Bitcoin (BTC) has now traded above $10,000 for an entire year, as expectations demand $100,000 before the end of 2021.
While hodlers impatiently wait for new all-time highs, BTC price action is celebrating the first of what is likely many anniversaries.
BTC/USD: One year in five figures
On Thursday, BTC/USD officially hit 365 days trading in five figures.
A year ago, on Sept. 9, 2020, the largest cryptocurrency slowly eased into the $10,000 zone, never to return.
A month later, it was only $1,000 higher, but fast forward to the end of Q4 2020, and the situation was entirely different — Bitcoin traded at $28,000.
The transformation is widely anticipated to repeat itself this year. As Cointelegraph reported, even a “worst case scenario” for BTC/USD is $135,000 by Jan. 1, 2022.
Even legacy finance has come round to the concept of bullish continuation, notably this month in the form of Standard Chartered, which forecast a cyclical top of $100,000 this year.
Zooming out, the predictions get even higher. Cathie Wood, founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Ark Invest, believes that Bitcoin will hav hit $500,000 by 2026.
Hodlers “unfazed”
At the time of writing, BTC/USD was hovering at $47,500, having beaten out what some feared would be solid resistance overnight.
Related: Bearish pennant breakdown confirmed? 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week
With profitable days, as ever, accounting for 99.9% of Bitcoin’s lifetime, few bearish voices were audible from within cryptocurrency circles five months after its most recent all-time highs.
“Despite a 50%+ sell-off experienced in May, a strong rally from the $29k lows, and now another sharp sell-off this week, HODLers appear unphased,” analytics firm Glassnode summarized in its latest weekly newsletter.
As Cointelegraph additionally noted, long-term holders now account for more of the BTC supply than at any point since before the main part of the bull market began in October. Exchange reserves, meanwhile, are at their lowest since February 2018.