What an astonishing year it has been for Bitcoin. The pandemic has certainly helped bolster the leading crypto coin. It was only a year ago on March 12 that Bitcoin tumbled to $4,000 overnight.
Not one year on and the picture couldn’t be more different, with BTC scaling $60,000. The crypto king is tearing its ways through key psychological barriers and some even feel that $100k could be the next victim of Bitcoin’s ruthless climb.
Bitcoin certainly has some ardent fans, from Elon Musk talking it up, to PayPal accepting it as a payment method, and major institutions giving their investors exposure through their funds and portfolios.
Most recently, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) has seen a massive influx of client interest, with the CEO John Waldron saying that they are seeing rising customer demand to both own and invest in Bitcoin. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor now holds over $5 billion worth of Bitcoin, and has increased the value of the firm many times over.
The Bitcoin mania is far from over. But the high cost of Bitcoin means it is fairly prohibitive to the average Joe. As such, what other options are there?
More Eyes on BTC Mining From Investors
Alongside this fabulously bullish market, investors are now also looking for opportunities in the upstream mining industry of the crypto market. This means going straight to the source, i.e. where the coins are mined.
However, there are several obstacles which currently make this area unfeasible for investors, too. Those are the prohibitive costs of mining and the low availability of mining equipment.
One company has managed to offer exposure to those investors who want to get involved upstream. That is Binance LaunchPool who have launched their unique project, BTCST. BTCST or Bitcoin Standard Hashrate Token is a conceptual project for the tokenization of Bitcoin’s hashrate. A way to tokenize the hashrate, if you will. But first let’s understand what the hashrate is.
“Hashrate” is an accumulation of computing power, used for mining and processing transactions on the Proof-of-Work blockchain. These include both Bitcoin and Ethereum (not including the 2.0 upgrade).
2021 Bull Market Kicks Into Gear
BTCST was launched early this year, and has since seen a price gain of 533%. On Jan 12, it was valued at $78 per coin, now in mid-March it is worth $416. It currently has a market cap of $252,099,917 and a trading volume of $55,263,883 over the last 24 hours, at the time of writing. The token is clearly having a very bullish streak.
Certainly a unique project, it seeks leading miners to tokenize and standardize their hashrates in order to turn them into a crypto asset. Meanwhile, the projects behind the coin are expanding fast, with the goal of bridging the world of Bitcoin to DeFi.
In February 2021, community voting took place over a token split, and it was decided that BTCST would split the tokens in a 1:10 denomination, with the overall valuation remaining unchanged. The final issuance of BTCST will be adjusted from 1.5 million to 15 million, with the token split expected on March 15, 2021.
During the split, BTCST plans to suspend trading. The valuation of BTCST will not be displayed during the split period, and the actual assets will not be affected.
After the split, Binance will reopen the deposit and withdrawal services of BTCST on March 19 at 14:00 (SGT), and reopen then BTCST/BTC, BTCST/BUSD, BTCST/USDT spot trading at 15:00 (SGT) on the same day.
As far as the market is concerned, the BTCST token split can likely enhance the token’s market circulation and value. The project behind the token is backed by many leading miners in the industry, which account for around 12% of the number of total miners in the entire industry. Meanwhile, holders of this token can use it to stake for Bitcoin rewards from the project.
In addition to the realization of more fascinating projects in the blockchain arena, this particular project stands alone, not only in terms of the massive gains it is seeing in a very short timeframe for its token, but also in its unique proposition of tokenizing hashrates.
The BTCST project is arguably going to be one of the most noteworthy projects for investors to pay attention to in 2021.
This article first published on coinquora.com