New Bitcoin price highs revive old misconceptions about BTC and crypto

As anyone following the crypto industry will have noticed, yes, Bitcoin (BTC) did recently smash its previous all-time high of around $20,000. Now, many analysts anticipate the cryptocurrency to eventually rise to the mid-$30,000s or even higher within the next few years.

As things stand, BTC is trading at around $23,300, briefly testing the $24,000 mark on several occasions. However, despite all of these positive developments, many prominent individuals from the financial mainstream have spoken negatively about the crypto industry, using cliche adages — such as “crypto is for criminals” and “crypto is all hype, no substance,” etc. — to describe BTC and other prominent digital currencies.

For example, renowned economist and financial strategist David Rosenberg recently referred to Bitcoin as a “massive bubble,” propping up the argument by saying that the supply curve of Bitcoin is unknown even though some people claim to know otherwise. Similarly, Mark Cuban, who is generally quite open-minded in regard to various futuristic technologies, also bashed Bitcoin, claiming that it is “more religion than solution.” However, he did concede that despite its shortcomings, it may be useful as a store of value.

And while crypto tech is far from perfect — admittedly being many years away from replacing legacy financial instruments such as fiat — the aforementioned opinions may seem to come across as the ramblings of annoyed traditionalists who fail to see the immense potential of the technology.

2020 bull run is different from 2017

As soon as Bitcoin broke the $20,000 mark, it was inevitable that analysts from across the board would seek to use the “this bull run is the same as 2017” argument to undermine the financial traction being gained by the industry as a whole.

In this regard, “CryptoYoda,” an independent cryptocurrency analyst, pointed out to Cointelegraph that one can see that the fearful perspective provided by the financial mainstream stems from a lack of understanding of the technology. As such, he believes that what is happening right now is a shift from debt-based fiat currency to trustless financial systems:

“What has changed? Everything. While the 2017 bull run was largely driven by early adopters and retail, this bull run is being dictated by institutional players entering the market. […] As of now, institutions buy a multiple of what is being mined per day. When one institution accumulates 500MM in BTC, it means that 500MM is no longer available for the other key players observing the market for entry.”

In a similar line of thinking, Jason Lau, chief operating officer of OKCoin, told Cointelegraph that it’s safe to say that the long-looming promise of mainstream players entering the crypto space has finally been fulfilled. In his view, this ongoing bull run has been driven by traditional financial institutions buying Bitcoin price dips as an investment and treasury product: “They have a long term…