Bitcoin Is Making Crypto Bullish Again
After recovering from $35,000 to $70,000 in October, Bitcoin has again corrected by 25%. But huge updates surrounding the world’s largest cryptocurrency are going to revive the crypto space before the end of the year. Will the entry of an extremely large corporate whale and a retail chain be enough for the bull market to resume? Or will the downward trend continue for cryptocurrencies as we enter 2022 in a few weeks? Let’s find out.
Bitcoin’s Performance
When there are possibilities of a bull run in the crypto markets, you need to look further than the biggest asset in terms of adoption, market cap and value, Bitcoin. Since Bitcoin alone accounts for almost 30% of all crypto-related investments, an increase in the coin means an increase in all cryptocurrency markets.
On December 5, when the majority of the cryptocurrency markets corrected over the weekend, Bitcoin began to tank — which usually happens during a bull run. As per the charts, Bitcoin has massively corrected in the last 1 month. This time last month, Bitcoin was trading at $68,000 after making all-time highs. As of December 10, Bitcoin is worth just $48K, according to Coinmarketcap. This means it has fallen by over $20K, which is a correction of more than 25%. It has gone down by 2% in the last 24 hours and has a trading volume of under $30 billion.
For comparison, Bitcoin had a trading volume of $40 billion about a month ago. So with a declining trading volume that has caused the price of the coin to shrink over the last 4 weeks and why would investors want to enter the market at such a volatile time?
Source: Coinmarketcap (Bitcoin: 1-month trading chart )
First and foremost, a large amount of money has just entered Bitcoin this past week, so is this what the market needs before Bitcoin can rally again?
Major Company Buys Just Over 1000 Bitcoin
If you are familiar with Bitcoin and the crypto space, you have likely come across the name Michael Slayor and his company, Microstrategy. The company runs in the business-intelligence software sector, and its CEO, Slayor, has been extremely bullish on Bitcoin in particular for a long time. In fact, before November 2021, the company owned 114,000 Bitcoin. This insane amount of Bitcoin makes Microstrategy the single largest publicly traded corporate owner of Bitcoin. Not only had the company increased its Bitcoin holdings by 198% by October, but they have also made a fortune in returns. Their average purchase price was $27,713, which comes to a total of $3.16 billion. So when the coin reached $68,000 just last month, Microstrategy had made an overall gain of around 150%, which would have been a profit of approximately $5 billion. Since then, the price has corrected massively, but the company’s holdings are still at a gain of almost 2x.
Microstrategy has again come to the forefront of Bitcoin-related news after their CEO announced a purchase of 1,438 more bitcoin between November 29 and December 8. The company paid $82.4 million for their buy, with an average price of $57,477 per Bitcoin. This has raised their total holding to 122,478 bitcoins, costing them more than $8 billion. This is huge news since the company bought more than 9,000 bitcoins in the 3rd quarter of 2021 alone. While the last few months have not seen any return for the company since Bitcoin ha
tumbled under $50K, Slayor and the company are very confident that they will show returns in the coming years.
Not to mention that such large whale transactions lead to creating an accumulation zone, which alone can provide returns on a short-term basis. Since Bitcoin is still considered relatively cheap at under $50K, it could be an excellent time to enter the space for some long-term profits.
But this isn’t it for Bitcoin, since a large retailer has just welcomed all of its users to use Bitcoin as a payment option.
Croatia’s Version Of Walmart Now Accepting Crypto & Bitcoin
Croatia’s largest retailer, Konzum, is now accepting payments in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. And while many may not see it as a significant development since the chain isn’t popularly known, its reach is massive. Not only does the retailer have more than 10,000 employees around the country, but they also serve over 650,000 shoppers every single day, making it more than $20 million per month. This announcement has excited many investors — those from Croatia who can use their cryptocurrency, but even for global investors since it brings in more active buyers and sellers for the market.
In total, Konzum will be accepting nine different cryptocurrency coins as payment. Aside from Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Tether are some of the popular coins you’ll be able to use as online payment options. To accept crypto, the company has partnered with a local crypto payment processor, PayCek’, which will allow merchants to accept the crypto payments.
On the announcement, Kanzum had the following to say:
“When it comes to crypto payment, Konzum doesn’t have any interaction with cryptocurrencies, we only receive Fiat into our bank account. Electrocoin does the payment processing from crypto to Fiat through their cryptocurrency exchange platform simply and securely.”
Once the payment system rolls out, it will be interesting to see the reaction from the crypto markets. As for the economic benefit from the roll-out, even if 1% of potential users use cryptocurrency as a payment option in the retailer, that would still tally to thousands of crypto-related transactions every month for Konzum.
While the news of Microstrategy’s big purchase and Croatia’s biggest retailer’s crypto entry is not enough to cause a rally on its own, long-term investors should be excited for the impact over the coming months and years.
