The Evolution of the Cryptosphere: Will the Next Major Bull Run Last Longer Than The Previous?

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Bitcoin at $5500; Market Cap Heads Towards $100 Billion, BTC Sets Out For The Nearest Resistance Levels
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Most people, including a few bears, would agree that for the most part, April 2019 began the crypto sector’s journey out of the winter that plagued it since last year. Two or three years ago, the sector wasn’t gathering as much traction as it currently is as in January 2017, Bitcoin was somewhere between $750 and $900 around the middle of the month. In the same period, Ether has also valued a little over a hundred dollars.

In fact, at the time, the entire crypto market cap was about $17.3 billion which is less than 7% of today’s market capitalization. In May of the same year, things generally began to look good as prices began to rise, eventually leading up to December when Bitcoin hit its all-time high of almost $20,000.

What has Changed?

A lot of things have happened in the sector between then and now topmost of which might be Bitcoin’s maturity. While the number one coin, as well as the entire sector, is still considered significantly unstable, Bitcoin has become quite immune to some of the problems that used to plague it.

A few months ago, Binance – arguably the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange – was hacked and the criminals made away with $40 million in BTC. A few years back, an event like that would have driven prices down and kept them there for a while but when the Binance news broke, not much changed.

However, the period also came with what many consider the “Death of ICOs” because these offerings didn’t seem as profitable anymore and investors lost a lot of the money they pushed into these new coins.

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It’s also important to consider that in recent times, there has been a lot of institutional interest and investment into the sector which should signify a maturity in the entire market and not just Bitcoin.

Apart from the number of major giant companies who are applying multiple crypto solutions to their core businesses, a lot of the world’s central banks are considering Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) with some sovereign states also floating a national digital currency as in the case of Venezuela and the Marshall Islands.

What Can We Tell?

If we’re being brutally honest, there might not be a lot we can definitively tell. However, based on some of the events highlighted above, the number of bullish opinions and analyses based on the numerous positive changes in the market are quite understandable.

At the end of December 2017, the same month Bitcoin hit its all-time high, the total market cap shot past $600 billion even though prices in the market were higher about 2 weeks before the end of the year.

What we can tell right now is that the market is a lot more mature and established than it used to be. Analysts have even said that it’s unlikely we will see a winter colder than we saw last year. Also, the current pullbacks being experienced were already predicted before they even began, which is another point for stability in the market. With all these, it’s likely that a new bull market might be quite sustained even if prices don’t reach $20,000 as they did in 2017.

As trader & technical analyst Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) puts it on Twitter:

“The previous bull market lasted 152 weeks

That’s 1064 days

Almost 3 years

We are only 10 weeks into the new bull market”