Bitcoin may not see a bull market until late 2024 or the beginning of 2025, predicted Du Jun, co-founder of top cryptocurrency exchange Huobi.

Huobi is a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange that was founded in China in 2013.

Du’s prediction is contrary to what others said during the recent bull market. Some crypto experts predicted that Bitcoin (BTC) would reach $100,000-plus by the end of 2021.

As recently as January 2022, Goldman Sachs analysts said Bitcoin could reach $100,000.

But Du is adamant that the decentralized digital currency won’t reach that threshold until 2024 or 2025. Since bitcoin bull markets are closely tied to a process called halving, which occurs every few years, it will take a few more years for that to happen, Du said.

Happening about every four years, a halving is a part of Bitcoin’s underlying code. “The key technical event cuts the reward that miners receive for validating transactions on the BTC network in half. Generally, miners on the BTC network run powerful specialized computers capable of solving complex mathematical puzzles. Miners do this in order to validate transactions on the BTC network and receive Bitcoin for their work,” Coin Speaker reported.

The next halving event takes place in 2024, and this is when Du thinks there could be another bull market for BTC, CNBC reported. 

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The last halving happened in May 2020, and in 2021, Bitcoin reached an all-time high above $68,000. A similar event took place when halving took place in 2016. By 2017, Bitcoin hit what was at the time a record high at close to $20,000.

But after both those peaks, Bitcoin tumbled. 

“If this circle continues, we are now at the early stage of a bear market,” Du told CNBC. “It is really hard to predict exactly because there are so many other factors which can affect the market as well — such as geopolitical issues including war, or recent Covid, also affect the market.

“Following this cycle, it won’t be until the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025 that we can welcome the next bull market on Bitcoin.”

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