After Bitcoin nearly reached its record price in the last weeks of 2017, many have been speculating if a similar growth will occur again. While some believe that Bitcoin won’t be seeing any growth too soon, several crypto investors and analysts predict that BTC’s price will go up this year.
Kay Van-Petersen: BTC Will Be $100,000 By December 2018
Kay Van-Petersen, an analyst at Saxo Bank, believes that Bitcoin could reach $100,000 in 2018, also adding that other rival coins could outperform it as well.
Van-Petersen predicted in December 2016 that Bitcoin would hit the $2,000 mark in 2017. At the time of his forecast, Bitcoin was trading below $900. Bitcoin’s price went past $2,000 in May just as the Saxo Bank analyst foretold.
“First off, you could argue we have had a proper correction in Bitcoin, it has had a 50 percent pull back at one point, which is healthy. But we have still not seen the full effect of the futures contracts,” said Van-Petersen.
Bitcoin futures trading contracts were launched last year by CME and CBOE. The launch was regarded as a tactic to attract more institutional investors to the cryptocurrency market and to add some legitimacy to it. Van-Petersen believes that more institutions will get involved as time goes by, describing it as a slow and steady process.
For Bitcoin to reach $100,000, it would require a rise of over 635 percent of its current price of $13,601.43. It should also be noted that Van-Petersen has previously stated that the $100,000 threshold could take up to ten years to reach.
Even though Bitcoin has been trading sideways since the beginning of the year, Van-Petersen stated that Bitcoin tends to trade around a certain level usually followed by a “re-rate.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s something we are seeing. It’s kind of building a foundation, then will re-rate a bit higher.”
Jeet Sighn – BTC will reach at least $50,000 in 2018
Jeet Singh, a cryptocurrency portfolio manager for the past six years, claims it is very common for digital currencies to oscillate between 70 and 80 percent of their initial record price.
When he spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he compared digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ripple to early tech giants like Microsoft.
“If you look at Microsoft or Apple, when they went public their stocks were very volatile because the market wasn’t mature,” he explained.
Mr. Singh explained that the market’s volatility might concern newer cryptocurrency traders, but older investors do not share their worries, as they are accustomed to these common fluctuations.
He also stated that he believes cryptocurrencies will be used in transactions more often in the months and years to come.
“There are not so many vendors right now who accept cryptocurrencies, but there’s huge adoption on the black market,” he claimed.
Adoption started mainly in countries with unstable economies and currencies, but this will extend to other industries and countries, he stated. He also noted that among coffee and tobacco farmers there seems to be a high rate of adoption.
“In different countries Bitcoin is qualified differently,” he said. It is a commodity in the US, a currency in Switzerland “but to me it’s more than a currency.”
Singh predicted that “bitcoin could definitely see $50,000 in 2018” even though “we will probably go through a suffering period of volatility.”
Dan Morehead- $20,000 by December 2018
Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund worth $1 billion, has speculated that the crypto market could reach “$40 trillion” in the next ten years.
“It’s a fascinating market … a $400 billion market that nobody owns … we’ve never seen that before … the industry as a whole could easily go to $4 trillion, $40 trillion is definitely possible … It’s the ten-year forecast, it’s not going to happen overnight.”
Morehead noted that CBOE and CME’s listing of crypto futures from last year could be one way to “potentially go short with crypto asset inv