Why is Bitcoin up to over $9,000 this morning?
Good question!
At the end of last week, traders were bemoaning prices around $7500. The Bitcoin spike as of this Monday morning represents one of the biggest and fastest leaps upward for this cryptocurrency, and it’s causing all sorts of market recalibrations.
“With $3.25 billion in global trades, BCH is the fifth most traded coin today below LTC and above EOS,” writes Jamie Redman at Bitcoin.com. “BCH is up 2.8% on Sunday and the coin has gained 19.3% during the last seven days of trading sessions. The decentralized cryptocurrency has an overall market valuation of around $4.74 billion which is considerably higher than it was three days ago.”
As for the prime mover behind all of this, analysts point to comments by Chinese president Xi Jinping at a government panel on blockchain on Thursday.
The translated readout of Jinping’s comments on Xinhuanet is almost poetic:
“Xi Jinping stressed that it is necessary to strengthen basic research, enhance the original innovation ability, and strive to let China take the leading position in the emerging field of blockchain, occupy the commanding heights of innovation, and gain new industrial advantages. It is necessary to promote collaborative research, accelerate the breakthrough of core technologies, and provide safe and controllable technical support for the development of blockchain applications. … Xi Jinping pointed out that it is necessary to seize the opportunity of blockchain technology integration, function expansion and industry segmentation, and play the role of blockchain in promoting data sharing, optimizing business processes, reducing operating costs, improving synergy efficiency, and building a credible system.”
Okay, so a lot of this might put you to sleep, but it’s doing the opposite for Bitcoin traders who are enervated and enthusiastic about BTC potential, both in the near-term and over the long haul for a cryptocurrency that suddenly has broad backing from the middle kingdom…
What all of this goes to show is that Chinese involvement in the global economy is anything but minor. We know intuitively of China’s clout as the emerging economy of the world – but it’s ability to spike Bitcoin this way is a concrete indicator of just how much power China has on the world stage.
For hodlers, though, it represents opportunity – so many of these traders have been waiting eagerly for greater government and institutional buy-in that should propel Bitcoin prices much higher. $7500 was lower than the doldrums of months past – $9300 or $9500 is healthy with a much greater upside according to some analysts as well as the usual suspects.
“Bitcoin bull and eccentric cybersecurity expert John McAfee has upped his price prediction for BTC to $2 million by the end of next year,” writes Michael LaVere at Cryptoglobe. “While McAfee gave little rationale for his bold prediction, an analyst at the state-owned German bank BaynerLB calculated that May 2020’s halving would give BTC a fair valuation of $90,000.”
