Metal Pay CEO Marshall Hayner mentioned bitcoin's growing role as an inflation hedge, while early ... [+] bitcoin investor Erik Finman sees the asset's recent price correction as healthy.

Bitcoin (BTC) had a standout year in the price category last year, rising from $3,870 in March, all the way past its 2017 record highs near $20,000. By January 2021, cryptos pioneer asset found itself priced at almost $42,000 per coin. Bitcoin also gained a notable amount of adoption in the latter half of 2020 as a number of mainstream companies, such as MicroStrategy MSTR and MassMutual, bought large amounts of the asset. Marshall Hayner, the CEO and founder of digital asset payment solution Metal Pay, said he thinks BTC has entered an acceptance stage on its adoption journey.

Bitcoin has reached all-time highs over the past few months, and with this meteoric rise, institutions, hedge funds, and major corporations have begun to add digital assets to their balance sheet, Hayner told me in a January 26 message. As the oldest, most liquid, and most well-known cryptocurrency, bitcoin is rapidly becoming a hedge against rampant inflation of fiat currency (USD, EUR), he said. This is what I'm calling the fourth wave of cryptocurrency adoption, he explained. The first three waves were exuberance, speculation, utility and finally acceptance.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

Launched in January 2009, bitcoin started out worth virtually nothing in U.S. dollar terms. In 2010, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz famously paid 10,000 BTC for two pizzas. The digital asset has obviously risen significantly in price since then, surpassing milestone landmarks of $1, $100, $1,000 and $10,000 through the years. Along the way, parties have created thousands of other cryptocurrencies, many of which hold varying value propositions, although some industry participants, known as bitcoin maximalists, argue bitcoin as the only option.

Bitcoin has gained significant traction over the past year as a number of mainstream financial players unveiled their positions in the asset, making BTC allocation more commonplace than years prior. MicroStrategy allocated more than $1 billion of capital toward bitcoin. Among a number of other entities who put sizable amounts of money toward bitcoin, MassMutual spent $100 million on the digital asset.

In October 2020, payments giant PayPal PYPL also furthered crypto adoption when it announced the addition of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash to its platform.

As we see major fintech firms like PayPal adding cryptocurrency and the first wave of national crypto banks under the OCC we are reaching mass acceptance and understanding of the true value of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, Hayner said. In July 2020, national banks received the ok from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to custody crypto assets. In January 2021, the OCC cleared institutional digital asset platform Anchorage to function as a national bank.

I expect bitcoin and smaller cap altcoins to absolutely blow some minds in 2021, Hayner said. In addition, I'm expecting some major utility especially around stablecoins, NFT, innovative decentralized lending/trading models, oracles, and payment systems, he added, referring to a few niches of the crypto space that picked up interest in 2020, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

After bitcoins price run up to nearly $42,000 on January 8, the asset retraced down below $30,000 a few times amid sideways trading action over the past few weeks, according to TradingView data. I think we are seeing the very healthy retrace that many expected, Erik Finman told me in a January 26 message. Finman bought bitcoin back in 2011, later becoming a millionaire from his investment before the age of 20.

As much as people want bitcoin to just ride straight on up forever, there are always going to be bumps along the way, he said, referring to bitcoins recent price rally up past $40,000. Honestly, right now I think a lot of people have their eyes on meme-stocks like GameStop GME ! Stock shares for the popular video game store GameStop recently soared in price.

Over the next couple of weeks I expect the price to maintain, barring some relevant news event, Finman said of bitcoin. After that we will probably see new growth and a new all-time high once more, he added.

Bitcoin is a game of patience. Ultimately we must focus on adoption, on technological innovation, and on education. I understand it's hard for many to not watch the price all day when they have so much invested, but I believe many would find it rewarding to look away for a few minutes and keep their eyes on the prize.

Crypto still has its doubters, however, such as financial commentator Peter Schiff. In one of his recent tweets, Schiff, a known bitcoin skeptic, said the asset carries traits of scam types, including Ponzi schemes. Additionally, as per a January 11, 2021 tweet, billionaire Mark Cuban compared the scene in the crypto space to the dot-com bubble, which popped in the early 2000s, although he did say he expects some assets, such as btc and ethereum (ETH), to succeed in the long run.

Disclaimer: I actively trade cryptocurrencies, as well as hold varying amounts of BTC, ETH, LTC, ZEC, BCH, LINK, VGX, HBAR, XLM and ADA.

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Crypto Has Entered Its Fourth Stage Of Adoption, Industry Exec Says - Forbes