Is the 2020 Year Zero that is Launching Cryptocurrencies Mainstream?

There is no doubt that 2020 is many things rolled up into one, even though the year is basically starting its second part. With the global COVID-10 coronavirus pandemic and the numerous fallouts from it, the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century is so dynamic and unpredictable that it has already cast a big shadow on practically the whole of the last 10 years. Instead, in these eight months, enough newsworthy material appeared to last not a full year, but more than one. At the same time, the year, like all of the issues and difficulties it produced, is very far from being over. In that social, economic, and political commotion, it is easy to see the cracks in the basic foundations of the present systems.

This affects almost any political specter in the world, from the staunchly communist nations to those with hybrid systems and all the way to the hyper-capitalistic societies. Even failed states and countries in deep poverty have also presented an even darker underbelly to their citizens and shown faults even in already deeply faulty governmental concepts. The same applies almost identically to the financial systems as well. Now, however, there seems that a different kind of response is coming for these problems.

Unlike a card blanch response for these situations in the past – call for a radical and sweeping change, even a violent revolutionary one – today’s setup is different. Instead of overall changes, there seems to be a higher willingness of individuals to seek out direct solutions for their current issues, not a big overhaul of the entire system. In that search, cryptocurrencies are presently scoring big and apparently show no sign of losing steam. This is why many experts believe that this year will be Year Zero for the integration of cryptocurrencies and bitcoin in particular into the daily lives of ordinary citizens all across the world. This would mean that cryptocurrencies are going mainstream, finally after a long wait, in 2020.

Explosion of Interest

Any theory about the widespread adoption of bitcoin quickly finds a range of supporters and detractors. From that point, it can easily be expected from the same theory to dissolve into a range of incoherent branches and subbranches which more than often lead to next to nothing both in terms of insight and any ability to predict what will happen. In 2020, there is one narrative that cannot be watered down and discussed into nothingness – there has been a surge of cryptocurrency interest that is unparalleled so far. Even the peaks of the 2017 cryptocurrency boom when the biggest bull market was in its full swing did not see this level of interaction and practical interest – in other words, unlike people just googling things about BTC, they are now actively buying it as well.

From the big Twitter hack to things like TikTok supporting in a weird way DogeCoin, the original joke cryptocurrency, 2020 is fully behind cryptocurrencies and all of their faulty and imperfect systems. Wherever one might choose to look, there are growing signs that more and more individuals are directly participating in the cryptocurrency economy and they are not coming from domains like esports or some niche crypto punks community. All of this points to the seeds of the actual general next level of cryptocurrency adoption.

Sliding USD Currency

In the US, many events are still canceled and numerous businesses are not back in action. Or, like the casino industry, for example, they are working but with drastically cut-down capacity. At the same time, millions of individuals are receiving government aid and thus gaining excess funds they did not have only a couple of months ago. In this flurry of no-activity, there are two things that did not change. The first thing is the internet and the second is the process of exchanging money. Now, many ordinary citizens from all walks of life are noticing that the value of USD is sliding down.

With money being pumped into businesses and individual households, the American dollar has nowhere to go but down. Recently, its value dropped to the lowest level recorded since early 2018. This is pushing some to hedge their bets and move money into alternative currencies, including bitcoin, but also others to invest their financial support money directly into things like bitcoin. This is why the influx of deposits that are valued exactly at 1,200 USD has been seen on many cryptocurrency exchanges. This is the value of the stimulus checks that citizens in the US received in recent months.

Bitcoin as the Best-Performing Asset

Naturally, bitcoin is reacting well to the attention and the support from all of these new investors. Banks are also more receptive to the same growing coalition between individuals and cryptocurrencies so they too are slowly warming up to BTC. PayPal and Venmo are doing what seemed unthinkable only months ago and are planning to include crypto offers in their services. With these direct sale features, over 320 million users will be able to access cryptocurrency purchases and sales in only a few clicks and taps.

This means that users do no longer need to figure out how to set up a digital wallet or an account on a cryptocurrency exchange. Instead, their favorite financial application will be able to provide all of this to them in the most elegant manner imaginable. That is a small but important game-changer for the end-user experience. It was also a big problem for previous big influxes of users and 2017 is one of those moments. Now, the infrastructure that was missing back then is presently ready and in place for a possible major bull run.

Future Steps

As the ultimate reason for supporting the incoming mass crypto adoption, the supporters of this theory are pointing to educational institutions. Places like MIT, Harvard, and Stanford all have their investment funds.

Currently, all of them are directly or through affiliated financial entities, investing in specialized crypto funds. Obviously, they believe that there is a future in crypto. That, along with all of the other factors, shows that crypto adoption on a scale that is unrivaled by anything so far is definitely underway on a global level.

Source: Forbes