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Is Bitcoin Dead? These 2023 Events Expose Bitcoin Might Be More Alive Than Ever

 

By Nerly Shammah May 31, 2023

 

The number of Bitcoin holders and developments just keeps increasing, proving that Bitcoin is not dead, but more alive than ever. 

 

 

In the cryptocurrency ecosystem, usually when an asset or currency records months of downward price movements, or rather stagnate trading patterns, the projects behind the said asset are declared dead, this is largely because the markets aren't yet matured thus almost all participants are after quick flips that leaves their wallets in green. Bitcoin specifically has been reported dead a lot of times in the past but after which the reverse is always the case, yet, it still funnily comes up over and over again. 

 

In the last couple of months, the Bitcoin blockchain has gone through quite some changes that have seen not only non-fungible tokens leave on the chain but also fungible tokens being inscribed on the Bitcoin network. All of this has been possible due to Ordinals, an inscription technology that allows the denomination of Bitcoin "satoshi" to be given individual identities without compromising the security of the Bitcoin network. Although Ordinal inscriptions were largely referenced as NFTs, an anonymous developer or set of developers devised a theory that allows a standard for fungible tokens to be deployed onto the Bitcoin network with the help of Ordinals inscriptions. 

 

This saw the release of tokens like pepecoin, a shitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain whose marketcap had swiftly hit 1.8 billion dollars in days of trading but currently hovering around $500 million. The idea of having an ERC-20 type token live on the Bitcoin blockchain goes to show how quite unlimited cryptocurrency blockchains are. Although most Bitcoin maxis have not been in approval of these developments with some proposing to cause a hike in fees to limit the transfers of shitcoins on the network, it does however, on general terms, reflect the amount of interest both developers and individuals have in Bitcoin. 

 

Just about 10 days ago, one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies was reported to be pledging about $500k to Brink for Bitcoin developments, showing the company's unwavering interest in Bitcoin and desire to see it succeed and scale. 

 

Events That Show Bitcoin Is More Alive Than Ever

 

The Ordinals

 

The Ordinal inscriptions have shown that Bitcoin can indeed be a competitor to Ethereum on the side of serving a storage platform for case-sensitive real-world assets by tokenizing them for ultimate immutability and uniqueness. 

 

The Release Of BRC-20 Tokens

 

An example of BRC-20 tokens is pepecoin which was mentioned above. BRC-20 tokens are typically like ERC-20 tokens, only that they are not directly powered by smart contracts on Bitcoin (although this can technically be outsourced) but the concept of actually being a direct reflection of  "Satoshi" makes it quite fascinating that a market and new economies can in fact be built within the Bitcoin network. 

 

Public Support For Bitcoin Development

 

Marathon Digital Holdings has shown to have its toes deep into the business of Bitcoin with pledges for its developments, in addition to this, it's important to note that on the side of developments, there is an estimate of 600 to 1,000 developers working on bitcoin as of May 2023.

 

Increased Bitcoin Holders

 

As previously reported on icoverage, as of September 2022, there were about 900k addresses holding at least 1 Bitcoin, approximately over $23 billion in total, about 4.5% of Bitcoin's marketcap, that said, as of May 2023, this number has increased to 1,000,986, over 100k added addresses now hold at least 1 Bitcoin counting towards over $3 billion being added to the network of holders with a balance of 1 Bitcoin(minimum). 

 

Bitcoin's Market Dominance

 

Regardless of not having the best past months price-wise, bitcoin has however maintained market dominance mostly controlling over 40% of ecosystem trading volumes across all trackable marketplaces. 

 

Fun Fact: Bitcoin has been profitable to hold 87.7% of the time throughout its existence. 

 

Is Bitcoin Dead? 

 

Bitcoin may be underperforming price-wise, but it is not dead. In fact, bitcoin is more alive than ever and it's speculated that the next bull run could see Bitcoin touching $100,000 per unit which pulls the network closer to being a widely effective means of trade as its denomination "satoshi" becomes more valuable and suitable for micro-payments.