Key Facts: The regulatory environment will be critical in enabling or restricting the further adoption of bitcoin. According to CoinShares, significant advances will be necessary in layer 2 scalability solutions. As investors in bitcoin (BTC) know, the market cycles of this digital currency have always lasted 4 years: 2 of them bullish and 2 of them bearish . In each bullish cycle, bitcoin has reached new all-time highs in its price. The 4 years are not just because, but because have been determined by an event called «halving». There have been bitcoin halvings in 2012, 2016, 2020 and, most recently, in 2024. As a rule of thumb for sports fans: there are bitcoin halvings in Olympic Games years (with the exception of 2020, when the COVID pandemic -19 forced the sports event to be postponed) And why are halvings decisive for the economic cycle of bitcoin? Because they reduce the issuance of digital currency by half. This makes producing 1 bitcoin more expensive and at the same time halvings remind the market that BTC is a scarce asset. Taking this into account, the investment company CoinShares has prepared a report titled «The bitcoin halving has occurred. What to expect before the next halving in 2028?» There, the company anticipates some events that could occur around the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry.
Something that CoinShares predicts is that institutional adoption of bitcoin will continue strongly. More and more corporate and institutional treasuries will add BTC as a store of value as the “digital gold” narrative expands. This, according to the investment company, will go hand in hand with technological advances. At the company's discretion, developments that increase scalability are necessary. In this way, bitcoin will have massive utility not only as an investment and as a store of value, but also as a means of payment (which, ultimately, was the reason why Satoshi Nakamoto created it).
The scalability of bitcoin—explains CoinShares—will occur in second-layer networks like Lightning Network. It also mentions sidechains, such as Rootstock (previously called RSK). Finally, the report anticipates that there will be a more favorable regulatory environment for the use of bitcoin and other digital assets. That, in the company's words, will be fundamental for the expansion of these technologies:
“How regulators treat bitcoin will affect its adoption for years to come.” CoinShares, investment company.
Currently – according to CoinShares – “global regulation is inconsistent”. He mentions by way of criticism that «national and regional authorities implement separate regimes to prevent money laundering and supervise cryptocurrency companies.» But he points out that several organizations are working to address this situation. CoinShares expresses itself in favor of the regulations developed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), although, as BitcoinDynamic has reported, these have received criticism from many bitcoiners. In any case, with criticism or not, it is likely that this regulatory environment will continue to advance and unify globally. According to CoinShares, The recent approval of bitcoin ETFs in the United States could be a catalyst to “improve the quality” of the industry, at least in that North American country. Something that CoinShares does not refer to is the price of bitcoin between now and 2028. Perhaps, because it is still early to make such long-term speculations. If bitcoin replicates historical patterns, It should have approximately one year of increase in its price from now on, to reach the peak of this bullish cycle. and then start a couple of years of “crypto winter.” But past behaviors are not necessarily repeated, so we will have to wait and see how events develop.