Bitcoin has rocketed through October, climbing as hype surrounding the first U.S. bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) and fresh inflation fears galvanize investors.
The bitcoin price has added around 40% since this time last month, earlier this week hitting an all-time high of around $67,000—$2,000 per bitcoin higher than its April peak.
Now, a panel of 50 bitcoin and cryptocurrency experts has predicted the bitcoin price will continue to climb through 2021, hitting highs of around $80,000, before surging to $250,000 by 2025 and a staggering $5 million per bitcoin by 2030.
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The bitcoin price has doubled since January and bullish traders have predicted it will continue to … [+]
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“As bitcoin continues to mature and increase in value, usability, age and trust, it will behave less like a growth stock, and more like a gold-like store of value,” said panelist and founder of bitcoin ATM network CoinFlip, Daniel Polotsky, who believes bitcoin will end 2021 at $80,000. “Eventually bitcoin will dethrone gold as the king of safe-haven assets, and hopefully this changing of the guard takes place by the end of the decade.
The panel, put together by personal finance comparison site Finder, was asked for their predictions for the bitcoin price over late September through to early February—before bitcoin’s latest break out.
The group, made up of crypto analysts, researchers and entrepreneurs, returned an average bitcoin price prediction of $80,021 in 2021 before ending the year at $71,415. By the end of 2025 and 2030, panelists expect the bitcoin price to skyrocket to an average of $249,578 and $5.2 million respectively.
“The bull run is different this year,” said panelist Gunnar Jaerv, First Digital Trust’s chief operating officer, who has an end of 2021 bitcoin price prediction of $70,000. “More innovations, more regulatory involvement (despite fear, uncertainty and doubt, known as FUD) and the ecosystem and infrastructure puzzles are falling into place quite nicely.”
However, not all of the panel are bullish on bitcoin’s prospects. University of Canberra senior lecturer John Hawkins said he thinks it’s time to sell bitcoin, warning it’s a speculative bubble and will eventually collapse.
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The bitcoin price has surged in recent weeks after a sell-off through the summer.
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“A bitcoin price collapse could be the result of disillusionment with all private crypto (with the possible exception of stablecoins with genuine backing) as central bank digital currencies demonstrate they are the future of e-currency, or it might just be because ethereum (or if it ever launches, Facebook’s diem) is seen as the better crypto.”
The combined crypto market has soared this year, becoming a multi-trillion dollar market as investors bet bitcoin will eventually replace gold as a major store of value and the likes of ethereum and other smart contract blockchains will help form the basis of a future digital economy—pointing to their use in decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The blistering crypto rally, coming after governments flooded financial systems with cash to ward off the economic effects of coronavirus lockdowns, has provoked warnings of a correction from some in the crypto space.
Earlier this week, the chief executive of bitcoin and crypto exchange Binance warned crypto traders should watch out for “very high volatility.”
“Expect very high volatility in crypto over the next few months,” Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao, often known simply as CZ, said via Twitter.
