Wall Street Experts Are Lining Up to Predict Bitcoin Will Hit $100,000
Money is not a client of any investment adviser featured on this page. The information provided on this page is for educational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Money does not offer advisory services.
Bitcoin's price continues to prove impossible to forecast — but a rise to $100,000 per coin is becoming a very popular prediction.
As digital assets become more widely popular, the original and most popular cryptocurrency will take market share from gold, Goldman Sachs analyst Zach Pandl wrote in a research note to clients on Tuesday.
Bitcoin currently has a roughly 20% share of the "store of value" market, Pandl wrote. The "store of value" here refers to how much the investors own of gold for investment purposes plus how much investors own of Bitcoin. Hypothetically, Pandl added, if Bitcoin's share of that market were to rise to 50% over the next five years, its price would rise to just over $100,000.
The price of the original and most popular cryptocurrency yo-yos at a dizzying pace, and all cryptos continue to be risky and highly speculative investments. Bitcoin lost 50% of its value between April and July of 2021, before surging to an all-time high of above $68,000 in November. It then ended 2021 at around $47,000 per coin.
Toward the end of December, Bitcoin was up 69% for the year — which is impressive, but not nearly as high as the rise of other trendy investments like Ether (up over 400%) and GameStop (up over 700%).
Crypto experts have always speculated where Bitcoin's price will go next, and some say that $100,000 could happen sooner rather than later.
Bitcoin at $100,000: predictions
Matt Hougan, the chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, told Bloomberg TV in December that Bitcoin could hit $100,000 in 2022. In February of 2021, Anthony Scaramucci, head of the investment advisor SkyBridge Capital and the former White House Director of Communications, told Yahoo Finance, that Bitcoin could reach $100,000 within 12 months. In September, the cryptocurrency research team at the U.K.-based bank Standard Chartered predicted Bitcoin will double in value by early this year, and could even hit $175,000 in the long term. Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro Jurrien Timmer has said Bitcoin could hit $100,000 by 2023.
Just this week, the founder of the cryptocurrency lender Nexo told CNBC's “Street Signs Asia” that Bitcoin could surge to $100,000 by as soon as mid-2022.
Of course, not everyone is so bullish on Bitcoin — or cryptos in general.
Robert Johnson, professor of finance at the Heider College of Business at Creighton University, previously told Money that 2022 will be the year the crypto bubble starts to deflate.
“It’s a modern day tulip mania,” Johnson added, referring to when a Dutch society became frenzied around exotic tulip bulbs and spent tons of money buying them up with hopes they could then sell them. Tulip mania is often used to describe speculative assets. Dimensional Fund Advisors co-founder David Booth also compared Bitcoin to tulip mania in an interview with Money last year.
John Paulson, the billionaire investor who bet against the housing market ahead of its crash, told Bloomberg TV last year that cryptocurrencies are a bubble and will "eventually prove to be worthless." JPMorgan Chase's CEO and chairman Jamie Dimon also said he thinks Bitcoin is "worthless" during an Institute of International Finance event, CNBC reported in October.
The jury may still be out on Bitcoin's worth, but one thing is for sure: No one can stop talking about where Bitcoin is headed next.
More from Money:
5 Crypto Buzzwords Everyone Should Know in 2022
Watch Out: These High-Risk Investments Will Be All the Rage in 2022