Since Bitcoin’s advent in 2009, people have been granted the freedom to manage their finances outside of banks. Using cryptocurrencies as opposed to fiat currencies alleviates their dependence on the government or large financial corporations. This in turn protects their funds from political policies that affect the fiat value or that send the country into a state of hyperinflation. Since the introduction of Bitcoin, people around the world have access to financial freedom, needing not worry about state sanctions or the bank freezing their accounts. While many are still to catch on to the powers of BTC, let’s take a look at how the pandemic propelled Bitcoin adoption rates.
What Is Bitcoin?
For those new here, welcome. We’ll briefly run through what is Bitcoin and then enlighten you on how the pandemic propelled Bitcoin adoption rates. Bitcoin was invented by an anonymous entity who used cryptography to create a digital currency. This currency can be used as both a store of value (investment) as well as a medium of exchange. Since its inception, the price of Bitcoin has risen over 9,000x. While the market is still susceptible to volatility (every new market is) the price has continued to increase steadily over the years.
The concept of Bitcoin is to offer a peer to peer payment system that is completely decentralized. With no financial institution or government controlling the currency, free from authority intervention. The network is operated by thousands of miners around the world, and all transactions are stored on a public ledger called the blockchain. Bitcoin offers near instant international transfers at a fraction of the cost of international fiat transactions, and has proven to be a viable investment tool.
Bitcoin Brings The Bacon
As the dominant and most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin holds the vast majority of market share, it too dominates the trend cycles. When Bitcoin goes up in value, altcoins tend to increase in value too. As the concept and use cases of Bitcoin have spread, so too have adoption rates. Originally designed as a response to the 2008 global financial crisis, Bitcoin was perfectly positioned in 2020 to offer those who further lost faith in the financial institutions a safe haven. According to a study conducted from 2017 – 2020 by The Tokenist, that was a lot of people. “47% of our respondents trust Bitcoin over big banks, an increase of 29% in the past three years.” The report also concluded that 43% (59% of millennials) believed that most people will be using Bitcoin within the next decade.
With 60% of the respondents (of all ages) reporting that they felt that Bitcoin is a positive development in the world of finance, where to next? Nowhere too fast for the over 65 year club. The respondents within this age bracket expressed little interest in adopting or using the cryptocurrency. While 44% of the millennial age group said that they would like to buy the dominant cryptocurrency in the next 5 years.
Where To Next?
Reviewing the year of 2020, Bitcoin saw powerful increases in price, gaining its highest price since July 2019. The cryptocurrency also offered a safe haven asset to investors when the stock markets plummeted in March 2020. Following the mass destruction that the pandemic took on economies around the world, we are likely to see Bitcoin’s true potential be tapped into in the coming years. Weakened currencies and economies are likely to give way to an increase in Bitcoin payments, something that was witnessed in Greece in 2015 following their financial crisis. In one day the BTC price rose 1.54% following a rise in Greek buyers (increasing from US$3.86 to US$254.76).
The Pandemic Propelled Bitcoin Adoption Rates
As the world continues to become increasingly digital, digitalization is fast becoming the norm. And Bitcoin is just that, digital money. As the pandemic propelled Bitcoin adoption rates, it too weakened peoples’ trust in financial institutions. As more banks started printing more money, the inflation rates went up and the currencies’ value went down, people lost faith in these once monopolized industries. Not just people, large corporations too, and instead turned to something outside of the normalized financial establishment.
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