Bitcoin’s price has always swayed the rest of the cryptocurrency market. Being the largest and most popular cryptocurrency in the world has its pressures, as the naysayers were ready to shoot it down at any moment.
Bitcoin has been declared dead more than 350 times so far. This was mainly due to price crashes that occurred throughout its history as well as massive hacks that rocked the cryptocurrency industry.
The latest bitcoin ‘ death ‘ was declared on March 4 when people said that the cryptocurrency had no intrinsic value. Since then, Bitcoin has taken a massive price hit. Over the past week, Bitcoin has dropped by more than 44 percent to settle the $5000 mark.
The market cap was also shaved off with the figure now being $93.015 billion. Bitcoin was not the only cryptocurrency that took a hit as other altcoins also plunged in terms of price.
Ethereum and XRP, two of the largest altcoins in the market fell by 32.7 percent and 26.24 percent. Although the entire market was bleeding red, critics especially pounced on Bitcoin’s latest crash.
Crypto naysayers recently claimed that the market was sinking because there was no solid foundation for Bitcoin to become a global form of payment. This wasn’t the first time Bitcoin had heard this as a sentiment dated back to a decade ago.
When Bitcoin was first created, a lot of people said that it would last only because of its novelty value. Some publications even said:
“Negative feedback loops like this are basically homeostasis. In nature, positive feedback loops like exist with Bitcoin are lethal; the only thing that’s even kept Bitcoin alive this long is its novelty. Either it will remain a novelty forever or it will transition from novelty status to dead faster than you can blink.”
It may not come as a surprise, but Bitcoin has clearly achieved more than anyone had expected. Cut to 2020, and the number of doors Bitcoin has opened for blockchain technology is numerous.
Adoption has reached such a point that even major countries like China and Japan have considered implementing blockchain technology within their areas. Despite all this, a majority of the financial ecosystem still doubt the capabilities of cryptocurrencies.
According to 99Bitcoins, the maximum times that Bitcoin was declared dead was in 2017, the year Bitcoin recorded its all-time high. The cryptocurrency was called a scam, a Ponzi scheme, and several other colorful names during its $20.00 mark increase. Things had come to such a crescendo that regulators had a hard time keeping up with business.
Bitcoin supporters have always said that the cryptocurrency would never die because the number of use cases will always be significant. As time progressed, the cryptocurrency’s longevity was judged by its utility rather than its price. Applying this logic to Bitcoin, it is clear why serious proponents are not worried about the industry.
Analysts have claimed that a price correction is always necessary to weed out the troublemakers within the virtual asset world. Bitcoin has survived this long because of the belief in technology as well as its applications. It is up to developers and the digital asset ecosystem to ensure that Bitcoin becomes a ‘safe haven’ asset again.