to the launch of social media giant Facebook’s libra cryptocurrency , crypto platform Bakkt’s Starbucks project, and bitcoin’s May halving event—when the number of new bitcoin rewarded to miners will be halved .
Elsewhere, Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey has grand plans for bitcoin and major U.S.
bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is working on some exciting new technology .
Bitcoin has had a less than auspicious start to the new year, with many other major cryptocurrencies …[+] faring far worse.
Coinbase Meanwhile, some economists continue to warn against bitcoin and cryptocurrencies with one branding bitcoin a “pyramid scheme” on the first day of the new year.
“You only make money based on people who enter after you,” Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist at online lending marketplace Lending Tree, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance , adding that bitcoin has “no real utility.”
“They’ve been trying to create a utility for it for ten years now.It’s a solution in search of a problem and it still hasn’t found a problem to solve.”.