The Latest News & Updates on BTC
As of March 2021, VISA Inc. has partnered with Crypto.com to facilitate crypto payments in USDC—a dollar-backed stablecoin by Circle. At the time of this news, Bitcoin had been languishing, for quite some time, around the $51K mark. Soon after the announcement, the price went up to $58K.
Around the same time as VISA, PayPal also joined the crypto scene, enabling users to make crypto-based payments to over 29 million merchants. The integration is compatible with BTC, ETH, LTC, and BCH, among others, while the experience will be similar to using Credit/Debit Cards.
Interestingly, soon before PayPal’s announcement, Tesla announced its plan to accept payments in Bitcoin. Elon Musk being Elon Musk, his tweet garnered massive attention on this subject. In turn, this translated into a surge in activities involving Bitcoin. Not only does Tesla now accept BTC for payments, they also invested a whopping $1.5 Billion of the companies cash flow into the leading cryptocurrency.
Earlier, in December 2020, the KiwiSaver Growth Strategy Fund—New Zealand’s national retirement saving scheme—had started investing in crypto. Out of a total holding equivalent to $244 million, the New Zealand Funds Management Ltd.—the organization responsible for managing the fund—has invested 5% in Bitcoin (BTC). As per the fund’s Chief Investment Officer, James Grigor, investing in BTC is similar to investing in gold. He also feels that this will encourage their competitors to follow suit.
While discussing Bitcoin funds, one simply can’t ignore the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which is one of the largest owners of Bitcoin. In 2020, the Trust became an SEC Reporting Company, which opened the doors to the participation of open-market investors. Over this year, Grayscale acquired around $5.7 billion through new clients. By February 2021, its asset holding soared above $38 billion, following a hedge fund’s Bitcoin trade.
What’s The Stock-to-Flow Model & Can BTC Reach $288K?
The Stock-to-Flow model (S2F) is used to measure the abundance of a resource. In doing so, the method divides the amount of the resource held in reserves by the amount produced annually. ‘Stock’ is the total reserve amount and ‘Flow’ is the estimated resource to be mined over the given year.
The S2F ratio is a reliable marker of the amount of supply entering the market in a year, as compared to the total supply. What this means is that assets with a higher S2F have greater chances of retaining or enhancing their value in the long term. As you might have already understood, this determines how valuable a given resource is.
Now, we know that Bitcoin, by design, has a maximum supply of 21 million. Further, the four-yearly halvings further slow down the inflow of new BTC into the market. Considering these factors, the creator of the S2F model, PlanB, has opined that we can expect BTC to reach $288K by December 2021. In this light, BTC 100K seems rather trivial—doesn’t it?
As such, the S2F model has been working “like clockwork”, although authentic data suggest an even happier picture. PlanB has confirmed that BTC prices have been 26% higher than the S2F’s predictions.
If we’re to go with the predictions of the S2F model, then BTC 100K is no more distant reality. It could arrive even sooner than we have thought, probably around April or the late summer of 2021. In fact, BTC 100K now seems to be only a beginning in what could be a long run into the future. As institutional and individual adoptions are on the rise, these trends can only be expected to become stronger with time. So, the next time someone asks you whether BTC 100K is a possibility or merely hype, you know what to tell them.
