In brief
- Bitcoin's price can reach $146,000 or above—but it will take some time, said JPMorgan's strategists.
- At this price, Bitcoin will match private investments in gold.
- While the levels of $50,000–$100,000 are possible, they are likely "unsustainable," the experts noted.
It’s possible that Bitcoin’s price could go up to $146,000 or higher in the long term—but it’s unlikely to happen this year, JP Morgan Chase & Co quantitative strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote in a recent note, according to Bloomberg.
“A crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies big upside for Bitcoin over the long term,” he said in the note, but “a convergence in volatilities between Bitcoin and gold is unlikely to happen quickly and is in our mind a multiyear process. This implies that the above-$146,000 theoretical Bitcoin price target should be considered as a long-term target, and thus an unsustainable price target for this year.”
Per the letter, Bitcoin will have to reach $146,000 to match the levels of private investments in gold—via various exchange-traded funds or bars and coins. But the crypto’s volatility can play a major role in this process.
“The valuation and position backdrop has become a lot more challenging for Bitcoin at the beginning of the New Year,” said the letter. “While we cannot exclude the possibility that the current speculative mania will propagate further pushing the Bitcoin price up toward the consensus region of between $50,000-$100,000, we believe that such price levels would prove unsustainable.”
As Decrypt reported, JPMorgan’s strategists have previously predicted that Bitcoin will hurt gold’s value in the coming years.
“The adoption of Bitcoin by institutional investors has only begun, while for gold its adoption by institutional investors is very advanced,” Panigirtzoglou said at the time.
This is mainly because institutions are showing more and more interest in Bitcoin instead of gold, he added, and the bank expects this process to continue.
For example, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust increased by $2 billion between October and early December. At the same time, while gold-backed, exchange-traded funds saw an outflow of $7 billion during the same time period, JPMorgan’s data showed.
And judging by Bitcoin’s latest tendency to constantly renew its all-time highs, institutional investors are likely to stay.
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The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.