The deteriorating macroeconomic environment and the collapse of industry giants like FTX and Terra have affected the bitcoin price this year.
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2022 is a tough year for crypto. More than $1.3 trillion has been wiped off the value of the market. And bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency, has seen its price drop by more than 60%.
Investors were caught off guard by the wave of industry collapses from stablecoin project terraUSD to crypto exchange FTX, as well as the worsening macroeconomic situation. People who made bitcoin price predictions for the past year really miss the mark.
But with 2023 here, some market participants are poised with price calls for what could be another tumultuous year.
Interest rates around the world are rising and that is weighing on riskier assets like stocks and bitcoin. Investors are also watching how the story of FTX, leading to the arrest of company founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas, will develop.
CNBC compiles some of the boldest price calls for bitcoin in 2023.
Tim Draper: $250,000
Bitcoin speculator Tim Draper had one of the most bullish predictions on bitcoin in 2022, predicting the token will be worth $250,000 by the end of the year.
In November, the billionaire venture capitalist said he would extend that prediction to mid-2023. Even after the collapse of FTX, he still believes the coin will hit the quarter mark. million.
“My assumption is that since women control 80% of retail spending and only 1 in 7 bitcoin wallets are currently held by women, the dam is about to burst,” Draper told CNBC via email.
Bitcoin would need to gain 1,400% to trade at that level.
Although the price dropped and trading volume is exhaustedAccording to Draper, there may be reason to suspect the market has found a bottom.
“I doubt that the block reward halving in 2024 will be positive,” he said.
Halve, or halve, is one the event that happens every four years where bitcoin rewards for miners are cut in half. This is seen by some investors as a positive for the bitcoin price, as it reduces the supply. The next halving is expected to take place in 2024.
Bitcoin miners, who use energy-intensive machines to verify transactions and mint new tokens, are being hit by the price drop and rising energy costs.
These actors accumulate large amounts of digital currency, making them one of the biggest sellers in the market. With miners reducing their holdings to repay debt, that should remove most of the remaining selling pressure on bitcoin.
It’s a historically good sign for bitcoin, said Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development at crypto exchange Luno.
“In previous bear markets, miner capitulation often pointed to major bottoms,” Ayyar told CNBC. “Their cost of production becomes greater than the value of bitcoin, so you either have some miners shutting down their machines… or they need to sell more bitcoins to keep their business running.”
“If the market gets to the point of absorbing enough selling pressure of this miner, one could argue that we are witnessing a bottoming period.”
Standard Charter: $5,000
For some market participants, the worst is yet to come.
In a December 5 research note, Standard Chartered said bitcoin can drop to as low as $5,000. Predictably, one of the bank’s “surprise” listings being “undervalued” by the market will represent a 70% drop from current prices.
“Yields fall along with tech stocks” in Standard Chartered’s 2023 nightmare scenario, “and while the Bitcoin sell-off declines,” said Eric Robertsen, head of global research at the bank. speed, damage has been done”.
He added: “More and more companies and crypto exchanges find themselves illiquid, leading to further bankruptcies and reducing investor confidence in digital assets.”
This scenario has a “non-zero probability next year,” said Robertsen, and is “fundamentally outside of the market consensus or our fundamental view.”
Mark Mobius: 10,000 USD
Veteran investor Mark Mobius has had a relatively successful 2022 in terms of his valuation ability. In May, he forecast bitcoin to drop to $20,000 when it trades above $28,000.
He said bitcoin would drop to $10,000 by 2022. That didn’t happen. However, Mobus told CNBC that he is sticking with his $10,000 price tag in 2023.
The investor, who has made a name for himself at Franklin Templeton Investments, told CNBC that his bitcoin price decline is due to rising interest rates and tighter overall monetary policy from the US Federal Reserve.
“With higher interest rates, the appeal of holding or buying Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies becomes less attractive because simply holding the coin will pay no interest,” Mobius said by email.
Carol Alexander: $50,000
Carol Alexander, a professor of finance at the University of Sussex, didn’t go too far with her prediction that bitcoin will drop to $10,000 by 2022.
Now, she thinks cryptocurrencies can be set up to make a profit — but not for the reasons you might expect.
Alexander said the catalyst would be more dominoes from the crash of FTX. If this happens, she expects the bitcoin price to hit $30,000 in the first quarter and then $50,000 in the third or fourth quarter.
“There will be a managed bull market in 2023, not a bubble — so we won’t see the same price spike,” she told CNBC.
“We should see a month or two of steady price trends interspersed with range-bound periods and possibly a few short-term crashes.”
Alexander’s argument is that, with volume evaporating with traders in a competitive position, large holders known as “whales” are likely to step in to support the market. According to fintech firm River Financial, the 97 richest bitcoin wallet addresses account for 14.15% of the total supply.
Some investors have given up trying to predict the bitcoin price. For Antoni Trenchev, CEO of crypto lending platform Nexo, recent events have been a serious moment.
“Bitcoin is on a “positive path” in early 2022, with institutional adoption increasing, but “several key forces have intervened,” he said.
Trenchev once predicted bitcoin would surge to as high as $100,000 in early 2023. Now, he’s done trying to predict the price.
Laith Khalaf, financial analyst at AJ Bell, proposed attempts to forecast bitcoin price are futile.
“We could be sitting here talking this time next year and it could be at $5,000 or $50,000, which wouldn’t surprise me because the market is very much driven by sentiment, “he told CNBC”European Squawk Box.“
