After failing to reach USD 100,000 by the end of 2021, as many expected, the price of bitcoin (BTC) is likely to hit this milestone during the first half of 2022, two industry leaders have argued. Others, meanwhile, warn that further price consolidation is the most likely outcome as the market enters the first quarter of 2022.
“We’ll see [USD] 100k within the first half of the year,” Samson Mow, chief strategy officer at bitcoin development firm Blockstream told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday.
Mow added that bitcoin over the short-term will likely continue to behave as a risk asset like stocks, with central bank policy being a driver of price. However, he added that:
“On a long enough time horizon, [Bitcoin] does its own thing.”
A similar prediction was also shared by Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo, who told CNBC on Monday that he believes bitcoin is going to reach USD 100,000 this year, with the most likely time being “by the middle of 2022.”
Trenchev added that he sees two reasons for the key price level being reached this year: companies are quietly “building out their treasuries and filling it with bitcoin,” and the “cheap money […] is here to stay.”
“Every time investors and the broader community writes off bitcoin, it outperforms significantly,” Trenchev said, while adding: “I’m quite bullish on bitcoin.”
Meanwhile, in comments shared with Cryptonews.com, Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at the digital asset broker GlobalBlock, pointed to a recent all-time high in the Bitcoin network’s hashrate as a sign of strength for the coin’s fundamental value.
“This indicator shows how Bitcoin is the world’s most secure computing network so new highs complement Bitcoin’s fundamental value,” the analyst said.
However, not everyone is convinced that the bitcoin price will move higher any time soon. According to the popular on-chain analyst and 21st Paradigm co-founder Dylan LeClair, a further consolidation in price is the most likely short-term outcome, given signals from the options market.
LeClair argued that “consolidation for a little” has been his base case for bitcoin since at least December, when he had predicted that BTC would consolidate into the first quarter of 2022. He added that he “sold some short dated calls” in recent weeks, indicating that he does not see a bitcoin price rise as likely in the short-term.
Lastly, according to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode’s latest The Week Onchain report, the beginning of 2022 has been marked by “a general lack of activity” across many on-chain metrics.
The report added that coins on the whole have continued to move to “increasingly illiquid, and dormant wallets,” which is normally bullish, while some “cyclical metrics” paint a more bearish picture.
“With a balance of both bull and bear signals at hand, our expectations into the start of 2022 are likely continued sideways consolidation,” the firm said.
At 11:02 UTC, BTC traded at USD 46,727, down 1% for the past 24 hours and almost 8% for the past 7 days.
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