Wat bepaalt de prijs van bitcoin? (Hint: het zijn niet alleen walvissen en elon)

Mon, Aug 4, 2025, 11:16 AM 8 min read

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Bitcoin's price doesn't follow traditional logic. There are no earnings reports, balance sheets, or CEO forecasts to guide the market. Instead, its value lives and breathes through one of the oldest forces in finance: supply and demand. When demand outpaces available supply, Bitcoin soars. When demand wanes or holders rush to sell, the price can fall just as dramatically. That's why Bitcoin's price often swings with far more volatility than traditional investments — sometimes shifting by double-digit percentages in a single week. Still, over the last decade, Bitcoin has proven itself as one of the best-performing assets on earth, rising from pennies to over $117,000 at its peak. So it's clear that Bitcoin isn't just surviving; it's establishing itself as a long-term fixture in modern finance. But to understand why Bitcoin moves the way it does, you need to understand what actually drives its price day to day — and why it remains so difficult to predict.

Bitcoin is often compared to commodities like gold and silver, and for good reason. Unlike a company stock, it doesn't produce anything. It doesn't generate revenue. Its value is derived almost entirely from what people believe it's worth — and what they're willing to pay for it. But it's not just a popularity contest. Like gold, Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million coins, and more than 19 million have already been mined. That built-in scarcity means that as demand increases, the price almost always follows. Bitcoin's supply schedule is hard-coded into its protocol: roughly every 10 minutes, 6.25 new Bitcoins are minted — a number that will halve again in 2025, making the asset even more scarce. Combine that with growing global demand, and you start to see why Bitcoin can climb so quickly — and crash just as fast when sentiment flips.

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Supply, in the Bitcoin world, is more complicated than it looks. While 19 million coins may be in existence, not all of them are up for sale. Some are being held long-term. Others are permanently lost — sent to wallets that haven't moved in over five years. Research from Chainalysis suggests that up to 20% of all Bitcoin could be lost forever, which significantly reduces the actual circulating supply. So when people talk about Bitcoin's scarcity, they're not just referring to its eventual 21 million cap — they're referring to how little of it is actively being traded at any given moment. That limited float means that when big buy orders come in, prices can jump quickly. But it also means that when major holders — often called "whales" — decide to sell, the impact can be just as dramatic in the other direction.