Want to buy Bitcoin in Nigeria? Here's how to analyze Bitcoin's price.
The entire cryptocurrency market has now surpassed over a trillion dollars in value, with the legendary Bitcoin becoming the No. 1 most traded currency globally. So should you buy Bitcoin now or wait? I clearly remember when I started investing and buying Bitcoin and other cryptos as a teen, I didn't even know how to look at the price and relate it back to anything that I understood. I had a hard time because trading or holding Bitcoin is not like stocks in any form.
At least in the stock market, you can look at things like dividends, payout ratio, debt level, cash flow, balance sheet, sales growth, etc. But Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a community, so how do you judge its actual price?
Welcome to HotNaija, your one-stop destination for the latest entertainment news, celebrity gossips and stories, lifestyle content, and cryptocurrency news. Today we'll be looking at the fundamentals analysis of when to buy a Bitcoin, then we'll go macro.
If you aren't familiar with those words, fundamental means judging a particular thing based on measurable and factual data to see if something is under-priced or over-priced. While Macro means piecing together bits and pieces together to figure out what's going on and come to a conclusion.
So the first metric is going to be on-chain data. Specifically, we'll be looking at the following:
(1). Transaction Volume
This is a measure of how much people are using Bitcoin. Why is that important? It's very crucial because we need to know if people are actually using this technology or are they just speculating the price for the sake of fun?Well, if you go to blockchain.com/charts, you'll find a graph showing transactions that took place per day. Click on "all-time" data. When you do that, you'll see that since Bitcoin was created back in 2009 by the unknown developer – Satoshi Nakamoto (according to its white paper), the transaction volume has been steadily growing. This is an outstanding performance because it tells us the network effect that is Bitcoin's blockchain is increasing, and the technology is becoming more adopted and accepted day by day.
(2). Wallet Data
Upon purchase of a Bitcoin, you're issued a unique wallet address where your Bitcoins are held. Once more, let's use blockchain.com and take a look at their wallet data. From 2011 all the way to 2021 (the present day), you'll notice the existence of over 65 million unique wallets. We can only see how much the network is growing if more verified individual wallets are created. The network effect is necessary because it cannot be copied over by simply copying and pasting the code of Bitcoin. This, in particular, is what makes Bitcoin extremely unique from all the other cryptocurrencies in the public market.(3). Hash Rate
Using a simplified textbook definition, this is simply a procedure of measuring the processing power of the Bitcoin network. There are over 50 million millionaires in the world today, and only 21 million Bitcoins already in existence, will ever be made. So how much of the price is inflated versus the technology actually being used and adopted?Let's head back to blockchain.com and find the hash rate chart. Welcome back. Did you notice how it has grown exponentially over a decade? Well, it's no surprise, as that's just the regular way technology gets adopted. A good technology usually never moves in a linear line; it is exponential. The current hash of Bitcoin is sitting around 151 Tera hashes per second, which means the Bitcoin network can process 151 trillion calculations per second. Awesome right? Well, that's a technology for you. Expect more in the future.
Moving on, this data reveals to us that the increase in Bitcoin's price is supported by all measurable growth. Now let's take a look at some macro analysis.
Whenever a particular kind of technology is created, whether it's been the aeroplane, your mobile phone/laptop, the television, and everyone's all-time favourite – the internet, they all follow the same general path of adoption – the S curve. The S curve is a method of measuring how long it takes technology to penetrate the market. Once the inflexion point of an S curve happens, the adoption subsequently leads to exponential growth, which reaches the masses.
In early 2020, Bitcoin made around a trillion dollars of on-chain transaction volume. That volume alone is more than Apple Pay, Venmo, or PayPal. This proves that it's at this point in the phase of technology that the growth becomes exponential. In my opinion, I think we are still in the early adopter's phase, just about to begin the exponential growth this decade – from the years 2021 to around 2030.
EndNote: None of these is meant to be construed as investment or financial advice. These are just opinions, and we urge everyone to do more deep personal research before investing their money.
Make sure you check out our other blog posts for more information about the crypto market and trending entertainment headlines. Thanks for reading!