Bitcoin’s 2020 explosion is not the 2017 bubble again

Bitcoin’s ( BTC ) recent volatile price corrections might conjure up images of the 2017 crash in your mind, or maybe even the crash caused by COVID-19 back in March of this year. But the fact that Bitcoin has reached $20,000 for the first time in history is not a reason to sound the alarm. Despite the fact that the price of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency is up more than 225% this year, the current bull run we’re living through is unlike the Bitcoin mania we saw back in 2017. Far from it. There are four key reasons for this:These four reasons aren’t just relevant now; they will all continue to play a role in the future growth of Bitcoin. Consider this your newsflash. Bitcoin doesn’t live in a bubble anymore, and soon, the traditional financial world is the only thing that’s going to burst. Related: Time is our best friend: Bitcoin’s 12-month trajectory to $100KBitcoin isn’t just for young, tech-savvy millennials anymore. Governments, central banks and major corporations can no longer ignore its value. That’s exactly why a few landmark investments by major Bitcoin backers grabbed the headlines in 2020. Related: Crypto could save millennials from the economy that failed themA publicly traded business consulting firm called MicroStrategy now owns 38,250 Bitcoin , currently worth just under $640 million. The BTC was originally purchased for around $250 million earlier this year. Thanks to the enormous scale of the purchase and its profitability so far, company CEO Michael Saylor has become quite the Bitcoin evangelist. Apart from major investment trusts, no company owns more Bitcoin than MicroStrategy. Related: Corporate Bitcoin treasuries are here, which can only mean good thingsSaylor and his company are joined by Square CEO Jack Dorsey in their enthusiasm for Bitcoin. Dorsey purchased roughly $50 million worth of the cryptocurrency for his company. What’s more important than that $50-million investment, however, is that estimates suggest both Square and fellow payments competitor PayPal are swallowing up more than 70% of newly mined Bitcoin entering circulation. Square lets customers use cryptocurrency as payment; PayPal lets customers and merchants purchase Bitcoin directly from their PayPal accounts . Both gateways are currently creating quite the windfall for Bitcoin’s market capitalization. Related: Will PayPal’s crypto integration bring crypto to the masses? Experts answerIn 2017, it would have been difficult for you not to hear about Bitcoin. Whether a friend or family member talked to you about it at Christmas, or you heard about it in the news or in TV commercials, the fact is nearly every major media outlet was covering the price boom at the time. Fast-forward to the present day, and you can take a look at Google Trends to see that searches for the word Bitcoin have been trending at a high level recently, yet apart from investment-specific television programming, you don’t hear about Bitcoin in the mainstream media nearly as much, with some exceptions of course. This means we’ve reached a new milestone for adoption. More and more people know about cryptocurrencies than ever before, and now they follow the asset class more closely. Related: Bitcoin is the best treasury reserve asset humanity’s ever hadRussia, China, Canada, the European Union and many other countries are either already working on their own central bank digital currencies or publishing white papers detailing their intentions to do so. Moving away from paper money and plastic credit cards is the natural next step for the world as payment technologies continue to advance. But as crypto enthusiasts know, a digital currency built on a blockchain owned by a central bank or government isn’t the same as one built on decentralized technology. Related: Central bank digital currencies are dead in the waterThis is obviously a sign that the powers that be in the old financial world are seeing the writing on the wall. They are doing everything they can to protect a system that favors those in control. But CBDCs and more stringent government regulations will only continue to blur the lines between government-backed digital currencies and Bitcoin. It’s only a matter of time before society chooses the latter over the former. Not only are Google searches for the word Bitcoin at an all-time high, but the two countries with the highest surge in search volume at the moment are Nigeria and South Africa , both of which are developing nations with unique challenges. It turns out that search volume is not just a sign of new crypto investors doing research; it’s leading to large amounts of capital flowing into the space. Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of Luno — a crypto exchange serving emerging markets — recently tweeted that purchase volumes on the company’s exchange have tripled among retail investors in Nigeria, South Africa, Malaysia and Indonesia. Related: Emerging technologies can change the African financial landscapeWh