When it comes to predicting Bitcoin price, the likes of Mike Novogratz has already tapered his prediction saying that institutional investors are most likely going to enter by next year. By the way things are going, Mike Novogratz thinks that it is quite impossible for the market to reach $10K for the remaining of 2018.
However, for Tom Lee, he believes that it is still possible for Bitcoin to surpass its all-time high of near $20,000 last year. Though Bitcoin has stabilized between $6300 to $6700 over the last weeks, Tom Lee sees that Bitcoin is still possible to land around $25K with the help of institutional investors.
Brian Kelly thinks that institutional herd is headed towards the market by the time it enters the first quarter of 2019. But for Tom Lee, he still believes that there is still hope to see Bitcoin surpass last year’s all-time high saying that “People are too bearish..What happens is people get bearish because it makes sense. You know the market conditions have been terrible and we are under our 200-day moving average”. He also mentioned that “We (at Fundstrat) just published a report this week that pointed out to our clients that when Bitcoin is under 200-day, it only goes up 50% of the time in the next six months. But when it’s above its 200-day, it is up 80% of the time (in the next six months), so the trend implied by the 200-day is obviously important”.
Break Even Mining Cost Will Rise
Lee also touched the subject of the potential cost of Bitcoin mining. He said that the break-even cost of mining one BTC will rise around $8,000 to $9,000 by the end of the year. And because of this, he pointed out that it is typical that Bitcoin price usually is double the breakeven point. This means that he is seeing Bitcoin to reach around $20K this year.
He also brought up an interesting point saying that investors usually “give 100% probability to the negative” when the price is already near bottom. And because of the number of bearish sentiments today, he thinks that there is a high chance that Bitcoin is going to go up before the end of the year.
However, there are also some hurdles that he pointed out. For instance, he mentioned the classic ‘chicken and the egg’ scenario. He mentioned that “Until people are convinced that there’s a bottom, like there are a chicken and an egg, you can’t motivate people until the (bottoming) event happens”.
Institutional Investors Coming?
2018 is all about regulatory changes all over the world. During the start of the year, many were anticipating that institutional investors will already flock the crypto market before the year ends. However, it isn’t happening as fast as some experts predicted. Could Tom Lee actually be correct that Bitcoin is still headed above $20K in the remaining months of the year?
Considering the volatility of cryptocurrencies, everything is actually possible. The possibility of a Bitcoin ETF, Bakkt (which is backed by ICE), and now Fidelity entering the picture can all do great things for the struggling crypto industry today.