The current dip aside, what are Bitcoin and Ethereum’s longer-term price forecasts? Finder’s brain trust of 35 crypto experts peers into a crystal ball.
Following a strong 2020, crypto is predicted to continue to surge in 2021. Notwithstanding the current dip, Bitcoin and Ethereum had both been hitting all-time highs in what seemed like every other week. As the market undergoes a correction, what will the rest of 2021 hold for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies?
Finder surveyed 35 financial experts to answer this question. Their virtual consensus: It looks like it’s going to be another solid year on the whole, especially for Bitcoin, with the panellists believing that Bitcoin will end the year at an average price of US$94,967, according to the latest edition of Finder’s Cryptocurrency Predictions Report.
That figure is a far cry from the average of US$51,951, which the panel forecasted for Bitcoin at the end of 2021 back in December 2020. Not only that, but the panel thinks that BTC could crack US$100,000 before the end of the year. On average, the panel thinks the digital currency will peak at a whopping US$107,484 at some point during 2021.
Samantha Yap, the founder and CEO of YAP Global, is one panellist predicting that Bitcoin will end the year at around US$100K, saying that institutional adoption will continue pushing this bull run forward.
“The momentum of institutional adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies that we’ve seen in Q1 of 2021 indicates that it’s not out of the ordinary to see the BTC price hit $100K,” Yap said. “It is very possible considering the rate of growth the cryptocurrency industry has experienced over the past few months.”
Interestingly, only a handful of panellists see Bitcoin’s price ending the year lower than US$60K. Lee Smales, associate professor of finance at the University of Western Australia, came in with the lowest prediction, with a year-end price of just US$25k. The rest of the panelists on the lower end of the predictions pegged Bitcoin’s end-of-year price to be somewhere between US$40,000 and US$56K.
However, at the other end of the spectrum, Morpher CEO Martin Fröhler — who believes that the value of Bitcoin come the end of 2021 will hit US$250K — says BTC is the future.
“Bitcoin is the ultimate long term store of value and will gradually replace gold and bonds in that role,” Fröhler said.
Looking further down the road, our panel believes that Bitcoin will end 2025 with an average price of US$360,179. Just over a third (35.71%) of respondents say that BTC will end 2025 with a valuation of $500K or more, and about 1 in 7 (14.29%) say that the price will reach US$1 million.
But does this mean you should buy?
With such rosy predictions, does the panel think that it’s time to buy, sell or hodl? Unsurprisingly, about half (48.48%) of panellists think that you should consider buying Bitcoin, with 2 in 5 (39.39%) saying that holding is the prudent move and just over 1 in 10 (12.12%) advising that you should consider selling Bitcoin.
The panel is similarly bullish on Ethereum, with almost three-fifths (59%) recommending that you consider buying ETH, a little over a quarter (28%) saying hold and just 13% saying that you should consider selling. While the year-end highs for ETH aren’t predicted to be as lofty as BTC, with the panel predicting that ETH will finish the year at $4,512, almost three-quarters (72%) think that ETH will hit 5 figures by 2025.
Sarah Bergstrand, the chief operating officer for BitBull Capital, is the highest on ETH, saying that it’ll end 2025 at the US$100K mark, thanks in part to upgrades to the network.
“We are likely to see major upgrades to the Ethereum network this year, and those can be expected to push the price higher,” Bergstrand said. “In the long term, only coins with strong communities and proven use cases are likely to retain value and remain relevant. Others are only good to keep in the short term, during a bull run.”
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