Bitcoin: Value and Rivals in 2018 So Far
2017 ended with sky-high bitcoin values. Home-grown blogs and legacy news agencies all flocked to crypto-trading apps to witness its ascent with e-currency newbies buying into the craze and long-time coin holders bellowing proud I-Told-You-So’s. It seemed like everyone was finally paying attention to the black sheep of the fintech family, including analysts and skeptics.
But all that hype brought prognosticators out of the woodwork from both sides of the aisle, kicking off 2018 with conflicting predictions of what the year would hold for cryptocurrency. With the year already more than half over, it’s time we revisited a couple of the major industry predictions to see how they’ve held up in the past seven months.
Bitcoin will rise to $50,000 in 2018.
Some early 2018 projections estimated bitcoin could rise to $30,000 or climb all the way to the $50,000 mark, more than doubling its highest noted value in the previous year, which capped at $19,783.21 in mid-December 2017 according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index.
“I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen with price and neither can anybody,” Blockchain Capital partner, Spencer Bogart, told CNBC in February when he predicted bitcoin would reach $50,000 this year. “But when I look out over the next 12 months, what I see is a significant supply and demand imbalance at the current price levels.”
As of March, Financial Analyst Ronnie Moas took to Twitter, saying he was “not budging” off his more modest, yet still high-achieving $28,000 target, a statement he still defended as recently as July 23rd. Moas has also made some lofty predictions about just how high bitcoin will rise in coming years, throwing out figures as high as $400,000.
Such momentous gains have yet to be seen. We saw the peak bitcoin valuation of 2018 so far happen on a Saturday in early January when the price of a single bitcoin reached $17,211.92, again according to the price index maintained by CoinDesk. Since then, the value has hovered between roughly $6,000 on low days and closer to $10,000 on its higher days.
Does this mean that we can officially put those $50,000-per-bitcoin aspirations to bed? Not really. Bitcoin was only worth around $1000 in January of 2017 (an already impressive hike since the currency’s debut in 2008) before making its meteoric rise to news desk domination at the end of the year.
Other coins will leave bitcoin in the dust.
Bitcoin’s rise led to discussions about coins on the periphery, whether those were other big names like Ethereum or alt-coins deployed by individual businesses. With each of these unique tokens offering its own function and valuation, some members of the crypto community guessed that 2018 would permanently disrupt the perceived homogony of e-currency.
Mashable Senior Editor Stan Schroder turned his magnifying glass on Ethereum amid bitcoin’s surge in December 2017. “Bitcoin has been outgrown in every sense of the word,” he wrote. “[Ethereum’s] had its own problems with network congestion and slowdowns, but there are currently thousands of apps actually running on top of it, and the number of transactions on its blockchain recently surpassed one million per day — more than double than Bitcoin on its best day.”
In January, Coin Central had similar predictions as we watched currencies on all levels of notoriety adjust following bitcoin’s rise and subsequent correction. Coin Central cited Ripple’s impressive showing during December 2017 as an indication of a powershift in cryptocurrency.
It is true that the number of daily bitcoin transactions cooled off as its value stabalized and media hype fizzled. While the same is true for Ethereum, the number of daily Ethereum transactions has maintained a higher average than it boasted pre-surge which cannot be said about bitcoin.
And though they may not indicate the untimely demise of bitcoin, there were plenty of altcoins that made their own personal gains during the fallout, opening the floodgates for even more like them. A total of 209 Initial Coin Offerings brought new tokens into this sphere throughout 2017, according to Coin Schedule. In this first half of 2018 alone, more than 600 ICOs have been launched giving traders more options, and presenting more tokens with limelight-stealing potential.
Such mixed progress among coins doesn’t mean that the digital currency market is in disarray, nor does it rule out bitcoin as a crypto leader. If anything, this transition bodes well for the longevity of crypto itself by creating a competitive market of coins for traders to embrace that meet their individual needs.
With values changing daily and more cryptocurrency options than ever, it is difficult to know whose predictions will adhere to reality. If this first half of 2018 is any indicator, we can be sure to hear plenty more I-Told-You-So’s before it’s time to ring in 2019.
