Bullish signs are everywhere for Bitcoin (BTC) March 1st as the largest cryptocurrency continues its record-breaking bear market cycle in 2019.
Addresses Amassing Coins At 4K
Capping a fifth day of broad stability, the bitcoin price [coin_price] was holding steady at around $3850 Friday, while data from traders suggested February ended the worst six-month performance for bitcoin ever recorded.
The price at the beginning of March was still up versus one month ago, however, with BTC/USD appreciating 11.4 percent in the interim despite significant volatility.
At the same time, analysts were looking at technical factors to determine whether BTC’s underlying strength continues despite price suppression.
Contrasting the state of the network with 2015, the time of the previous bear cycle after price highs in December 2013, Diar noted twice as many addresses held amounts of bitcoin between $4000 and $40,000.
“Addresses holding anywhere between 1 and 10 Bitcoins now represent nearly 10% of the circulating supply,” researchers noted.
Despite the bubble burst, Bitcoin holdings in these addresses increased by 5% since Bitcoin’s peak. Since January 2017 to date, the most popular band of address holdings have seen an increase of 38% with an average of 35% increase year-on-year since 2015.
Halving Excitement Builds
Messari founder Ryan Selkis added that the increases come despite the BTC price now being worth 15 times more than in 2015.
Delphi Digital co-founder Anil Lulla found more reasons for most bitcoin holders to be cheerful. Just 3 percent of BTC addresses hold more than a whole coin.
“There’s a max of 21 million people in the world who can own 1 bitcoin…and the total population currently is already close to 8 billion,” he reiterated.
Lulla’s comments were within the context of the Bitcoin block reward halving event, scheduled for May 2020. As Bitcoinist reported, previous halvings have entailed increases in the bitcoin price by orders of magnitude.
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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Diar