Raging bulls – crypto’s got ’em like pretty much no other asset class we can think of, outside of cattle. Now US spot BTC ETFs are green-lit at last, we round up some wild price predictions. 

 

It’s done. We officially have spot Bitcoin ETF approval in the US of A – for all 11 filings that were sitting in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s in-tray. And so it begins.

SEC Overlord Darth Gary Gensler has finally located his “APPROVED” rubber stamp and presumably sacked the intern (possibly) who sent out a fake tweet from the SEC’s X account yesterday.

With this momentous occasion in mind, we had a bit of a look to see who’s predicting what in a financial titan-led spot Bitcoin ETF world.

While who knows how the price action will track post launch in the short term – could even be a nuthinburger – you might know by now that the SEC’s approval of said Bitcoin ETFs in the US is regarded as the biggest long-term catalyst for the crypto moon mission since sliced BTC.

And yes, that’s a bad halving “joke”. Should we explain it, making it even less amusing? (Quickly checks Coinhead’s handy Cryptionary from 2021.) Okay then, here you go:

Halving (noun)
An event scheduled into a blockchain protocol that serves to halve the reward of Proof-of-Work miners that operate in the network. Halvings reduce the rate at which new coins are created, effectively reducing the supply. The most notable “halving” event is Bitcoin’s and occurs every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years. In the past, Bitcoin halvings have subsequently resulted in price surges.

 

Actually, along with the Bitcoin ETFs from entities including BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, Ark Invest and more, the halving is another major reason Bitcoin (and the rest of crypto) could have a particularly bullish year or two.

Grains of salt, of course – halvings are no absolute guarantee of baked-in future performance for Bitcoin and pals, although historically all preceding ones have coincided with epic crypto bull runs.

Right then, those predictions, beginning with one that dropped this week.

 

Standard Chartered – US$200,000 BTC by end of 2025

This British multinational bank thinks BTC is going pretty big over the next two years, with a US$100k target for 2024, and double that by the end of 2025.

Eyebrow-raising stuff for those outside of the crypto echo chamber, but actually pretty run-of-the-mill crystal balling for those within it.

Most predictions we tend to see around the influencer/general crypto punditry traps tend to envision about a US$150k to $200k cycle top. Some much lower, some stupendously higher.

Standard Chartered made its predictions in a report dated Jan 8 and it hinged on the approval of the BTC ETFs.

Crucially, too, the bank sees whopping great inflows into approved ETFs, ranging from US$50 billion to $100 billion in 2024 alone, hence the positive price predictions.

“People are not mentally prepared for this”, apparently.

 

Anthony Scaramucci – all-time high in 2024, $750k by 2030

Former White House Director of Communications during the Trump administration, Anthony Scaramucci is the CEO of asset management firm Skybridge Capital, which is in the hunt for a Bitcoin ETF.

In December he admitted to CNBC that he’s a little “gun shy” about making predictions on Bitcoin.

“I’ve been embarrassed by my predictions in the past,” he said, “I thought it would have gotten to $100,000 by the end of 2022,” he said.

That said… the Skybridge boss has been making predictions nonetheless, and still expects Bitcoin to bust through its previous all-time high of US$69k this year, although he envisions potential selling pressure along the way.

His projection beyond that, though, is the reason he makes this raging bulls list, foretelling a US$150k-$250k top for this cycle, and a moon-boi-frothing US$750k within the next seven years.

 

Tom Lee – US$500k within five years

Another guy who’s been a fair way off with his predictions in the past is Fundstrat’s Head of Research and CNBC regular Tom Lee. He’s generally been mega positive on the orange coin, though, and here he is speaking with the US financial channel’s Joe Kernen (who’s also into Bitcoin).

The simple takeaway from Lee there (right at the very end of this video after they bang on about inflation) is:

“I think in the next 12 months, something over $100,000… maybe $150,000… and in the next five years, you know there’s a finite supply, and now we have a potentially huge increase in demand with a spot Bitcoin ETF approval, so I think in five years, something around half a million whould be potentially achievable.”

 

Samson Mow – US$1 million BTC… in, er, DAYS TO WEEKS

This is probably the craziest prediction of all right here.

Samson Mow, the CEO of Bitcoin-focused tech firm Jan3, which aims to see nation states adopt the cryptocurrency, is a well known BTC bull.

But he’s outdone even himself with this call, predicting a… cue Dr Evil little finger to mouth… ONE MILLION DOLLAR Bitcoin… within DAYS TO WEEKS.

Seriously? Yeah…

He describes such a move as “max pain” for people trying to accumulate Bitcoin at a steady pace – for example, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-hoarding MicroStrategy firm.

As well as the potential derailment of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network payments system, citing much higher transaction fees to use the thing as a result.

But never mind, eh? Most Bitcoin HODLers would probably be more than delighted to take a $1m BTC in a few days’ time. Or even just within the next seven years or so… which leads us to Cathie Wood, of course.

 

Cathie Wood – US$1.48 million BTC by 2030

Cathie Wood, the CEO of tech-focused investment firm Ark Invest, is well known for her bullish takes, but her Bitcoin advocacy makes her just about the biggest raging bull we can think of in this sphere. Yes, okay Michael Saylor is up there, and we’ll get to him in a sec…

Wood has gone on record, recently again as late 2023, saying she believes Bitcoin could reach an incredulous $US1.48 million by the end of this decade.

But really, why not just round it up? What’s another $200k between friends, eh?

Wood was talking to Natalie Brunell on the CoinStories podcast, and suggested she and Ark Invest envision a “bear case” of $258,000 per Bitcoin in this time frame, a $682,000 “base case”, and a “bull case” of the $1.48 million figure.

Wood cites growing institutional adoption as the chief contributing factor to the Ark Invest thesis.

“As new asset classes evolve, what institutions do in particular is they tiptoe in, they start with 1% and then they migrate to 2% and then they migrate to 5%,” Wood said.

“When there’s a new asset class, it tends to end up in the 5% to 6% range. This happened to real estate, it happened to private equity, venture capital … it happened to the whole category of emerging markets.”

 

Michael Saylor – a 10X for Bitcoin this cycle

Let’s finish this list with the biggest Bitcoin moon boi of them all, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor.

As reported by Cointelegraph, during a speech at the 2023 Australia Crypto Convention on Nov 10, Saylor was asked for his outlook on Bitcoin and over the next four to five years.

Saylor noted: BTC will become an “adolescent mainstream asset by the end of 2024,” adding:

“I think that this next 12 months is going to be big. Because [monthly] demand should double or triple or maybe go up by a factor of 10, anywhere from two to 10… And the supply available for sale will be cut in half in April.”

Plus, referring to greater commercial and institutional interest…

“You’re going to have ferocious competition and will among Wall Streeters to get the most asset share, and you’re going to have crypto exchanges competing, and you’re going to have other tech companies getting involved.”

So, with that high level of 10X by the end of 2024, and bearing in mind BTC was trading at about US$37,000 on November 10 when Saylor made those comments, the extrapolated rough figure to take away from this might be about a US$370,000 Bitcoin by year’s end.

Considering MicroStrategy holds about 189,150 Bitcoins as of December 27, 2023 (average purchase price: $31,168 per BTC), this would surely make its investment one of, if not the absolute greatest in the history of throwing money at highly speculative assets.

 

Just in case you need the disclaimer, Stockhead is not endorsing any of the predictions above. The opinions in this article are soley those of the quoted experts. So if you have (quite) a few thousand to throw into BTC or other cryptocurrencies, you are encouraged to do your own research first.

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