Changpeng Zhao: Bitcoin Use Is About to Explode

by
Nick Marinoff
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The past few weeks have been relatively up and down for bitcoin, the world’s number one digital asset by market cap, but for Changpeng Zhao – CEO of Binance, the most popular and largest crypto exchange across the globe in terms of volume – the good news is just getting started for BTC.

Changpeng Zhao Thinks Use Will Increase for BTC

During the last few months, there has been serious hype surrounding the bitcoin halving, which occurred roughly 48 hours ago. For the most part, the leadup to the halving had more promise than the event itself. The currency spiked all the way to $10,000 briefly before falling back into the high $8,000 range, proving once again that the spike was too much too soon.

In addition, bitcoin and the crypto market have been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken a serious toll on assets of every kind. Bitcoin briefly fell into the high $3,000 range in mid-March, and while it has managed to regain steam, the currency and its altcoin cousins left many investors in the dark through late April.

For Zhao, however, bitcoin is on the verge of really moving up in the digital world. He thinks the halving and the virus have potentially done wonders to raise awareness for the coin. He sees not only its price moving up in the coming future, but he’s also confident that use will explode along with its price figures.

In a recent interview, he states:

There’s a psychological effect, which also pushes the price up, but fundamentally I believe the supply is limited, but demand is increasing exponentially.

He’s right about the limited supply. As it stands, there are only 21 million units of BTC available, of which 18 million have been mined. That means there are only 3 million BTC units left for miners to extract. Naturally, it will be many years before this happens, so we don’t have to worry about it yet – especially with the recent reduction of mining rewards thanks to the halving. Rewards fell from 12.5 BTC to about 6.25 BTC, which will help bitcoin to remain rare, and with a halving slated to occur every four years or so, we can expect to see these rewards for extractions fall further and further down.

Still, the day will come when every bitcoin has been mined and is in circulation, meaning it will become just another standard unit of finance, and it may not have the same value then that it does now.

Why BTC Remains So Strong

But Zhao believes BTC offers a freedom that users can’t get anywhere else, which is what keeps it so valuable and in play. He explains:

As long as there is a currency that offers a high degree of freedom, that allows people to transact globally, that’s cheap to use and very safe, we care about those fundamental things. If another coin does that, I think it benefits all our societies and that’s a positive thing for the industry.