Bitcoin Price Prediction: BTC Price to Get a Boost After Exchanges Slash Fees?
Daily Bitcoin News Update
Bitcoin is the only crypto in the top 10 that’s trading in green on Friday morning. The BTC price has hopped across the $11,000 mark, most likely because buying and selling BTC has just become a whole lot cheaper.
Major crypto exchanges around the world are slashing withdrawal fees for BTC. How did that happen?
Anyone who’s downloading the new Bitcoin update, that is, “Bitcoin Core version 0.16.0,” is automatically shifting to SegWit—a tweak in the code that has made BTC transactions a lot cheaper and faster than before. Exchanges are likewise benefiting from it.
Two big global exchanges, Binance and Kraken, announced yesterday that they have slashed BTC withdrawal fees by 50%.
#Binance is happy to announce a 50% reduction in $BTC withdrawal fees. Effective immediately, BTC withdrawal fees are only 0.0005 BTC!
— Binance (@binance) March 1, 2018
Last week, the largest U.S. crypto exchange, Coinbase, revealed that it rolled out SegWit to 25% of its customers and planned to adopt it for 100% of its customer base by this week. Coinbase users are now reporting on social media that they’re witnessing a significant drop in fees. Another major exchange, Bitfinex, has likewise announced plans to add 100% SegWit support.
All of these developments can simply be translated as this: Bitcoin is not only getting cheaper to use for day-to-day transactions, it is also becoming much more affordable to trade for retail investors.
No matter how great the idea of a decentralized cryptocurrency is, if investors cannot efficiently buy and sell it on exchanges, it will nearly be worthless as an investment vehicle. This is exactly why these fee cuts are a big deal.
Bitcoin is available on virtually every crypto exchange around the world, making it a ubiquitous crypto investment. The costs of trading Bitcoin, however, wreaked havoc on prices as fees spiked to all-time highs following the December bull run.
Also note that most altcoin prices are listed in terms of BTC, which means that traders are required to first purchase Bitcoin and then use it to buy these altcoins. Hence, altcoin prices likewise faced the brunt of high BTC costs.
So, now that trading Bitcoin is becoming more cost-effective, this may revive buying activity, possibly sparking another bull run in BTC prices.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin prices were up about 2.60%, with one BTC changing hands for $11,024.90.
Chart courtesy of TradingView.com
Analyst Take
The drop in BTC fees makes Bitcoin attractive to trade. We expect that, as more and more exchanges adopt SegWit, transaction fees will lower across the board and pull in new investors. The trend reinforces our Bitcoin price forecast for 2018 that targets the BTC price of $15,000.
