Bitcoin price reaching $50,000 in the near term looking likely, experts suggest
BTC has made an impressive recovery since yesterday, wiping out its biweekly losses almost overnight.
- Analysts believe that if Bitcoin is able to cleanly break past its current levels, a run-up to the $50,000 mark may be in the cards.
- Reports indicate that longterm crypto holders (LTHs) now own a whopping 80% of Bitcoin’s entire supply pool.
- The Bitcoin network’s power consumption numbers for 2021 have already exceeded those witnessed through all of 2020.
After unexpectedly slipping down to the $44,000 range over the past week, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalization, seems to have forged an impressive comeback, with the asset currently up 4% over the last 24 hours. At press time, BTC is trading for $47,583.
In terms of what comes next for the flagship cryptocurrency, market expert Michaël van de Poppe said that as long as BTC is able to cleanly break past its current price levels, it should be able to continue its upward ascent to the all-important $50,000 psychological barrier. “Upward continuation to $50,000 is possible as the final hurdle before a potential all-time high test,” he suggested.
In a similar vein, trader and analyst Rekt Capital noted that Bitcoin’s moving averages are looking promising at the moment, hinting at the possibility of a return to the $50,000 range soon.
And in its latest weekly report, crypto analytics firm Glassnode noted that longterm Bitcoin holders now own a whopping 80% of the cryptocurrency’s existing supply pool (which works out to nearly 13 million BTC). The firm further noted that the trend has been on the rise in recent years but peaked in 2021.
Bitcoin’s energy consumption woes continue
According to a recent report, Bitcoin’s power consumption figures for the current calendar year have already exceeded those from 2020. The study states that by December 2021, the Bitcoin network would have utilized a little over 91 TW/h (terawatt-hours or one trillion watts per hour). The report further reads that the ecosystem has already used up more than 67 TW/h of energy this year, a number that is higher than what was witnessed all through 2020.
Even though the aforementioned power consumption figures may vary slightly from index to index, the numbers are moving upwards. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, BTC will most likely consume more than 95.68 TW/h by the end of the year — nearly the annual power consumption of the Philippines.
In another study, it appears as though in the coming years as more and more miners upgrade their existing hardware rigs, the total amount of e-waste generated by Bitcoin will continue to rise. “Bitcoin could produce up to 64.4 metric kilotons [64,400 tons] of e-waste at peak Bitcoin price levels seen in early 2021,” the study noted.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner’s guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
