The price of bitcoin went parabolic to reach $19,000 and seems on track to break the previous $20,000 record high. In November alone, bitcoin added more than a third of its value, according to Reuters.
Analysts say that the bitcoin bull run is still on despite signs of volatility that make some question whether it had reached a top.
So what are traders, investors and analysts saying about bitcoin’s extraordinary price rally?
“(I am) 90 percent confident we’ll see $20k by year end, (as it’s) blown through a number of key resistance levels,” said Ryan Selkis, the founder of crypto research firm Messari, in a Fortune.com interview.
Selkis cited bitcoin’s recent embrace by PayPal and institutional investors.
The price could soar even higher in January if more fund managers, many of whom are safely locking in their year-end performance fees, decide to dip their toes in crypto in 2021, Selkis added.
New data suggest that more high-net-worth individuals are growing fond of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, being the largest digital currency by market value, is expected to benefit from enthusiasm from the deep-pocketed.
“Nearly three-quarters of high net worth individuals will be invested in cryptocurrencies before the end of 2022,” respondents said in a global poll by deVere Group, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations.
Investor Mike Novogratz told CNBC that Bitcoin’s 148-percent surge this year is different from the retail-driven “speculative frenzy” of 2017, when the cryptocurrency reached $20,000, only to drop 78 percent a year later.
“You can’t buy bitcoin at Citibank or Bank of America, but their strategists are talking about it,” Novogratz said. “People are going to bitcoin because there’s 20 million bitcoins that will ever be mined. There’s complete scarcity in it. People believe it’s a store of value. It’s a social construct, and you can’t change that.”
Traders are expecting that bitcoin’s price could exhaust its momentum soon since it has rallied without any significant consolidation since late October. The BTC price has increased six-fold since its March crash.
“Consolidations are getting shorter without much retracement. Blow-off top is coming soon,” a pseudonymous trader known as “Squeeze” wrote.
A blow-off top is a chart pattern that shows a steep and rapid increase in price and trading volume followed by a steep and rapid drop in price, usually on significant or high volume as well.
Some hedge fund managers have suggested that bitcoin could hit $100,000 in 2021.
“I have seen bitcoin go up 10X, 20X, 30X in a year. So going up 5X is not a big deal,” said Brian Estes, a chief investment manager at Off the Chain Capital.
Some analysts are skeptical about the rally in bitcoin prices, saying the prediction that it will keep rising is a symptom of mania.
“Any hedge fund model on bitcoin is rubbish. You can’t model a mania. Is it plausible? For sure. It’s a mania. But does anyone actually have a clue? Not a chance,” said Kevin Muir, a trader based in Canada.
Cryptocurrencies including bitcoin are “here to stay” and millennials are happily embracing new technologies, said Rick Rieder, the chief investment officer of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager.
“But do I think it is a durable mechanism that could replace gold to a large extent? Yeah I do, because it’s so much more functional than passing a bar of gold around,” Rieder told CNBC’s Squawk Box.
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The all-time high price for bitcoin is largely pegged at $20,093, reached on Dec. 17, 2017, according to CoinMarketCap. But since the price is just a weighted average, some analysts think this is not it.
Messari researcher Ryan Watkins told Decrypt that it “all depends on which exchanges they’re using and how each provider calculates prices.”
Neeraj Agrawal, director of communications for cryptocurrency advocate Coin Center, told Decrypt, “Really I guess 20k is the line for mainstream attention (which is why I care).”
Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, a longtime bitcoin bear, admitted in a series of recent tweets that he “might be missing something about bitcoin.” However, he insists that its volatility diminishes its use as a store of wealth and medium of exchange.
