The CME Group recently announced the ability to trade Bitcoin futures. The announcement has sparked a snowball effect of investors that are finally starting to believe in Bitcoin. With that in mind, Coinbase has taken full advantage of this situation. In the past 24 hours, Coinbase has been able to add 100,000 new users to their exchange.
Why Coinbase?
I like to call Coinbase the “gateway exchange”. Coinbase made cryptocurrencies easy to access. Users are able to plug in their bank or credit card information and start buying cryptocurrencies in less than 10 minutes. Using this tactic, Coinbase has been able to sign up over 11.9 million users in 32 countries around the world.
The CME announcement has many investors on their toes. Many individual investors think that institutions are going to start heavily investing into Bitcoin and they want to be in the game before the explosion occurs. Coinbase is the easiest way for these investors to get access to Bitcoin quickly.
I hope that Coinbase has the protocol in place so that they can handle this type of surge. In the past, surges have caused exchanges to crash and massive price manipulations to occur. Flash crashes can sometimes occur in these situations when large orders go through and systems are not able to handle them correctly.
What Does This Mean For Us?
It is estimated that 0.5% of the world’s population is invested in cryptocurrencies. The growth potential is unbelievable. The surge of new investors is predicted to make a positive impact on the price of Bitcoin. Increasing the market cap is a process of pushing the price up with the limited supply that is available.
I would start preparing because the price of Bitcoin is going to have extreme volatility before this upcoming fork. We have hundreds of thousands of novice investors jumping into a complex market. It will be interesting to see how the market reacts. I believe we are going to see a Bitcoin price over $10,000. It is just a matter of time.
Getting In Before the Fork
Another reason for the surge is the upcoming SegWit2X fork. Investors want to be able to get their hands on BTC2 because many believe that it is going to be superior to BTC1. Coinbase recently made an announcement updating their customers about the upcoming fork:
We wanted to remind you that the upcoming Bitcoin Segwit2x fork is projected to take place on November 16 and will result in 2 bitcoin blockchains.
In our effort to make Coinbase the most trusted, safe, and easy-to-use digital currency exchange, we are working to ensure we maximize your benefit from this event. So, following the fork:
Any user storing Bitcoin on Coinbase at the time of the fork will be credited with an equal amount of the new Bitcoin2x asset on the Bitcoin2x blockchain. No action is required – we will automatically credit your account. If you have 5 Bitcoin stored on Coinbase before the fork, you will have 5 Bitcoin and 5 Bitcoin2x following the event.
Coinbase users will be able to trade both Bitcoin and Bitcoin2x shortly after the fork.
Coinbase will disable buys, sells, sends and receives for Bitcoin and Bitcoin2x approximately 24 hours before the fork. We will re-enable them following the fork once it’s safe to do so.
For a detailed timeline of events surrounding the fork please see our blog post and FAQ.
Thank you,
Coinbase Team
