Bitcoin Likely To Hit The $10,000 Mark, Experts Say

Bitcoin is more likely to tumble to $10,000. This means that its value is likely to be cut in half, rather than to rally back to $30,000, according to 60% of the 950 investors who responded to the latest MLIV Pulse survey. 

Forty percent saw it going the other way. Bitcoin fell 2.4% to $20,474 on Monday morning in New York.

The lopsided prediction underscores how bearish investors have become. The crypto industry, affected by troubled lenders, collapsed currencies, and money policies of the pandemic is taking a serious blow. These fueled a speculative frenzy in financial markets.

Some $2 trillion has vanished from the market value of cryptocurrencies since late last year, according to CoinGecko.

Investors Give Their Bitcoin Verdicts

Retail investors were more apprehensive about cryptocurrencies than their institutional counterparts. About a quarter of them declared the asset class to be garbage. Professional investors were more open-minded toward digital assets.

New Bitcoin and Ethereum Traders are quite skeptical on the next step to take amid this crypto winter. Even Bitcoin buyers are barely making confident moves due to the market’s nature.

But overall, this sector remains a polarizing one: while some 28% of the overall respondents expressed strong confidence that cryptocurrencies are the future of finance, 20% said they’re worthless.

Bitcoin has already lost more than two-thirds of its value since hitting nearly $69,000 in November. Since then, it hasn’t traded as low as $10,000 since September 2020.

“It’s very easy to be fearful right now, not only in crypto, but generally in the world,” said Jared Madfes, partner at Tribe Capital, a venture capital firm. He said the expectations for a further drop in Bitcoin reflect “people’s inherent fear in the market.”

Impending Thickening Of Government Regulations

The crypto crash is likely to put further pressures on governments to step up regulations of the industry. Such supervision is perceived as positive by the many of the respondents. They see it this way because it could improve confidence and lead to broader acceptance among institutional and retail investors.

Government intervention will also probably be given applause by consumers affected by the collapse of so-called stablecoin and TerraUSD. Including troubled middlemen like Celsius Network  and broker Voyager Digital Ltd.

Central Bank To Dethrone Bitcoin?

Central banks are also considering developing their own digital currencies for use in digital payments.

But neither the recent price drops – nor the potential challenge from central banks – are expected to significantly upend the industry by dethroning the two dominant tokens, Bitcoin and Ether. A majority of respondents anticipate that one of those two will remain a driving force in five years even while a significant share sees central bank digital currencies taking on a key role.

“Bitcoin still is powering large parts of the cryptoverse, while Ethereum is losing its lead,” said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp., a foreign-exchange broker.

There was a broader consensus about one corner of the market: Nonfungible tokens. NFTs became famous for attracting valuations in the millions of dollars for pictures of monkeys during the height of the crypto boom. But the overwhelming majority of those surveyed consider them to be just art projects or status symbols, with only 9% seeing them as an investment opportunity.

“The next financial bubble is always something different than the last bubble. So, the majority is absolutely right on this one” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co.