Bitcoin looks set to disappoint analysts who had predicted that its price would surge to as high as $80,000 at the end of this year, EHIME ALEX writes
The price of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is currently below $50,000, which is nowhere near the average prediction that the crypto will peak at $80,021 towards the end of this year.
It rose to an all-time high of $68,990.90 on November 10, 2021. In February and April, the crypto exceeded $65,000, a feat attributed to the events involving Tesla, an American electric vehicle and clean energy company, and Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
The November peak was also attributed to Tesla’s announcement of his acquisition of $1.5bn worth of the digital coin, even as the initial public offering of the United States’ biggest crypto exchange fuelled massive interest in Bitcoin.
With the recent fall in the price of Bitcoin, it is less likely that the asset class will cool to $71,415 as 2021 draws to a close, says Crypto Finder, a cryptocurrency news platform.
Higher than the $28,768.84 back in December 2020, the current Bitcoin worth is still well short of the $100,000 that some bullish analysts are anticipating.
PlanB, the creator of the stock-to-flow model, reportedly said that Bitcoin will hit $135,000 in December.
“The key question facing Bitcoin nearing the onset of 2022 is whether it’s peaking or simply a consolidating bull market. We believe it’s the latter, and see the benchmark crypto well on its way to becoming global digital collateral in a world going that way. It’s likely to be about key support around $50,000 and $100,000 resistance in 2022,” a senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, Mike McGlone, said, according to CoinMarketCap.
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin market is expected to be worth $249,578 by 2025, increasing fourfold from its current value and reaching a single coin value of $5,237,082 by 2030.
“Bitcoin is so hot right now. NFTs [non-fungible tokens] are pumping it, there is so much institutional demand, the US government is not banning it and everyone’s getting in on it. I have a strong conviction that it will continue to rise,” Finder.com’s Founder, Fred Schebesta, said.
The outlook for 2022 is still bullish, according to Bloomberg Intelligence,
Although Nigeria remains the largest market for cryptocurrency trading platforms, in February 2021, the apex bank barred local banks from working with cryptocurrencies, warning of “severe regulatory sanctions” and freezing accounts of firms involved in crypto transactions.
However, crypto trading thrives in Nigeria despite official disapproval, Reuters reported recently. Transactions in June were 25 per cent above the same month last year, according to Chainalysis, a research firm.
Reuters said in the report that Nigerians were turning to crypto for business, to protect their savings as the naira lost value and to send payments abroad because it was often hard to obtain US dollars.
A Nigerian blockchain engineer, Tosin Olugbenga, in a tweet, said, “A researcher at King’s College London is undertaking a large-scale questionnaire study evaluating Bitcoin usage in Nigeria. The results of this work will have the potential to shape policy relating to Bitcoin.”
