No-one had a crystal ball but cryptocurrency ‘experts’ are not shy of making a bold Bitcoin price prediction or two. Lately, financial institutions have also weighed in with their views. Some based on analytics, others probably plucked out of thin air. As recently as May 2021, pundits had written off any chance of Bitcoin hitting $100k in 2021 following a 50% retrace in BTC price action. But prices have since rebounded.
In this blog post, we’ll look at the most up-to-date bitcoin price predictions from crypto industry experts and leading investment houses for the end of 2021 and beyond. Is Bitcoin on track to meet expectations this September day in 2021? Let’s dive in and see.
What is Bitcoin?
For the crypto uninitiated, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and digital worldwide store of value. It’s the first decentralized digital currency, as the blockchain technology it is built on works without a central bank or single administrator. The network is operated through peer-to-peer and transactions take place between users directly through a public ledger, without an intermediary. These transactions are verified by network nodes through the use of cryptography.
What is the price of Bitcoin today?
The price of Bitcoin at the time of writing is $47,251.
BTC’s 2021 YTD trading high is $64,854.
BTC 2021 YTD trading low is $28,130.
That’s quite the range in a 9 month period, meaning any Bitcoin price prediction should be taken with a grain of salt! So lets have a look at what the big names in crypto have to say…
A Bitcoin price prediction from the Bulls
Tim Draper
Tim Draper is the founder of Draper Associates, a seed stage venture capital firm. He is also a Bitcoin investor. Tim Draper predicted that BTC would hit a whopping one million dollars in 2018, which didn’t quite hit the mark.
He now believes the price of Bitcoin will be $250k in 2022/23 and see a total market cap around $100 trillion.
Cathie Wood
Cathie Wood is the CEO of Ark Invest, a popular global funds manager. She’s also an expert on investing in disruptive technologies.
Cathie Wood believes that the value of BTC could reach $100,000 by 2021 (sources: Coin Telegraph and CNBC ). She says the technology is advancing quickly – in just a few years blockchain tech has gone from an idea to real applications with working projects.
Wood’s long term Bitcoin price prediction is closer to $500,000. And that’s in just 5 years.
Mike Novogratz
Mike Novogratz founder of Galaxy Digital a investment manager specialising in cryptocurrency and block chain predicted in November 2020 that Bitcoin would hit $65,000 in the short term. It almost met those expectations. According to Financhill, Novogratz expects a price of $100,000 by the end of 2021.
Raoul Pal
Raoul Pal is a widely respected macro economic analyst formerly of Goldman Sachs, and an expert on global economics. He founded Real Vision TV, a financial media website.
Pal sees Bitcoin hitting $100k in the short term (sources: Business Insider Financhill ). Pal’s most recent prediction has Bitcoin at between $250,000 and $400,000 a coin by March 2022.
He predicts that BTC will be worth somewhere between one to ten million by 2025 – depending on how quickly the world begins to adopt crypto.
Pal believes the currency could achieve this if it becomes “the global standard for value transfer” which will require widespread adoption from governments and banks. The number might be about right but the timeframe in our view is too short. Government regulators are painfully slow to move on new tech and there is fierce resistance in some quarters of government to decentralised currency and value transfer.
What do the Bitcoin bears say?
John Paulson
John Paulson is a hedge fund manager and a billionaire. He’s famous for making $15 billion in 2007 by shorting the US housing market as it collapsed – which turned him into an overnight multi-billionaire.
Recently John Paulson predicted to Bloomberg that Bitcoin would crash to zero, calling it a limited supply of nothing.
Peter Schiff
Peter Schiff, well known gold bug and CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, asserts that bitcoin is worthless. He famously called the cryptocurrency a bubble in 2017 (sources: Business Insider ).
Schiff was calling for BTC to fall back to $0.01 but then most recently conceded that the price may actually hit $100,000 by the end of 2021.
Warren Buffet
And then of course there is the greatest stock market investor of all time Warren Buffet, who famously called Bitcoin ‘rat poison squared’. Buffet is reported as thinking Bitcoin owners are delusional.
What price do financial institutions predict for Bitcoin?
Forbes reported at the end of 2020 that a leaked Citi report predicted the price of Bitcoin to be $300,000 by the end of 2021. We’d need a 600% increase in 3 months to get there. That would be crazy, even for crypto.
Credit Suisse predicts a high-end estimate for bitcoin prices by 2025 at around $50,000.
In 2021, JPMorgan issued a target price for of $140,000 but says because of price volatility the price could be closer to $23,000. Their mid term price valuation is between $23,000 and $35,000.
UK banking behemoth Standard Chartered has reportedly issued a new price prediction for Bitcoin or $100,000 this year.
In God we trust, all others bring data – so what do the charts say?
Logarithmic charts are often used over linear charts to understand the uptake and price of assets that grow exponentially. Exponential growth is where growth compounds continuously. If you think about how compound interest provides interest on interest, that’s an example of exponential growth. Bitcoin is an exponential growth asset. If you take a look at a linear Bitcoin chart it resembles a hockey stick – exploding growth – like the chart I posted above. A logarithmic chart plots the growth of Bitcoin so that analysts can better understand its trend.
If you take a look at Bitcoin on this logarithmic chart it indicates a high in December 2021 of $145,000.
Stock to flow model charts like this one by Plan B show a price hovering around $100,000 at the end of 2021.
If you want to know more about Bitcoin price prediction charts have a read of this great article.
As you can see, there is no real consensus about what to expect in 2021 for BTC prices. Not overly surprising given how volatile the market is. The other thing is bulls are mainly already Bitcoin investors. They don’t mind if you buy some Bitcoin because they predict the price is going up.
We like the logarithmic charts , because one thing about Bitcoin is that it’s programmed value. The logarithmic charts reflect the Bitcoin price playing out along the line’s we’d expect, based on the way the asset is programmed with supply halving every four years.
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