That being said, I'm sure a vast majority of the money would be spent on essentials.
That might be true, but think of how many stimulus checks actually went out (I don't know the number, but with everyone getting one it has to be huge). I have no doubt that quite a few recipients did indeed spend theirs on bitcoin or some other crypto. And this is the US we're talking about, where tons of people live well beyond their means with credit card and other debt weighing them down.
Stimulus checks has been out since last week, so if it is an another reason for the bitcoin to increase then we should be seeing a massive market movement right now but lets turn off this scenario. Stimulus checks is amounting $$,200, if you convert it to your local currency then you might find that the stimulus check is quite big, actually it is bigger than what we are getting with ours as a relief. After reading of some articles about stimulus, there are 150 million residents that might qualify for the stimulus check that has been distributed, so if we put that on calculation, that's a $180 billion. woah.
It may be a little ridiculous that the whole crypto world has started spinning over whether US stimulus checks will inflate the BTC price, as if $2 trillion would automatically go to BTC. According to some research, 80% of Americans have reportedly heard of BTC, while about
6.2% own it (probably in their Coinbase accounts).
Again, those stats may well be correct, but with bitcoin's market cap where it is how much collective buying would have to take place in order to spike the price just a little? I don't have the answer to that either, but I think the free money did have an effect.
[/quote] It's not quite safe to assume that we are going to have a bounce because of this, even a billion dollars put in the market can make a huge pump.