As stakeholders, players, and crypto wannabes ponder if increasing their stakes on the world’s most popular crypto seems ideal now, despite the fact that it’s trading near a record high, Nairametrics decided to weigh in on some key fundamentals showing Bitcoin looks like a bargain.

With prices exceeding $18,000 for the first time since 2017, BTC looks poised to break its previous all-time high. More investors are holding bitcoin for wealth preservation.

A recent report from Glassnode, revealed plummeting Bitcoin exchange balances support the narrative that investors intend to hold their flagship crypto more than ever before, taking into consideration that with the prevailing demand in play, and limited supply of Bitcoin, the price would most definitely go north.

With prices exceeding $18,000 for the first time since 2017, $BTC looks poised to break its previous all-time high.

Meanwhile, plummeting #Bitcoin exchange balances support the narrative that investors intend to hodl.

Read more in The Week On-Chain 👇https://t.co/fRTVsO1tqM pic.twitter.com/3VQWgsvmGO

— glassnode (@glassnode) November 23, 2020

Bitcoin liquidity continues its downward trajectory, buttressing that the macro bitcoin is becoming scarce for open sale.

It is also important to note that Bitcoin has a circulating supply of 19 million coins and a max supply of 21 million coins, meaning there are about 2million left to be mined.

Taking into account that about 4 million Bitcoins have been lost forever as a result of BTCs owners dying, and their next of kin not having access to such cryptos, it is fair to say there are only about 15million BTC presently in circulation to cater for over 7 billion people fighting to have a stake in Bitcoins, meaning that as BTC becomes scarce and more popular, it becomes a matter of time that the crypto asset valuation will hit the roof.

Bottom line

It’s vital to consider the bias saying that as global financial regulators begin to implement their regulatory framework on cryptos, it could become a matter of months for global banks and multinationals to increase their buying pressures on Bitcoin. Thereby, pushing the price beyond the reach of an average investor.

PayPal CEO, Mr. Schulman, recently hinted that the company would allow the usage of crypto funding for the 28 million merchants on its payments platform.

In a report credited to CNBC, the CEO of the payment juggernaut company elaborated further by saying, “Early next year, we’re going to allow cryptocurrencies to be a Funding Source for any transaction happening on all 28 million of our merchants and that will significantly bolster the utility of cryptocurrencies.”

READ: Why PayPal dropped 6% after posting its strongest earnings growth

The Chief Executive also disclosed that it was just a matter of time for digital currency to replace the old traditional forms of fiat currencies (paper money).

He said:

“As paper money slowly dissipates and disappears from how people are using transactions; Central banks, especially on the retail side, will need to replace paper money with forms of digital fiat currency.”

READ: Ripple emerges as fourth biggest fintech company globally, worth $10 billion

"As paper money slowly dissipates and disappears from how people are using transactions, central banks especially on the retail side will need to replace paper money with forms of digital fiat currency," says @PayPal CEO Dan Schulman. pic.twitter.com/pLuvc2RxPY

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) November 23, 2020

READ: NIPC releases its Q3 2020 report on Pioneer Status Incentive (PSI) applications

What this means

About a month ago, Nairametrics reported on PayPal Holdings Inc’s announcement that it would provide its users the opportunity to buy, hold, and sell cryptos directly from their PayPal accounts by early 2021.

It also hinted at a strategy to significantly boost its crypto’s utility capability, by making it readily available as a funding source for purchases with its 28 million clients globally.

READ: Unknown identity moves $117 million worth of Ethereum

In a press statement seen by Nairametrics, Dan Schulman, President and CEO, PayPal, gave key insights on why the global payment company was going crypto:

“The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable, bringing with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access, efficiency, speed, resilience of the payment system, and the ability for governments to disburse funds to citizens quickly.”

XRP’s trading return to investors has just broken another record, gaining over 100% in two weeks. It has also overtaken the most valuable stablecoin, Tether (USDT), to become the third-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $26,112,034,716 USD.

Barely two weeks ago, XRP traded at around $0.23 before it broke above the $0.56 price level, printing a gain of over 100%.

READ: Over $20 billion pumped into crypto market by big investors

READ: Billionaires that can triple the value of Bitcoin

• At the time of drafting this report, XRP traded at $0.575812 USD, with a daily trading volume of $19,587,373,613 USD.
• XRP is up 25.10% in the last 24 hours. It has a circulating supply of 45,348,221,180 XRP coins and a maximum supply of 100,000,000,000 XRP coins.
• XRP was designed by Ripple mainly to perform speedy, less costly, and more scalable alternative transactions for both crypto assets and existing monetary payment platforms like SWIFT.
• Ripple owns more than half of the total supply of XRP. In late 2017, the company vowed not to sell all of its tokens (XRP) at once, keeping up to 55 billion XRP in protected escrow accounts.
• Ripple (XRP) plays a dual role as a payment platform and a currency. The platform is an open-source platform that is created to allow quick and cheap transactions.

READ: 28 million merchants to be granted crypto usage on PayPal

What they are saying

Top crypto strategist and trader, Michaël van de Poppe, believes the fast-rising crypto asset is likely due for a correction, as it has gained over 100% in November only.

“We can expect XRP to relatively top out soon unless it flips this $0.50 level. So, if we get momentum like this and we flip there ($0.50), that would definitely argue that we’re going to see a continuation. But, given the significance of the previous range of resistance between $0.27 to $0.30, it would definitely be expected to see a correction towards that region, before we can see an impulse wave.”

Explore Data on the Nairametrics Research Website

$XRP managed to run towards $0.47-0.50 and reached a higher timeframe resistance zone.

What's next? This video from trader @CryptoMichNL shows the levels to watch.

Full analysis can be found here:https://t.co/b4mbsKrV1d pic.twitter.com/t0mWhgSyNb

— Cointelegraph Markets (@CointelegraphMT) November 22, 2020