Bitcoin’s price in 2017 caught mainstream attention as it skyrocketed from around $1,000 to near $20,000 by mid-December. This year, after regulatory changes, controversies, and even hacking incidences, the price of Bitcoin is just trading at around $6,200 to $6,500. If you are going to ask Arthur Hayes who is the CEO of BitMEX, the world’s biggest Bitcoin derivative trading platform, he believes that the bear market could last another 18 months.
This is quite a different prediction from others thinking that by the time 2019 entered, institutional investors are ready to participate in the market. He said that “My view is the volatility environment that exists right now could persist for another 12 to 18 months, that flatness”. In fact, Bitcoin is currently less volatile than tech related stocks such as that of Amazon and Netflix, which is quite surprising knowing the behavior of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Could it be that people are waiting for another bull run? Could it be that the entire market is currently becoming more mature?
As for Hayes, he started trading cryptocurrencies in 2013 when he lost his job as an equities trader for Citibank. With his amount of experience with cryptocurrencies, he said that the patterns today resemble the “nuclear bear market” in 2014. He stated that “I started Bitcoin in 2013, when the price went from $250 to $1,300”. He then added that “And then 2014 to 2015 was sort of the nuclear bear market. Price crashed, volume crashed—very difficult to make money”.
Retracting the $50,000 Prediction?
He believes that in the coming months, there is a chance that Bitcoin is going to go lower. Hayes said that “We think trading volumes could fall further from where they are now”. In June 2018, Hayes said that Bitcoin is going to hit $50K by the end of the year.
In June, he mentioned that Bitcoin only needs to encounter one positive regulatory decision before it goes back to its bullish ways and go past $20,000 and hit $50K by the end of the year. At this point, the prediction made last June is no longer realistic.
However, there are the likes of Tom Lee who still believes that Bitcoin is going to surpass the all-time high last year by the end of 2018. Tom Lee thinks that it is still possible to hit $25K by the end of 2018.
Recently, Tom Lee of Fundstrat Global mentioned that he was “pleasantly surprised” by the stability shown by Bitcoin. He said that “Bitcoin volatility should be much higher” after a 9 percent slump in equity markets. He was then asked whether or not it is a good time to enter the crypto market, he said that “Bitcoin seems to find its floor at $6,000”.
This is an assessment that he has in common with Mike Novogratz. For Novogratz, he believed that Bitcoin has already bottomed. For Lee though, he believes that the movement of Bitcoin price will be affected by the US dollar. He mentioned that “So dollar strength has actually been a headwind for Bitcoin. But if the dollar begins to weaken, there will be a tailwind for Bitcoin”. Given the stagnation of the market, how long do you think this will last?
