The world’s flagship digital coin, Bitcoin, successfully went through the third halving in its history last month, seeing its daily supply of new bitcoin reduced by half.
Bitcoin halving cuts the reward for using BTCs mining software to ‘mine’ bitcoin from 12.5 new bitcoins to 6.25. Since then, the rush for BTCs has never been the same, as consumers, and institutional investors are rushing to have a stake in the most popular digital gold of our time.
According to a report by Cointelgraph, the use of BTCs has increased exponentially, triggered by the macro fundamentals changing in our present world.
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Consumer interest continues to rise, with the growth of services such as Square cash app in the US, a mobile payments app that also allows the purchase of Bitcoin. Last month, the company announced that its Bitcoin revenues were up 71% versus the previous quarter to $306m, and up by a staggering 367% year-on-year.
The growth was attributed to an increase in the number of active Bitcoin customers, as well as growth in overall consumer demand. Strong levels of growth are expected also in emerging markets such as India, where recent regulatory changes are helping to open up a huge consumer market to cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency growth had been restrained until March this year due to the government ban on banks interacting with cryptocurrency businesses. Those restrictions have now been lifted, which will likely help legitimize Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
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The prevalence of cross border remittance payment needs in India is also acting as a key stepping stone into the world of digital stablecoins and Bitcoin.
Paxful and Local Bitcoins, two peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchanges, have seen steady growth in recent years. This growth will likely accelerate in the new regulatory climate recently announced.
Last month, Paul Tudor Jones, CEO of U.S.-based hedge fund, Tudor Investment Corp, declared his enthusiasm for Bitcoin by announcing that his fund currently holds Bitcoin futures and the fund has allocated around1-2% to this trade.
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Despite Goldman Sach’s skeptical public announcement towards Bitcoin last week, large institutions, in general, have been increasing their involvement in the space. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust bought up a staggering 18,910 bitcoin in a little over two weeks, post the halving. This clearly shows a strong investor appetite for the digital asset, given that bitcoin supply (i.e. mined bitcoin) in that time was only 12,337.
A key part of its appeal is that, despite being extremely volatile, BTC has outperformed most other asset classes significantly in such a testing 2020macro environment. Currently, Bitcoin is up 36% year to date.