Retail Catching Up on Bitcoin as the Digital Asset Gets Ready for $30,000

Bitcoin vaulted above $29,000 to hit an all-time high at around $29,620 on New Year’s Day. Last month, Bitcoin advanced about 50% to mark its biggest monthly gain since May 2019.

Q4 of 2020 was the second-biggest percentage gaining quarter ever at 168.78%, after 210% of Q4 of 2017.

These gains took Bitcoin’s market capitalization past $545 million and it became the 10th largest asset by market cap, surpassing BTC skeptic Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Bitcoin’s weekly RSI at 92 meanwhile is pointing to Bitcoin being in overbought territory and the market is expecting BTC BTC -2.62% Bitcoin / USD BTCUSD $ 25,757.09
-$674.84-2.62% Volume 19.53 b Change -$674.84 Open $25,757.09 Circulating 19.4 m Market Cap 499.65 b 1 y SEC Commissioner says NFTs Might Fall Within Their Jurisdiction, Gensler Hires Senate Aid for Crypto Policy 1 y A Possible Crypto Recovery Moving Into New Year, Risk-on Sentiments Send The Stock Market to Another Record High 1 y Bitcoin and Ether Dump More Going Into Year-End, ETH Killers Showing Great Momentum to top somewhere around $30k before seeing a correction. But given the strong and resilient demand for the digital asset, it’s anyone’s guess at this point, when and how low exactly we will go at this point if any at all.

Bitcoin’s Gain, USD’s Loss

While bitcoin is on a price discovery ever since breaking 2017 ATH $20k, the US dollar posted its biggest yearly loss since 2017.

The greenback soared to a three-year high of 103 against a basket of currencies in March when panic over the spread of COVID-19 in the US peaked, pushing all the markets down, before dropping on unprecedented Federal Reserve stimulus.

Now, improving global economic outlook, COVID-19 vaccines getting rolled out, ongoing fed bond purchase, and zero to sub-zero interest rates have put a dent in the dollar's appeal.

“I expect the dollar to depreciate further over the next few years as the Fed keeps rates at zero whilst maintaining its bloated balance sheet,” Kevin Boscher, chief investment officer at asset manager Ravenscroft, told clients.

All the actors negatively affecting USD are actually working in favor of Bitcoin, pushing the digital asset’s prices higher and higher towards the moon.

Retail Taking Notice

The growing prices of Bitcoin have started to catch the attention of retail as well. The interest in the term Bitcoin on Google Trends has seen an uptick to February 2018 levels in the US, although nowhere near the 2017 high.

A similar jump in interest is seen worldwide but while it has a reading of 39, on a 0-100 scale, compared to the 30 reading in the US. Nigeria, South Africa, Austria, Ghana, and Switzerland are currently leading this interest.

Interest is actually higher for the terms ‘crypto’ and ‘buy crypto’ that have a reading between 40 to 48 last seen in Jan. 2018, both in the US and worldwide, most among Malta, Australia, Slovenia, Nigeria, and St Helena.

The n00bs are coming!

Google Trends data for 'Buy crypto' in the US pic.twitter.com/977Ke6UpNE

— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne) December 31, 2020

Among the cryptocurrencies, Google Search interest for Bitcoin, ETH, and XRP are at their highest since Jan. 2018 with Tezos being the only one to hit its peak in 2020. While ETH has relatively the highest search interest, IOTA has the lowest.

When it comes to Twitter, “the percentage of Bitcoin tweets coming from unique Twitter accounts is at an ATH,” noted The TIE.