Has Bitcoin Been To The Moon Already?

On November 7, 2021, Bitcoin reached a record high of $68,789. It settled that day at around $65,500. Bitcoin investors were convinced the moon launch was in effect and $80,000 was right around the corner. After that, $100,000. Was that the moon landing price tag? Is there one? Or, did Bitcoin already have its moon landing?

When central banks start rolling out their preciously programmable central bank digital currencies, things like the FedCoin will put an end to all this “Bitcoin moon” talk. Ray Dalio said he wouldn’t be surprised if they outlawed it.

Dalio said this in 2021:

“Back in the ’30s in the war years, they made 1% the short-term interest rate, and 2.5% was the bond yield. So it was profitable to buy those bonds, funding it with 1%, then you got 2.5%. That could put a lid on it. But because those two assets, cash and bonds, were such bad investments relative to other things, there was the movement to those other things still, and then the government outlawed them— I mean, things like gold. They outlawed gold. That’s why also outlawing Bitcoin is a good probability.”

Dalio can be wrong. I think he is right. If he is, the moon landing has already occurred.

Justin Sun, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the World Trade Organization and founder of the TRON public blockchain, a decentralized autonomous organization, thinks Bitcoin will push higher than its record reached in November.

“I think Bitcoin 100k is just a matter of time,” he says. “Maybe it’s impossible to put a timeline on it, but I honestly think this is something we will see in the next few years if not in the next few months. There are just so many big players in the game now. There are countries that are creating regulation around the adoption of Bitcoin,” he says, without mentioning the two of the most well-known ones – El Salvador, and more recently, Russia. Though it seems the Central Bank of Russia is asking Sberbank to make its own digital currency – called Sbercoin.

“Just a few years ago, it would have been unheard of to have a company, let alone a country, jump into the crypto space,” says Sun. “Now it’s just a question of who’s next? I think this is the road to $100k.”

Bitcoin Moon: The Relaunch

Led by Russia, central banks in emerging markets are learning a very important lesson in real-time. Their dollar reserves are not safe from a retaliatory and angry Washington (or Brussels, in the case of the Euro).

“Your nation’s money can be frozen by the West at a moment’s notice,” says LunaFi founder and CEO, George Porchester. “If you’re the People’s Bank of China and you have around one trillion dollars in reserves and you just saw what happened to Russia, what are you going to do? You’re going to shift reserves into truly sovereign assets, which at the moment are only gold and crypto of which Bitcoin is still the most liquid option,” Porchester says. “Over the next decade, any central bank that wants sovereign forex reserves that can’t be attacked will consider Bitcoin.”

But can it not be attacked? Really?

Remember that Coinbase did manage to seize some 25,000 Russian accounts, banning those clients from accessing their funds.

Justin Trudeau, just back from being lambasted by the European Parliament for his China-style dictatorial actions against peaceful protesters, blocked the Bitcoin addresses of some activist truck driver accounts.

The long arm of U.S. law is also gunning for El Salvador’s Bitcoin now. They used to be a dollar country. But in February, three Senators, led by Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), introduced a bill called the Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador Act. Bitcoin is under duress that it has never been under before, and it is from powerful governments and their FedCoin dreams that are leading it. That, I think, it is putting a lot of heavy obstacles on the Bitcoin launching pad.

“El Salvador recognizing Bitcoin as official currency opens the door for money laundering cartels and undermines U.S. interests,” says Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bill Cassidy (R-La.) “If the United States wishes to combat money laundering and preserve the role of the dollar as a reserve currency of the world, we must tackle this issue head on.”

In this case, Washington is messing with a sovereign economy’s choice to use Bitcoin instead of dollars. El Salvador hasn’t had its own currency since 2001. And since adopting Bitcoin as legal tender last year, it has become the subject of a bill in the Senate.

The bill will likely never see a floor vote. But it stands as a testament to how Washington thinks about Bitcoin. If it can curb demand, it will do so.

“The problem with centralized systems is that they create a psychological distance between those with authority and those without,” says Temujin Louie, director of marketing of the public blockchain protocol Wanchain in Singapore. “These decision-makers take measures that ignore the needs of the masses. This is also true of centralized finance. Decentralized finance — and this is generalizable to all decentralized systems — better ensures the rights of the masses.”

This is nothing new.

The Western governments have had Bitcoin in the crosshairs for a couple of years now. We are just now starting to see governments taking legit shots at it.

Bitcoin has been described as a “threat” by Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank.

“Lagarde warned of Russian oligarchs using cryptocurrencies to avoid sanctions, however there is little evidence to support this,” says London-based Jacob Kowalewski, chief strategy officer at t3rn, which describes itself as a smart contract hosting platform. “People need to be careful and balanced about what they pay attention to about Bitcoin, whether good or bad. There was a lot of incredibly positive news lately, like the EU Parliament Committee rejecting an outright ban on the proof of work consensus system used by Bitcoin. This shows that the same entities that demonize cryptocurrencies, clearly see Bitcoin’s utility.”

In Canada, savvy crypto users figured out ways around Trudeau’s Bitcoin ban.

Despite the war in Ukraine, Bitcoin is climbing again after falling of a small cliff in early March.

Bitcoin values doubled between 2014 and 2016, going from around $400 in September of 2014 to $800 by December 25, 2016. It rose exponentially in 2017, its first serious moon launch. Maybe it was preparation for the “big one”.

By the end of 2017, Bitcoin hit a high of around $20,000, before collapsing without any government pressures or an economic downturn, back to around $3,500.

For those who love the Bitcoin Moon analogy, and all its hope and promise, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency took off in March 2020 and gave them a reason to feel validated. Its chart looked like a real rocket launch.

More Bitcoin Adoption in Emerging Markets

Bitcoin is primarily technology-driven, private way of transferring value between two people. No government owns Bitcoin. At best, they can freeze wallets, that people can then open up on other platforms, or switch to other cryptocurrencies not on the government’s radar.

“If people trust Bitcoin technology to transfer $100,000 of one Bitcoin to another person, then it is not unfathomable that Bitcoin could be worth $100,000,” thinks Mikhail Karkhalev, an analyst at cryptocurrency exchange Currency.com. “The number of coins in circulation is getting smaller every month, and the number of long-term holders is getting bigger. The old market rule is that scarcity of a commodity leads to an increase in its value. Demand for Bitcoin is very high, and the current mood could change to positive as soon as the economic and political situation stabilizes. It’s just a matter of time.”

James Taylor, chief business officer at Unizen, a digital assets exchange based in London, says that countries with distressed economies and volatile stock markets – either because of wars, disrupted supply chains, or inflation, will turn people onto Bitcoin.

“We already see this in Eastern Europe and it will galvanize a movement in Latin America and all other countries that are distressed because of the dollar-denominated financial system,” says Taylor.

Argentina is increasingly interested. And so the International Monetary Fund is warning them against it. Argentina is the IMF’s biggest loan, followed by war-torn Ukraine.

Acceptance among distraught states like those is supportive of a second moon launch.

“I think, for now, markets will continue to be range-bound this year,” Taylor predicts. “But there will be massive strides in Latin American and Caribbean adoption. These countries will reduce the regulatory hurdles to onboard crypto companies which will be the primary reason for the next bull market.”

Like they used to say on Merritt Island, Florida back in the space shuttle days:

“Attention all (Bitcoin investors), this is The Entity conducting the launch status check. Verify ready to resume count and go for launch. OTC?”

“Orbiter Test Conductor is go.”

“TBC?”

“Tanker Booster is go.”

“PTC?”

“Payload Test is go.”

“LPS?”

“Launch Processing System is go.”

“Houston flight director…?”

“Stand by.”