It’s a bit like waiting for the new millennium. Everyone’s watching the price of Bitcoin as it climbs towards US$100,000. At this point, the world’s leading cryptocurrency is valued at just over $96,000, up some $30K since late October. All that’s missing is the Jennifer Lopez song.
But will Bitcoin hit $100K before the end of 2024? That’s the wager on tap at Bodog Sportsbook, where “Yes” is the heavy favourite at –550. It may have even happened by the time you read this, although market forces could delay the inevitable until early 2025. Our latest Bitcoin betting preview has the scoop on the one digital coin to rule them all.
What is Bitcoin?
For those who are still unfamiliar with cryptocurrency (about 12% of US adults, according to a Pew Research Center estimate from April 2023), Bitcoin is the world’s most established form of digital currency. It’s also the first fully “decentralized” cryptocurrency, running as part of an open-source network that’s ungoverned by central banks or other third parties.
Created in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person (or group of people) behind the bitcoin.org domain, Bitcoin version 0.1 was released on January 9, 2009 to very little fanfare. But as the price of Bitcoin (BTC) slowly went up, from 5.8 cents in 2010 to $5 in 2011 and $10 in 2012, people started taking notice.
The technology itself is very promising. Bitcoin functions both as a store of value and a unit of exchange, much like the beads, animal pelts, precious metals and paper currencies of old. But thanks to the internet, Bitcoin outperforms the others when it comes to portability, durability, uniformity, and divisibility.
The way Bitcoin was designed also ensures scarcity. There will never be more than 21 million “bitcoins” in existence. Nearly 20 million of those had already been created by May 2024. This scarcity keeps demand high, which lifts the price of Bitcoin in turn.
That just leaves one of the six key attributes of a viable currency: acceptability. How many people are ready and willing to adopt Bitcoin, as a means of exchange and/or a store of value? That number has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade, as more of us get acquainted with Bitcoin and how it works.
How Does Bitcoin Work?
The most important thing to know about Bitcoin’s architecture is the blockchain. Think of it as a ledger book like the ones old-school accountants use. Every Bitcoin transaction is recorded on the blockchain, using a network of computers with the requisite software to perform those functions. The whole process is kept secure using cryptography, which is why it’s called “cryptocurrency” in the first place.
The public ledger is called a “blockchain” because this database is essentially a chain made up of blocks, each of them a file containing the information for the transaction in question – plus some other information like which version of the software is being used. If you’re willing to devote some computing power towards the cryptography efforts supporting Bitcoin, you can become a “miner” and be rewarded with bitcoins every time you “verify” the contents of a block.
Mining bitcoins was a lot easier back in the day. It didn’t take much computing power, and the reward for clearing the first block was set at 50 bitcoins, which would be worth almost US$5 million in today’s money. However, Bitcoin is designed so the reward for mining a block is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, which takes about four years to clear. The most recent halving took place on April 19, 2024, leaving the reward at 3.125 BTC.
It’s a good thing this halving was built in, because mining Bitcoin has become an energy-intensive endeavour. If you want to make serious money at this, it’s not enough to use your personal computer anymore; you need giant banks of computers, preferably somewhere that’s both cold and inexpensive for utilities, like Iceland or Tierra del Fuego – although recent legislation has made Texas a more desirable location for some.
The halving helps ensure that people don’t drain the entire energy grid (or at least they haven’t yet) trying to mine Bitcoin. There are still some 1.3 million bitcoins to be created, but thanks to this clever design, the last one won’t be created until the final halving sometime in mid-2140.
When will Bitcoin Reach 100K?
Very soon now, in all likelihood. Every time there’s been a halving, the crypto markets have responded with a rush of demand, enough to boost the price of Bitcoin severalfold. Each bounce has been smaller, though, just like when you throw a rubber ball onto the pavement.
Here are the prices of Bitcoin at two-year intervals, one year before and after each of the previous halvings, as per CoinDesk:
– Nov. 28, 2011: $2.54
– Nov. 28, 2013: $1,007.39
– July 9, 2015: $269.68
– July 9, 2017: $2,506.17
– May 11, 2019: $7,325.08
– May 11, 2021: $56,612.10
As you can see, the bounces associated with these halvings went from around 4000x to 10x, and then to 8x. We’ve been expecting an even shorter bounce for 2024; the price of Bitcoin was about $28,823.68 on April 19, 2023, and analysts are calling for Bitcoin to peak around $200K sometime in 2025.
How quickly it gets to $100K is the question here, though. And again, things look good for 2024. Tim Draper was quoted by Yahoo Finance in late November with a target of $120K for year’s end, although he’s also more bullish than most at $250K for next year.
Will Elon Musk Help?
While the price of Bitcoin did go up after Musk helped Donald Trump win the 2024 US presidential election, most analysts think that would have happened even if Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party had won instead. That’s just the nature of Bitcoin’s architecture.
Having said that, Musk (and Vivek Ramaswamy) will reportedly be in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE. It won’t technically be a department within the federal branch, since that would require approval of the US Congress, but DOGE will give Musk a prominent role as one of Trump’s enforcers, cutting through red tape and eliminating some of the regulations that have been holding back the “tech bros” and their crypto efforts.
None of this will happen officially until January 2025 when Trump takes office, but the markets have already responded to Trump’s impending return to the White House. It’s certainly helped the price of Dogecoin, the Musk-supported digital coin that’s trading at 41.19 cents as we go to press, up from 15 cents just before the election.
Pumping up a “meme coin” is one thing; Bitcoin is by far the largest of all cryptocurrencies, and aside from Ethereum, it’s the only one the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved for “spot” ETFs, or Exchange-Traded Funds. It’s decentralized by design, so there’s only so much any third party can do to influence it, even Musk and his DOGE cohort.
What is the Future of Bitcoin?
Before we speculate about where Bitcoin might be headed, we have to recognize as usual that past results do not necessarily predict future outcomes. The price of Bitcoin has indeed bounced every four years, but we’re still talking about something that’s only been around since 2009; maybe everything up to now has been a short-term anomaly, like Dutch tulips.
The internet itself was new at one point. Now we can’t imagine living our lives without it – and there’s a good chance we’ll be saying the same thing about Bitcoin before too long. As a form of currency, it does its job better than anything else we’ve invented up to now. You can even use it to bet at Bodog Sportsbook, and play at Bodog Casino.
As long as enough people keep using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, and don’t just hoard it while they watch the price go up (and down, and up again), this technology will likely carve out the same kind of space in our daily lives as Wikipedia and Apple Pay. That’s why we’re not too concerned about the price of Bitcoin going south again anytime soon – not before 2025 at least.
While we wait for Bitcoin to hit the magic $100K mark, don’t forget that Canadians have already enjoyed this milestone moment. Bitcoin is worth just under CAN$136K as we go to press. Celebrate by checking out our Cryptocurrency Specials, which you’ll find as part of our comprehensive list of entertainment odds here at Bodog Sportsbook. And if you want maximum value for your hard-earned entertainment dollar, use cryptocurrency to place your bets here. Our Crypto FAQ and Help guides will show you how it’s done. Enjoy the Bitcoin ride, and best wishes for 2025.