The Bitcoin price doesn’t want to move very far away from its current home in the $10,000 range. It temporarily slummed around the sub-$5000 range not so very long ago, but after a rebound the crypto largely hasn’t looked back.
It bears noting that Bitcoin’s fantastic recovery coincided with a massive scandal surrounding one of crypto’s largest stablecoins, Tether, and one of the oldest exchanges in the business, Bitfinex.
People get into Bitcoin for a variety of reasons.
Do Bitcoin Traders Miss Volatility?
For traders, the asset offers regular, ample opportunities to make (or lose) money. The poor souls who bought in beyond $15,000 may regret it currently, but the fundamentals of Bitcoin make it such that it’s hard to ever call its acquisition a mistake.
So far.
Things can change.
This is perhaps an uncomfortable truth in the Bitcoin space.
Then there is a fringe element of traders who go beyond the Bitcoin/dollar pairings and trade in alternative cryptocurrencies as well. Even beyond the large market caps, people make small fortunes everyday trading on exchanges like Binance.
A great deal of trading is also conducted by bot.
The volatility of the master price – Bitcoin’s fiat figure – is a key element in the shifting values of altcoins. One day someone may be willing to pay 10,000 satoshis, while the next day the same coin, in its dollar figure, is only worth 2,500 satoshis.
Lack of Volatility Breeds Quiet Altcoin Market
For the past while, Bitcoin’s been what traders might call “boring.” A typical investor still will have seen plenty of recent opportunities to make great money, but volatility is reportedly at a four-month low.
This article isn’t meant to be a price forecast or investment advice, but all the same, the price can do one of two things from here: springboard after a long period in this range, or eventually taper off back toward its previous support levels.
Historically, on the long scale, the former has been the case with Bitcoin.
That doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Believing so would be a mistake in strategy. There can always come a time that interest in the asset, or demand for blockchain products, changes enough that the bottom falls out.
It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before. Such periods yield more philosophical leanings, such as “1 bitcoin equals 1 bitcoin.”
Bitcoin: $0 Or $1 Million?
But the more skin one has in the game, the more one wants to see prices maintain their current levels, or higher.
Volatility affords a clever trader a chance to acquire more Bitcoin.
But for most traders, there’s an eventual exit strategy.
Which brings us to perhaps Bitcoin’s most unique aspect: its culture of “hodling.” This culture would best be represented in traditional stocks by the companies themselves – except in this case, the majority is held by various unknown entities.
One of the largest holders, Satoshi Nakamoto, has had his identity repeatedly disputed. Some have even suggested deleting his massive stash of coins.
But simply having a dedicated user base isn’t necessarily enough to promise a certain future price. The future could be $0 or $1 million per coin, depending on a large variety of events.
