Many publications and individuals like to look at Bitcoin in the short-term, focusing more on its current price than anything else. But with something as innovative as this cryptocurrency, the focus should go way beyond where it is right now – and its future truly is bright. While it has been decimated so far this year (down to the $6k range from its $20k high late last year), it’s still way up year-over-year, and it’s been growing in utility at a very quick rate. To see this, let’s look at some metrics and just how much they show.
Trading Volume
Cryptocurrency as a whole is much larger than just Bitcoin. Even so, just looking at Bitcoin itself, in the past 24 hours there have been over $234 million worth of BTC traded on just ONE exchange (Binance), not including any of the others. Add in OKEx and we now have almost $400 million in a single day. Add in Bitfinex and we’re now at almost $600 million. In other words, there are a LOT of bitcoins being traded every day! And that’s even considering the fact that the price drops as of late.
Transaction Volume
Bitcoins get moved pretty frequently through the network. As of the past 24 hours alone, over 1 million coins have been moved. And that doesn’t include anything from the Lightning Network, which is a side-chain to Bitcoin. This is a total of over 5% of the currently mined bitcoins being transferred per day. Do note that coins going back and forth do add to this total, but it’s still a significant amount.
Hash Rate
The hash rate for Bitcoin has been growing at a very quick rate. Just from July of 2017 to today, it’s grown by over 9x! New hardware does add to this, but there is a high cost of R&D, and this helps show that major backers are still joining the fray and massive investments are still being made into the infrastructure to profit off of mining.
The Big Three
There are definitely more metrics that you can follow, but these three alone tell a great story about just how well Bitcoin is doing. While its price may be suppressed right now, that doesn’t mean that it is dead, dying, or is even hurting. It’s important to remember that Bitcoin is all about the utility – it was never meant to be a “get rich quick” scheme, despite its quick growth over the last couple of years. That in no way means that the price is guaranteed to go up, nor that it won’t go down, but it is worth considering if you’re already in the space or are thinking about entering. Rather than looking at the price right this second and its short-term moves, take a look at where it’s been, where it is, and the direction it’s going as a technology. After all, Bitcoin and blockchain tech is about much more than just finance – it’s revolutionizing many different industries through the creation of an incorruptible, decentralized database. And with this, the possibilities are really endless, as we’re already seeing with many new businesses and technologies being built on top of it!