Bitcoin Forum

The first of 2020 has been roller-coaster ride for Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency market. The outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic world-wide has the dynamics of global economics as well as for the crypto markets.

Besides, we also have some important events from the crypto space like the Bitcoin halving in May 2020 and the accelerated development of ETH 2.0. Let’s take a look into the performance of Bitcoin and other top-five altcoins in the crypto market.

Bitcoin Performance in First-Half of 2020

2020 started on a pretty good note for the Bitcoin investors as the BTC price appreciated over 40% just in the first 45 days of the year. Bitcoin went all the way from $7000 to over $10,000 by mid-February.

However, Bitcoin couldn’t cross its major resistance at $10,500 levels and soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, BTC price plunged more than 50% from its 2020-high to go below $5000 levels just in a month’s time by mid-March 2020.

If we look at the BTC year-to-date chart, BTC’s performance has been very similar to the traditional stock markets. BTC’s price collapse is in tune with the global market collapse in March 2020. Thus, Bitcoin failed to live to its image of being the ‘Digital Gold’ and a safe haven for traditional market investors.

On the other hand, the price of physical Gold continued to rise with the global markets plunging. Soon after this price crash, Bitcoin investors yet again started accumulating the world’s largest cryptocurrency.

But investors’ hopes remain up and alive for the Bitcoin halving event in May 2020. Investors once again started accumulating BTC and BTC price started. Just before the scheduled Bitcoin halving data of May 11, BTC price touched $10,000 surging 100% from its 2020-low.

Pots the Bitcoin halving, Bitcoin price has remained volatile moving back-and-forth in the range of $8800 (support) and $10,500 (resistance).

If we compare the year-to-date graphs for Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency market, they are largely identical showing that BTC still decides the over crypto market momentum single-handedly.

Currently, BTC is trading at 30% year-to-date premium around $9200 levels.

A Look At the Altcoin Performance

The world’s second largest cryptocurrency and the most popular altcoin - Ethereum - has remained on investors’ radar for 2020. The Ethereum community has been eagerly waiting for the launch of Ethereum 2.0.

As Ethereum prepares to move from the PoW to the more efficient PoS consensus model, investors are accumulating ETH to participate in the staking process in Ethereum 2.0. In ETH 2.0 investors need to have a minimum of 32 ETH to participate in staking.

Of lately, developments with respect to ETH 2.0 have been in an accelerated mode. Last week, blockchain engineering firm ConsenSys announced its Codefi staking platform to offer institutional-grade, exchanges, and wallets, its ETH 2.0 staking as a service.

Ethereum has been one of the best performing altcoin trading at 80% premium year-to-date. At press time, Ethereum is trading at $228 with a market cap of $25 billion.

Stablecoin Tether (USDT) has managed to climb up the ranks and is currently the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Thanks to the poor performance of other altcoins like XRP, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC).

One altcoin which has turned very popular and given massive returns is Chainlink (LINK). The price of LINK cryptocurrency has surged over 3000% year-to-date. Chainlink is an oracle service provider which helps to transfer off chain data to other blockchain networks. Recently, Chainlink partnered with China’s Blockchain Services Network (BSN) to transfer real-word data using the interchain service hub IRITA. 

Source: https://www.worldcoinindex.com/news/a-look-at-the-performance-of-the-top-cryptocurrencies-in-the-first-half-of-2020 (https://www.worldcoinindex.com/news/a-look-at-the-performance-of-the-top-cryptocurrencies-in-the-first-half-of-2020)

PoS is more efficient than Pow, as it will solve scalability problem, allowing the network to process more transactions than it can currently handle. Stakeholders will get some benefits too. An investor who locks up the projected minimum of ETH 32, may thus earn $0.82 per day and $297.67 per year as a passive income. Does it mean that ETH will outperform BTC this year?

Doesn't mean that you posted the source of your thread wouldn't mean it wasn't plagiarism. If you want to start such topics, better indicate your own words as well and rather just quote important keypoints on the article. You're posting here a clear copy/pasted thread..

Enough said, Bitcoin still remains good after the halving and in this mid of 2020. Yet the problem here is that would ETH 2.0 make a huge impact on Bitcoin's price? The new upcoming system would be promising as many awaits its release, maybe it will pump but it wouldn't reach even a quarter of Bitcoin's price. Also, I think the price and the $10,000+ resistance would remain until the end of the year while we are facing the pandemic. And it might rise just after the worldwide quarantine ends.

The market for altcoins might change int he 2nd half of this year if the ETH 2.0 will be successfully launch.
I know there's no definite date yet as Vitalik has not confirm the launch date, but people are already speculating and they want it sooner since they have been waiting for too long. When ETH dump, the rest or most of the altcoins lose its value, so maybe ETH would be the answer to bring back the bullish market for alts.

Bitcoin performed quite well in first half of 2020 but not like it performed in the end of 2017 or start of 2018. Bitcoin crossed the milestone of 20k$ which was a great achievement. According to market condition the performance seems good.

Actually if we are looking for Bitcoin for us to be confident about it's actually how it quickly recovered from the massive drop as well as how it is somehow immune to the pandemic as compared to other markets. I remembered it during March where the crypto market was not the first market to react in the pandemic and it was actually the last one, and even if it was the last one who have broken down it was the first one to recover. Some say the recovery was because of the upcoming halving but I think the price action in the post-halving shows no relation on how the demand and price went up even before the halving happened. Some whales might just have actually taken advantage of the FUD for them to short Bitcoin and maybe that's why it recovered so quickly.

In my opinion, bitcoin's performance around the times of halving is not up to satisfactory levels regardless of its successful run against the pressures of pandemic times. This first half of 2020 must be really a roller coaster ride for bitcoin markets but failed to break and hold the biggest resistance level. If there was no halving this time then probably I would have rated this period as "too good" but halving should have launched prices above $11k to assume about bulls on control.

Overall, last 6 months neither of bull nor bear dominated the markets continuously which must be a good thing as fluctuating markets usually attracts more investments rather than falling conditions like 2018. I guess the second half 2020 will be more interesting as we can expect bulls to dominate at least hereafter.

I think even if there's no pandemic, bitcoin can be seen to struggle to cross the resistance level. Post-halving, it's expected to see that the price of bitcoin will go down due to the effect of the halving.

Miners, not all of them but some will probably shut down their miners due to the impact that it brings. Lesser rewards and for them, they can't cope up with the expenses anymore so it will result to shutting down. We can conclude that the first half became good, looking back to the big plunge in March and the expectations after the halving.

To my opinion that exactly is the problem. We always compare Bitcoin performance with 2017 hoping that will repeat sooner or later and everything less is disappointment. But 2017 was exceptional and we shouldn't always look back to that.
I think that Bitcoin performance in first half of the year was average but expected and if we don't have too big and unrealistic expectations, we have to admit it was quite good.

So many tokens are relying on Ethereum update and price and you are right when you posted the launch date of POS will have an impact on the price of altcoins but we all know Vitalik he is very unpredictable, maybe he'll just surprise everybody with an announcement, market is still in standstill but I like the market now, than when the pandemic started.

In the first half of 2020 Bitcoin's performance was very good but it was much weaker due to the virus. But now, even after the onset of the epidemic Bitcoin is performing much better in the market. That's why all traders are coming Bitcoin may perform well again by the end of this year It may be faster than we expected But now Ethereum is going to be much better like Bitcoin.

We cannot forget that the one that has had the highest performance in recent times is bitcoin:

https://i.imgur.com/TxYnIpM.png
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-price-stalls-below-92k-but-data-shows-investors-are-bullish (https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-price-stalls-below-92k-but-data-shows-investors-are-bullish)

If we put to review since 2017 the Bitcoin whales increased significantly, and if by simple inspection we know that altcoins depend on Bitcoin directly, it is a consequence of the movement that Bitcoin makes.

The effect of Covid-19 if the market was affected, due to the fact of causing panic, and it is obvious that the price has panicked, but the price has been recovering and will continue to do so.

The pandemic affected every asset price but food and other needed equipments  for survival. The halving was a success to me, the hype around it was much maybe I didn't have the whole picture of what  The halving would look like even the oil market was affected.

Initially, it was confirmed to be July, but I don't know if they can hit that target, and there have been a lot of postponement of the release that investors grow tired of waiting for ETH 2.0 to go live. It could trigger some sort of bull run, but I don't know how long will it last. As for bitcoin, we're still looking strong despite the covid-19 scare that put a dent on the price mid-March. We have recovered though, and still trying to get to that 5 digits again on the second half of the year.

In the last 20 days or so of June the market has seen the fall though because previously for most of the time it was above 9500$ and was trying to break past 10k and was successful as well twice but could not resist above 10k for long and fall back. After that the price slowly started to dip itself and went below 9k as well but was up again to above 9100$ . Though still holding above 9k is the key and lets see if can cross 10k and end up above 12k or more by year end.

You are right people are waiting for ETH 2.0 for quiet a long time and it can lead to a bullish price of the entire altcoin market, but the problem here is that if ETH 2.0 doesn't get released quickly then this upgrade won't have any effect on the price if released on a later date, or maybe the price can also fall due to more delays in the update. There will definitely be more delays in the update due to Covid as the pandemic is still affecting individuals in living their normal life and do their work.

"Bitcoin failed to live to its image of being the ‘Digital Gold’ and a safe haven for traditional market investors" -- even gold itself crashed on the same day, if we're being fair. Not as badly, but it suffered all the same, and recovered to pre crash levels in almost exact 30 days after.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, needed under 60 days to recover to pre-crash levels, so yeah, it's not exactly gold, but it bears the same remarkable recovery and resilience I'd say.

Year end is too far from here and by end of 2020, like most people here, I am too expecting bitcoin markets to be trading around $20k levels. $10500 levels must be a key from here because $10k to $10.5k must be the psychological target for most short term traders which must be the one of the reason why we are stuck below $10k for more than 6 weeks in a row even after halving. If pandemic chaos get settled down somehow, we can see bitcoin market leaps toward $15k regions straight away.

5 digits was tested more than one time after halving but failed to sustain due to pandemic reasons. Compared to gold, bitcoin is not trading stronger among the pandemic scare. Hopefully institutional finds may start inflow into cryptos in the second of half of this year as gold may get stagnant around its current levels due to slow world economy reasons and bitcoin may start performing well as usual at times of year end :D.

Bitcoin did not perform very badly at the beginning of 2020. In the beginning it was in fairly good condition. Hopefully the end of Bitcoin 2020 will be like 2017. So far it is in a good place. It remains to be seen what the end of 2020 will look like.

"If we look at the BTC year-to-date chart, BTC’s performance has been very similar to the traditional stock markets. BTC’s price collapse is in tune with the global market collapse in March 2020. Thus, Bitcoin failed to live to its image of being the ‘Digital Gold’ and a safe haven for traditional market investors."

- But it did recover right? And if not for the government's stimulus package for the traditional markets, it will be hard pressed for them to recover, while bitcoin's reached hits higher high after the March fall out. So it's pretty obvious that bitcoin is performing very well in the first half of the year.

As for altcoin, I would tend to agree that there are altcoins that out perform bitcoin year-to-year but it doesn't mean that those kind of growth are to be sustainable long term though. We all know how altcoin market tends to be a "pump-and-dump" scheme.

Although bitcoin has a good performance, we are seeing bitcoin price is too volatile right now. The price is up and down every day without we know what will happen tomorrow. Actually, that will be good for us if we can analyze the bitcoin market so we can find when we can enter the market and buy bitcoin. These situations need us to analyze deeper than usual because bitcoin can go down or up in the next hours. But we hope that in a few weeks later or months, the bitcoin price can move to the higher price.

I don't remember we ever had stable price, bitcoin price fluctuate all the time, the difference is in the range of those fluctuations. If you wish to earn from those daily fluctuations you can try to analyze the market, or you can try any other approach that can help you in predicting the next bitcoin move, and earn from that.
Many opinions in this topic, I think that comes from peoples expectation. Who expected more is not satisfied with this year performance until now, who didn't expect much are satisfied with current price. Traders like traders they enjoy volatility and who is skilled trader probably makes profit every day!

Well, let's be honest first half of 2020 was insane for everything, not just crypto but general finances and economies, not just economy but health, not just health and politics, basically first half of 2020 was one of the worse and weirdest halves of any year I can remember in my life. The lack of "store of value" would work in longer term, which means if there is something that causes banks to collapse, bitcoin would go up, if there is something that causes real estate go down, bitcoin would go up, if there is anything that makes tech bubble burst, bitcoin will go up.

However if there is something that destroys the WHOLE economy, bitcoin can't swim against that, we get affected as well and there is really not that many ways we can recover from it better than any other place neither.

Gold did recover quickly, and I think one of the reasons was that the lockdowns shut down some of the world's biggest mines and smelters. That cut off a lot of supply.

Anyway, I don't see the pandemic or the March crash as a test of BTC or gold's safe haven status. The March crash was a liquidity event, a rush to cash. That's the true safe haven and it's where whales like Warren Buffett are still waiting out the storm. If things turn south (let's say mass lockdowns get implemented again) I see the same thing happening again. Gold and BTC will get dumped just like stocks.

Gold (and probably BTC too) are not that interesting as hedges against recession. They are much more interesting as hedges against inflation.

That market looks stable and we can tell that we have survive the effect of the pandemic which was the sudden crash.
Stocks fall while bitcoin is quite healthy, I think this would attract investors in the long run if the recession will come.


Actually it was not confirm,  (https://www.coindesk.com/vitalik-buterin-clarifies-remarks-on-expected-launch-date-of-eth-2-0)

If bitcoin price can stay at $9,000-$9,2000, that will be a stable position because the price is not going up or down too far. And although the price still fluctuates, the price does not change too much. I don't analyze the bitcoin market every day, but I only check the price 3 times a day, and if somehow, I feel that I can enter the market, I will analyze more to find out the time for me to buy or sell. I still enjoy the bitcoin fluctuating of the price, and I know that is what will happen every day.

Couldn't agree more, and I think the full blowback from Covid-19 + Global economic downturn + unemployment actually hasn't arrived yet. Cash is being pumped, stocks, money put into people's hands... but when the band aids aren't coming fast enough, we'll see another dump and gold and bitcoin and stocks will follow the same merry trail.

I can't agree that 2020 has been a "roller coaster ride" for Bitcoin.What about 2013,2017 or 2018?
Every year,the Bitcoin price is in "roller coaster" mode due to the volatile nature of Bitcoin.2020 is no different than the previous years.Bitcoin is going just fine and I hope that next year,we will be hitting the moon.
This sub-forum is about Bitcoin price speculations.You should put the article part about altcoins in the Altcoin discussion forum.

I never really understood why gold and bitcoin went down though. I mean I get that stock markets would go down, because let's face it the pandemic hurt the companies and everyone's work and people were at home all day and night and nobody spent money or worked or even got fired. So, I understand stock market going down.

However, I can't understand how the hell gold and bitcoin went down? We are talking about basically having a whole level of something new that caused devaluation with money, a ton of (trillions) of money printed, and gold/bitcoin duo should have gone up because of it. I guess it was just market panic, I can't see any other reason to be fair and I am sure it will get better and better but I really hope that whenever something economically bad ever happens again, we will not get this much low with gold/bitcoin but instead go up.