Cashing in the Next Massive Bitcoin Bull Run

Investors have been yearning for another bull run ever since the last massive Bitcoin surge ended in January 2018. At that time, it never crossed people’s minds that two years down the line we’d still be no better off today than we were back then.

And why would we? We were high and one little crash couldn’t easily bring us down.

This article is a guest post from Evan, a die-hard crypto and blockchain supporter who has written over 200 crypto-focused content for various media companies and his blog, Crypto Skillset, in the last 3 years. His long-term mission is to help blockchain companies succeed and bring crypto adoption to the masses through informative and easy-to-digest content.

In the second half of 2017, we had pockets as deep as the Marianas Trench. Our bags were filled with shitcoins soaring and we didn’t know better.

Every day our assets grew by 10-20% on average while countless shitcoins popped out of nowhere raising hundreds of millions of dollars and multiplying by a factor of 20 or more when listed. It was insanity yet we couldn’t see past it.

Now, we long for another 2017-like Bitcoin bull run that would drive new unprecedented levels of vibrance to the crypto market. At the very least, we want Bitcoin to reach $20,000 again.

But will it ever happen? Some pundits would say no, but the vast majority would say yes, and the data seems to affirm that hypothesis.

And if we intend to cash in on the next bull run, we’d best be prepared. We can never predict the next massive surge with certainty, but we can anticipate the date range that it’s likely to occur. Timing means everything in this pursuit.

In this article, we will explore different projections for Bitcoin and what could justify another bull run. My aim is to hopefully give you a clear perspective on Bitcoin’s future so you could use them to your advantage in whatever investment decision you make.

You might also be interested in learning different crypto investing strategies.

How Far Along is Bitcoin?

Most investors are too caught up with the price of Bitcoin that they forget what truly matters, which is the fundamentals. Crypto markets are volatile and one of the few things that could provide long-lasting price support would be proper fundaments. Namely, the underlying technology and adoption rate.

If mass adoption were to happen tomorrow, could Bitcoin support millions of daily users? That’s a good question to ponder on. With that being said, the progress of Bitcoin in the last two years has been phenomenal both in the financial infrastructure aspect, as well as the tech.

1. Tech

The biggest technological obstacle to Bitcoin’s mass adoption is scalability. If too many people use BTC to send and receive payments, network congestion is bound to occur. After all, the Bitcoin network can only handle 7 transactions per second.

Thankfully, Blockstream and a few other Bitcoin-focused companies have been working on a scalability solution — the lightning network — for more than a couple of years now. Lightning was released on the 18th of January, 2018.

Back then, it only had 60 nodes while today, it currently has over 5,700 and still continues to grow.

You don’t need to know the implications of these technical statements but realize this:

Normal Bitcoin transactions take around 10 minutes to an hour to confirm while with the lightning network it happens almost instantly. That’s scalability. 

So if Bitcoin has lightning, is it ready for a hundred million users now? Unfortunately, not yet. Despite all its capabilities, it is still an experimental technology with all major implementation still in the beta phase, meaning it contains many known and unknown bugs.

There are some limitations in “payment routing” that make it hard to transact with large payments. Therefore, lightning is ideal for paying coffee, but not for buying a car or paying college tuition.

But fret not, because original whitepaper indicates that “eventually, with optimizations, the network will look a lot like the correspondent banking network, or Tier-1 ISPs”. In layman’s terms, they’ll make it work eventually.

2. Infrastructure and Adoption

The number of Bitcoin markets have exploded since mid-2018, both in the retail and institutional offerings. 

According to CoinMarketCap, there are about 22,712 crypto markets and 326 exchanges. This does not constitute the total number worldwide, only what’s been recognized.

Some of the most notable institutional custodial services that recently entered the crypto scene are Bakkt — a subsidiary of the massive Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Fidelity — a family-owned multinational financial service provider with $2.5 trillion assets under management.

On the adoption side, the number of crypto ATMs and stores accepting Bitcoin has also increased worldwide. In fact, all 7-Eleven stores in the Philippines now sell Bitcoin.

The number of stores that accept Lightning Network is steadily growing as well.

BTC Price Projections Based on Past Halvings

For those who don’t know what the Bitcoin halving is, it’s basically an event where the reward for generating Bitcoin is cut in half, which results in lesser incoming supply and the same demand. In theory, this should increase the value of BTC since there is less to go around. 

The halving event happens every 4 years.

The main reason I could confidently say that the next Bitcoin bull run is near, to a high degree of probability, boils down to this: every Bitcoin halving always followed with a bull run.

With that being said, we’ve only had two past halvings so there is a slight chance, albeit very unlikely, that this time could be different.

First Halving

The first halving took place in November 2012. Back then, Bitcoin was trading around $12 for a few months, then surged to $230 in April 2013. 

By November 2013, BTC broke through $1000, a year after the halving. Now that’s an 8,300% gain, which took about two years after the halving.

Second Halving

The same thing happened during the next halving, which occurred in July 2016. At that time, BTC hovered around the $600-$800 region. 

By May 2017, it broke above $2,000 and rallied through, peaking at $19,200 in December that same year.

As you can see from the past halvings, it takes BTC a year or more to surge at unprecedented levels. 

If that were to occur this time around, then we should expect Bitcoin to moon not earlier than May 2021. With that in mind, we have plenty of time to prepare for the next bull run.

How to Cash in for the Next Bitcoin Bull Run

Let it be known that this is not financial advice. But if you were to spend money on crypto regardless, then I would ‘suggest’ that you only invest what you could afford to lose. 

Investing in cryptocurrencies is not the same as investing in blue-chip stocks like JFC, BPI, or RLC. Remember, the higher the reward the higher the risks.

With that out of the way, my ‘suggestion’ would be to put a little bit of money on Bitcoin every month. It doesn’t matter how much as long as you are comfortable with the amount.

And you do this consecutively for 6-10 months or more up until Bitcoin hits above $13,200. That’s the highest resistance level since the crypto winter. If we break through that then BTC will be entering new territory and could potentially blow up to $20,000 and shoot to the moon.

All things considered, Bitcoin is one of the most phenomenal projects that has ever been developed. Even if we lose, we can’t say it was a bad bet. Unless you invested more than what you could afford to lose, you should be fine.