One of the biggest Bitcoin stories of the year was the news that MicroStrategy, a business services company, had deployed $425 million into BTC. The move garnered much attention within the cryptocurrency space, with many seeing this as validation of Bitcoin’s store of value properties.

But outside of crypto, few knew about this purchase. The move was widely covered by industry media like NewsBTC, but coverage about this move by mainstream media was somewhat scarce. At least until recently.

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Bitcoin Hits Front Page of the WSJ

On Friday morning, the Wall Street Journal published an article covering MicroStrategy’s half-a-billion Bitcoin bet and about the space as a whole. As by Su Zhu, CIO of Three Arrows Capital, the story about the investment hit the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s online edition. //twitter.com/zhusu/status/56176384 While the article was somewhat critical of this move, basing this sentiment around the stagnation of MicroStrategy’s share pre-Bitcoin, many see this as validation of the space. There were likely many Wall Street investors that saw this, along with mainstream investors with subscriptions to the WSJ. It is unclear if this story was printed in the print version of the paper. This article comes as this space has seen a strong uptick in mainstream media coverage. CNBC, for instance, has hosted at least four separate TV segments on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies over the past two weeks. For most of the year, this space barely got a peep on the outlet.

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Retail Involvement to Drive BTC Above $20,000

Despite this coverage, retail involvement in the Bitcoin space remains minimal. Hans Hague, head of quantitative strategy at Ikigai, recently shared the chart below. It shows that Bitcoin interest as per Google Trends remains at lows, far from the highs seen in 2017’s bull market. //twitter.com/hansthered/status/73398272 Analysts say that once retail investors enter the space en-masse as they did during the last cycle, prices will shoot past $20,000 easily. How soon this happens, though, remains to be seen. But with increased coverage and increased institutional interest, it is likely to play out over the coming months or year.

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MicroStrategy's Bitcoin Bet Reaches Front Page of the Wall Street Journal