As Bitcoin smashed through its highest ever market cap on November 17, amounting to an astounding $330 billion, the interest in BTC among billionaires & institutional investors has never been higher.
Although Bitcoin’s market cap hit a historic All-Time High (ATH) over the past 24 hours, the price of BTC, currently standing at $17,800, has not yet reached its previous ATH of $20,089 from December 17, 2017. This fact is easily explained by Bitcoin’s continuously growing supply over the past three years.
During the peak of the last bull run, there existed around 16,7 million Bitcoins, but due to new coins being created through the network’s ongoing mining operations, 1.8 million new BTCs have since been mined. This means that the total supply of Bitcoin is roughly 10,7% larger than it was in December of 2017.
Current bull run vs 2017-18
But there are several factors that are fundamentally different and more stable with this ongoing bull run compared to the one we experienced in 2017-18, which was mainly driven by “FOMO” from retail investors, rampant speculation and an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) boom.
Today, the Bitcoin blockchain’s hashrate, or combined computing power, has breached old records. Meanwhile, the fundamentals of both the Bitcoin network specifically and the cryptocurrency space in general, are more mature, developed and product-oriented.
But most importantly, institutional investors are showing a growing interest in using Bitcoin as a Store of Value and a hedge against the continuously weakening US dollar and fiat currencies worldwide.
Institutional investors publicly promoting BTC
In particular, billionaires on a global scale are increasingly going public with their Bitcoin holdings. For instance, Mexico’s second wealthiest man, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, announced on November 18 that 10% of his portfolio is now tied up in Bitcoin. Bill Miller, founder of investment manager Miller Value Partners, followed legendary investors Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones in touting Bitcoin as an excellent Store of Value.
Meanwhile, MicroStrategy founder and CEO, Michael Saylor has become an influential Bitcoin evangelist after investing $450 million of his company’s reserves, stating that he plans to hold Bitcoin for 100 years, describing it as “the world’s best collateral,” and has no plans on selling.
Saylor argued that the reason behind his investment into Bitcoin was when the Federal Reserve in the spring of 2020 relaxed its inflation policy and the unrelenting money printing of the US dollar.
Michael Saylor’s move into Bitcoin, along with other billionaires entering the cryptocurrency space, has clearly opened up the door for institutional investors into seeing the value of investing a portion of their portfolios into Bitcoin.
Clearly a sign of the changing times for institutional investor’s involvement in Bitcoin’s favor, famous crypto fund manager Grayscale announced on November 16 that they had increased their Bitcoin holdings to over 500,000 BTC. This move has increased Grayscale’s Bitcoin holdings by roughly 50% over the past half-year alone, highlighting the growing interest from institutional investors.
The stark difference between the ongoing Bitcoin bull run and the 2017-18 bull run is, besides improved fundamentals, that institutional investors have taken a significant step into the world of crypto by publicly declaring their Bitcoin holdings. These billionaire investors conduct long term investments and do not sell for small profits, but will likely rather buy every Bitcoin dip they possibly can. In other words, there is a more clearly defined class of investors with a long term strategy to hold Bitcoin as we face this current bullrun, compared to the largely speculative investor prevalent in 2017-18.
Klever offers current and future Bitcoin holders a simple mobile app to securely store, send, receive, swap and charge BTC directly in the Klever app, while giving the custody of private keys to the user, meaning that you have true ownership of your BTC holdings. Klever also allows you to Swap Bitcoin to and from 8 blockchain coins and over 37 different tokens based on the Ethereum, Tron and Binance blockchains, all at a single push of a button.
Sincerely,
Misha Lederman
Director of Communications and Marketing at Klever.io
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