Bitcoin has been struggling still in 2019. However, according to Anthony Pompliano, he called the Bitcoin network as a “sleeping giant”. The founder and partner of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, he mentioned that Bitcoin is going to be much larger than visa and Mastercard combined.
Pompliano made use of the data by Dair research. Here, the data shows that miners were paid a total of $5.8 billion in 2018 in revenue. In contrast to Visa and Mastercard, the former generated $21.1 billion while the latter came second in generating $14.9 billion. He said that “Today, it is 1/4th the market cap of Mastercard and 1/6th of Visa, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Bitcoin surpasses both within the next 36 months. The legacy networks were built for a world that we no longer live in and decentralized network is built for the future. I know which one I’m betting on”.
Regulatory Changes in 2018
Regulatory changes were the real challenge in 2018 for the cryptocurrency market. It has rocked the industry to the point that Bitcoin lost around 80% of its value since it reached its all-time high in mid-December of 2017. Also, adoption is still quite far from happening. Institutional investors, though showing interest in the market, haven’t committed fully towards adopting cryptocurrencies.
Many are still waiting for the approval of a Bitcoin ETF by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. But for SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, he mentioned that until the industry adopts changes to monitor the possibility of price manipulation, the agency isn’t comfortable approving a Bitcoin ETF. Could this mean that the VanEck Bitcoin ETF is meant to be shut down? Many believe that a Bitcoin ETF could speed up the adoption of Bitcoin since institutional investors could easily participate in the market.
Minor Bitcoin Rivals are Skyrocketing?
Today, altcoins are experiencing a spike in the last 24 hours. Among cryptocurrencies include Apollo, augur, loopring, power ledger, status, zilliqa, and steem. And in fact, some might even be listed in major crypto exchanges and wallets.
This sudden movement could mean that investors are moving away from Bitcoin. The top cryptocurrency has lost around 1% of its value in the last 24 hours. For Mati Greenspan who is the senior market analyst at eToro, “There will always be some level of correlation in broad markets. Over the longer term these particular coins are still tightly correlated to Bitcoin”. He also added that “That said, when you have a news story that highlights a development, it can cause these sudden leaps. What we’re seeing now is the effect of a flat market—the overall sentiment noise is dying down so individual token developments are getting more attention”.
Could the smaller cryptocurrencies hold the gains that they’ve experienced today? That is still uncertain at this point. However, Greenspan also mentioned that traders shouldn’t be expecting this type of movement to happen regularly.
There are many crypto observers who believe that the crypto bear market is going to last for the entire 2019. For Anthony Pompliano, he actually thinks that the market is likely to just go sideways. He thinks that the price of Bitcoin is somewhere at $2,500 to $4,500.
