Bitcoin’s price rally in the year 2016 has topped all other currencies in the world. The coin had a 79% gain in 2016, four times that of the Russian rouble.
This was partially due to the halving, which halved the supply of new coins being mined every day, along with capital controls and greater market adoption of the digital currency.
This has been helped by the fact that Bitcoin has recovered from the MtGox scandal, and has come into it’s own when governments of countries have become less and less trusted in the area of currencies. The endless supply of fait currency that is continually printed has increased inflation, rather than deflationary as Bitcoin was intended to be.
Bitcoin has also increased in value as a way to move your assets across world borders without government controls. The tight and sometimes draconian restrictions in some countries have been combated by the ease of transporting private keys of Bitcoin, as Bitcoin is practically impossible to censor.
With increasing adoption, the price is sure to increase due to supply and demand, as the supply of Bitcoins is capped at 21 Million, and with 8 billion people in the world, the more people that adopt the digital currency, the more the price is bound to rise, along with the increase in blockchain difficulty.
There are however some limitations which need to be overcome. The block size limit is going to cap the number of users who can use Bitcoin at any one time, until a solution such as Segregated Witness or an increase in the block size limit is implemented, Bitcoin could potentially hit a wall, hoping that miners come to consensus soon is the best thing. If you are mining, our opinion is that the Bitcoin Core developers have the best solution to the scaling issue, and signalling your support for Segregated Witness is the way forward.
This will also ensure that updates are received from the Bitcoin Core developers, as all later versions of the software will support this. 2016 is the year Bitcoin begun to go more mainstream, 2017 looks as if this trend will continue.
With Bitcoin holding the highest value of any currency in the world, this shows the strength Bitcoin has as a currency, although price stability will be needed for further adoption.