The most important cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has suffered a lot of fluctuation since the peaks at $60,000. These days, the Bitcoin price somewhere falls to $45000.

Since nearly a decade ago, bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market have been dogged by doomsayers who criticized the coin will be dead.  But now it appears to have found some stability as it matures. 

Is Bitcoin going to be obsolete once all 21 million have been mined?  Or is it a step back before a “new storm” of Bitcoin price in the near future? 

We can’t answer directly. However, let's check for current facts and predictions about the Bitcoin future so that you can draw a personal conclusion.

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Since the first Bitcoin was mined 10 years ago, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have a lot of fall and rise in the coin value and cap market value.  Bitcoin value ever dropped down to only $6,000 by the end of 2018. At that time, a lot of doomsayers claimed that Bitcoin and its derivatives will barely dead after a few months. 

However, today we have witnessed a steady Bitcoin price at around $45000 (update in 2021, December). 

So, the coin is growing and gaining its stability and maturity now? 

■  What the supporters say

Major techs have employed cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies in their businesses. Banks, leading billion-dollar companies have started exploring blockchain in many large projects. 

Amazon, for instance, has developed Hyperledger blockchain fabric, a framework for developing applications and solutions in the form of modular architecture. 

In China, Ant Financial (a start-up belonging to the Alibaba ecosystem) develops blockchain initiatives to offer large-scale financial transaction technologies to big enterprises. From Europe, the USA to Asia, Bitcoin and blockchain technologies have been adopted gradually.

■  What the doubters say

The volatilities of cryptocurrencies are enormous and very deceptive. While there are over 5,000 coins on the market, only a few big coins are still alive today. Based on a report by CNBC, over 800 coins have substantially dead now. 

Besides, a lot of coins of ICO (Initial Coin Offering) market are scams. Modern Tech, a Vietnamese start-up has raised $600 million for its Pincoin token, taking money from over 30,000 supporters and then disappearing. The founder of Bitconnect, a loan program offering its ICO worldwide, is now dealing with a lawsuit from investors for a total loss of million dollars.

Last but not least, the legality of Bitcoin in many countries is not the same. Bitcoin is banned and sometimes it is considered hostile. Traders, investors, dealers of Bitcoin are not guaranteed any rights under that countries laws. 

Every group has its reasons to speculate on the future of Bitcoin. However, which group is correct? We should delve into the current state of Bitcoin, its value, technological improvements, and transaction data to see the complete picture.

■ Network Hash Rate - A great indicator of the network health

We know that the hash rate is a measure of the processing power of Bitcoin. Every time a Bitcoin block is mined, it is completed with a “hash”, before adding other growing blocks. The hash is created by solving a difficult puzzle by super-powerful computers. The hash rate shows how many times the Bitcoin network can complete the puzzle every second. Simply speaking, the higher the hash rate, the network is safer and getting more protection.

Photo: Bitcoin hash rate chart from 2009 to 2019 - source: https://www.blockchain.com

Currently, the hash rate of Bitcoin is 114 exahash per second (27th September 2019), which is nearly 10-folds compared with the highest peak in 2017, the time Bitcoin value reached $20,000 as you still remember. In other words, the Bitcoin network is gaining a lot of strengths and protections than it has ever been before.

■ Transaction history

The value of the Bitcoin transaction after the December 2017 event was crashed. However, during the whole year of 2019, 2020, this value gradually rises and becomes steady.

Photo: Bitcoin transaction chart 2018-2019 - source: https://bitinfocharts.com

When translating the transaction value per day in USD, again we see the stability of the whole Bitcoin Network. 

■ Technological advancements

Lightning Network - a scaling approach

As we all know, the Bitcoin transaction is rate is currently about 4 transactions per second (TPS), which is relatively slow compared to others. For instance, Ripple (another cryptocurrency) can process about 1,5000 TPS. VISA, on the other hand, does up to 24,000 TPS. Therefore, it is essential to find a scalable approach to make Bitcoin transfers faster and cheaper. At the moment, Lightning Network is a solution for Bitcoin Network scaling. The premise is to have one transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain to begin a series of off-chain transactions. On Lightning Network, users can transfer Bitcoin nearly in real-time.

Photo: Lightning Network size presented by active amounts of nodes 

2021 has been a great year for Bitcoin and other altcoins, showing steady growth and even more maturity in both the coin real value and technological improvements. Bitcoin is far from dead, it is just growing and getting acceptance from the mainstream. 

Nowadays, a lot of countries are now accepting Bitcoin as a “ real money transmitter”, rather than just a digital commodity. Currently, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Malta, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Belarus validate Bitcoin and develop a regulatory framework to protect users and to attract more institutional investors in this sector. 

At the same time, the US Congress declares to put Bitcoin into a more streamlined approach to regulate the coin in the whole country. The regulatory will eventually protect the coin and bring more investors into the market.

Technological advancement also plays a major role in Bitcoin Network. At the moment, the transaction with Bitcoin is quite slow when compared with VISA, Paypal, etc. However, developers are now initiating a new technology called Lightning Network to facilitate a faster transaction time and reduce the cost of payments with Bitcoin. With this new technology, Bitcoin transfer time can be nearly real-time.

■ Bitcoin future value in the long-term

Bitcoin plays an important role in crypto-markets. In the long term, Bitcoin is expected to have enormous value and utility, besides fiat currencies. Moreover, important macroeconomic factors such as trade war between the U.S and China, covid-19 etc, will affect the Bitcoin value. The reason is that these events might eventually lead to a monetary easing policy to keep economic expansion. 

As a result, major reserve currencies are at risk of devaluation.Bitcoin will alternatively become an important investment channel. A lot of well-known investors, policymakers anticipate that Bitcoin will evolve and in the long-term will become a “digital gold”, and eventually will grow even bigger than the gold market over time.

According to a poll of 50 financial technologists, bitcoin may not hit six figures this year. By 2022, it could be frozen at around $70,000.

Analysts, on the other hand, are significantly more positive about bitcoin's price in 2025 and 2030. They're used to it.

By 2025, Bitcoin will be worth $249,578.

By 2030, Bitcoin will be worth $5,237,082.

“As Bitcoin continues to mature and increase in value, usability, age, and trust, it will behave less like a growth stock and more like a store of value. Eventually, Bitcoin will dethrone gold as the king of safe-haven assets, and hopefully, this changing of the guard takes place by the end of the decade.”

- from coinmarketcap.

What is the future value of Bitcoin? Bitcoin has experienced many new all-time high values... The volatility of Bitcoin has become a cause for investors to stick to a long-term strategy. My prediction for Bitcoin is short-term swings and long-term growth.

Should you invest in Bitcoin now? 

If you're buying for the long-term, don't be concerned with short-term fluctuations. The best thing you can do is "set it and forget it" when it comes to your cryptocurrency investment.

However, you should know it is still a new and speculative investment. No one knows what an expert believes or says.  Keep your crypto investments minimal, and never prioritize them over other financial goals.