The price of Bitcoin is going up. Will it reach its highest point since 2021 by year’s end? Here’s what the crypto odds have to say.
It’s so trite, it bears repeating: Bitcoin goes up, Bitcoin goes down.
Too many people were willing to write off crypto in general after the FTX scandal and the collapse of the NFT market helped drive the price of Bitcoin down below US$16,000 in November 2022. Now here we are back up above $43,000 as we go to press, with hopes of reaching $100,000 in the not-too-distant future.
Baby steps. Before we get to six figures, we have to endure the market correction that came after the recent Bitcoin ETF price spike; the fine folks at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review) have the Under favored at -140 on a total of $43,000.50 for the price of Bitcoin (BTC) at the end of January.
But things start getting brighter very soon. The Bitcoin odds for the end-of-year price at the main crypto betting sites have the total at $53,500.50, with each side priced at –120. That would be the highest price Bitcoin has seen since December 2021, well before we reached Peak Bored Ape.
There’s always going to be someone out there telling you that Bitcoin is headed for the moon – that’s the “pump” part of “pump and dump.” But if you’ve spent any time at all looking at crypto, you know how volatile this commodity is, or to be more precise, how volatile the market is for this commodity. You can tell just by looking at these crypto odds that business is picking up.
To be fair, there is definitely some built-in volatility with Bitcoin itself, at least from a price perspective.
The supply of Bitcoin is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, which takes about four years; each halving has seen the price of Bitcoin rise substantially, and go figure, we’re on pace to reach the next target sometime this April.
But how high will it go? There have been three halvings thus far, each leading to the following cycle peaks:
While the relative impact of each halving is softer over time, the price is still going up – assuming that enough people come into the Bitcoin market after the next halving. They did before, so why not this time?
If anything, people are more aware now than ever about this halving and the expected price bump that comes with it. Bitcoin goes down; Bitcoin goes up.
The prevailing wisdom, at least for this particular cycle, is that the SEC decision to allow the listing of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States will bring enough additional buyers into the marketplace to boost the price of Bitcoin by the minimum 2x required to make up for the halving.
Here’s the trick from a betting perspective: the halving may take place sometime around April, but if history is any guide, the market won’t peak until late 2025.
That’s well beyond the expiry date for this Over bet. The good news: $100K is indeed within reach, and an entirely reasonable target given the way events have unfolded up to this point. It’s just a question of timing for how quickly we get to $53,500.
Don’t assume this is a lock either way. At some point, there will be a Bitcoin halving where the cost of mining just isn’t worth it anymore – even if they don’t make it all the way to the maximum 21 million coins – and the price of Bitcoin will stabilize rather than take another moon shot. This could be that halving.
In the meantime, why stop at $100,000? Anthony Scaramucci at SkyBridge is more bullish than that, telling attendees at the Reuters Global Markets Forum in Davos this past Monday that Bitcoin was on its way to $170,000 by the next scheduled peak. “Wherever the price is on the day of the halving in April, multiply it by four, and it’ll reach that price in the next 18 months.”
Why multiply by four, when the last peak didn’t even get that high? It’s those “spot” Bitcoin ETFs, apparently. If Scaramucci is correct, we should see the price of Bitcoin start rising again within the next couple of weeks, after people have disinvested themselves from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and into new holdings. No word yet on whether Scaramucci will do the fandango if he’s proved correct.