- CloudAICrypto
- Pages
- Bitcoin Supply Shock
What Is The Bitcoin Supply Shock?
A supply shock refers to an unexpected event that dramatically alters the supply of a product or commodity, leading to a sudden change in price. Supply shocks can be either negative, reducing supply and driving prices up, or positive, increasing supply and lowering prices. Assuming demand remains constant, a negative supply shock causes prices to spike, while a positive supply shock typically drives them down.
Bitcoin Hard Cap
One prominent example of a supply shock in the modern financial landscape is the Bitcoin hard cap—the limit of 21 million BTC that can ever be created. This hard cap is a cornerstone of Bitcoin’s monetary policy, designed to ensure scarcity and control inflation.
A growing Bitcoin supply crisis is positioning the cryptocurrency for exponential growth. As Bitcoin reserves on exchanges dwindle, it is likely that a supply crunch more extreme than the one that propelled Bitcoin’s price by 2,000% during the 2017 bull market will occur.
Bitcoin Facing An Unprecedented Supply Shock
According to Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo, this depletion of Bitcoin inventory on exchanges—where most speculative buying and selling occur—has reached unprecedented levels.
“We can see this from tracking the flows of coins out of the exchanges, where typically people speculate or buy and sell their coins, and they have a set inventory, some of which is allocated for speculation. We’ve just seen an unprecedented amount of depletion of that inventory.
Comparing today’s trend to the five-month depletion in 2017, Woo anticipates a long-term trajectory that could push Bitcoin’s market capitalization beyond gold’s $10 trillion benchmark and drive prices to over $2 million per coin.
“Once you get a glimpse of something that’s easy to access like Bitcoin without the trouble of holding assets like real estate, it’s going to take a big chunk out of that. There’s no way Bitcoin is going to stop at the market cap of gold, which is $10 trillion, it’s going to go a lot higher, which means that we’re going to be going into the millions of dollars per coin, which is hard to believe right now but if you look at the sheer fundamentals and stretch it off over the long term, that’s how cheap Bitcoin is today.”
Woo predicts that as Bitcoin matures and captures a greater share of the financial market, future bear markets will likely be less severe and significantly less volatile compared to previous cycles.