$10,000
Bitcoin and 10k has been debated a lot in the last months. The Bitcoin price has fallen slightly below $10,000 ($10k) multiple times before quickly rising above it again. Bitcoin and 10k support is of psychological importance. A price of 5 digits looks better than a price of 4 digits. We always look at the price in dollars because Bitcoin is the most commonly traded against the dollar in the world. Why are we in this phase and what comes next?
Accumulation
Such a long sideways movement is called an accumulation phase in which there are usually many small sellers and a few very large buyers. The large buyers can expand their possessions unnoticed and without causing drastic price increases if they would buy these quantities in a shorter period of time. It doesn’t always mean that the price will never drop again, because they can also say goodbye to their coins in one go if the price threatens to fall further below $10k. Bitcoin and 10k have become important because the price has been close to them for such a long time and this has now become an important level for Bitcoin and the entire cryptographic currency market.
History
On November 29, 2017, Bitcoin broke the $10k barrier for the first time in its relatively short history, and a week later the €10k (in euro) had also been passed. Less than two weeks later, Bitcoin and 10k was only a vague memory because like a rocket, the price was already close to the $20k, and then suddenly the party was over. Within a month, Bitcoin lost half of its value in early 2018 and was back to $10k and that wasn’t enough. Soon the $6000 was found and Bitcoin kept bouncing on this level for nine months, with the impression that every time the price hit $6000 and climbed up again, the tops were getting lower. Eventually this level broke and again Bitcoin lost half of its value in a month.
2019
In 2019, Bitcoin immediately started to move up to more than three times it’s value in a six-month period, and became the best performing asset of 2019 in comparison to gold, real estate and equities. Just as we bounced up from the $6000 level for a while in 2018, we now seem to be doing the same thing from the $10,000 level (actually $9500 but we’ll round that up to $10k). Again, the tops are getting lower each time we bounce upwards and we are running the same risk that Bitcoin will fall through this level and lose a lot of value in a short period of time. But this is not 2018 and Bitcoin is now known to many more private as well as corporate investors. This means that there are many more buyers ready to absorb a decline in the price and that could mean that Bitcoin may never fall significantly below $10k again.
Bitcoin is freedom
Bitcoin seems too volatile to be a store of value. There is too little adoption to speak of a universal method of payment, and we are still years away from replacing our money with cryptocurrency. That’s the opinion you hear a lot at the moment.
Let’s start by saying that Bitcoin can perform all the functions of money and more, but it’s not meant to replace our current money at all. It is meant to give people the freedom to choose how they want to store value and transfer value to another person without being dependent on the consent of a third party. And there is no more than that. There is no plan of attack to replace money and there is no company or organization behind Bitcoin that is marketing this.
Attractiveness
Bitcoin buyers seem to find the currency attractive enough and accept that its value only depends on supply and demand and therefore moves wildly up and down. The Euro is artificially stable and will always slowly depreciate due to inflation. Governments and central banks are constantly arranging this slow decline of the value of our current money.
Free people can choose for Euro, Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. The attractiveness of a currency (demand) and the available quantity (supply) together determine the value of each currency. We live in a world of negative interest rates at the bank, trade wars between world powers and Brexit. In a world of manipulation of exchange rates for political purposes, and an American president who considers higher share prices more important than the real economy. In that world the potential value of Bitcoin is increasingly winning over the fear of volatility. Bitcoin’s attractiveness increases globally against the local currencies.
$10k is not enough
The amount of Dollars and Euros is continually increasing through the policy of trying to stimulate the economy with newly printed money, which has been pursued for many years. This constant inflation means that you pay more for your bread, gasoline and rent every year. And also for your Bitcoin! Because that price is partly determined by the price of the electricity used to mine the Bitcoin.
Bitcoin itself has a predictably increasing, but above all finite amount of money. Approximately every 4 years, the amount of new bitcoins decreases by half and eventually the increase stops completely at 21 million bitcoins. Although not always visible because of the wild movements of the currency, you can clearly see this continuous price increase if you look at the bottom prices in all the years of its existence.
2012 – $4
2013 – $65
2014 – $200
2015 – $185
2016 – $365
2017 – $780
2018 – $3200
Ultimately, $10k will not be enough to balance the price between all the people who want to own Bitcoin and the number of Bitcoins available to them.