Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, despite some recent volatility, have soared over the last year—with the bitcoin price up around 250%.
The bitcoin price topped $60,000 earlier this year before crashing, losing around 40% of its value in a matter of weeks. But many crypto investors remain confident bitcoin will surge far past its recent highs and potentially boost other smaller cryptocurrencies.
Now, one early bitcoin investor that manages a $2.8 billion crypto-focused fund has predicted huge, mainstream adoption could push the bitcoin price up by around 1,500% within the next decade.
“We did a study showing the number of people using bitcoin over the years and price of bitcoin,” Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead told Yahoo Finance.
“Both of those data series went up by an order of magnitude every two years. If that kept going, that would put bitcoin at $700,000 when everybody with a smartphone uses it. Ten years’ time is a reasonable forecast.”
Bitcoin and crypto adoption has leaped over the last year as payment platforms such as PayPal PYPL +0.9% and financial technology companies including Jack Dorsey’s Square SQ -1.1% allow users to buy and trade digital assets. Others, including card giants Visa V -1.1% and Mastercard MA -2%, have recently indicated they’re gearing up to offer increased support for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin got a major awareness boost this year thanks to Tesla TSLA 0.0% billionaire Elon Musk’s support. Tesla announced it had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in February, putting bitcoin onto the corporate radar.
Others have named bitcoin as a hedge against a rising tide of inflation that threatens to devalue fiat currencies in the aftermath of huge coronavirus lockdown money printing.
“I think the macro story is so positive, there is so much money being printed and so many institutions are coming into the space that over the next twelve months the markets are going to resume their rally,” said Morehead.
Meanwhile, bitcoin and crypto traders are closely watching for indicators of where the bitcoin price could be going in the short term.
“Some on-chain metrics suggest a continuation of the recent uptrend,” Marcus Sotiriou, sales trader at the U.K.-based digital asset broker GlobalBlock, wrote in a note this week, pointing to data that suggests short term speculators are selling over the past few months whilst long term holders have been accumulating.
“Technically, bitcoin has closed above the 21-week exponential moving average [yesterday], which is regarded by many as the key bull market support, as well as the 100-day simple moving average. However, the breakdown of the rising wedge suggests that bitcoin may fall back to the mid-range at around $36,000, or lower before the rally continues.”
After the bitcoin price crashed in May, bitcoin has struggled to find support over $40,000 per bitcoin. However, some think that could change in August.
“The data from the options suggests that the market is positioning itself for another leg-up on bitcoin by mid-August,” Pankaj Balani, the chief executive of crypto derivatives exchange Delta, wrote in a note.