Everyone’s waiting with bated breath for Bitcoin to hit six figures. But just like last month, the crypto odds are preaching patience.
Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering crypto kaboom. On Friday, April 19, sometime around 8:10 PM Eastern, Bitcoin dropped their latest hot wax to much fanfare: the fourth “halving” of the reward miners receive for completing a block on the blockchain. The last three times this halving took place, the price of Bitcoin went up – a lot.
It will probably go up again. However, as we warned you in last month’s award-punting article about the Bitcoin odds, this fourth halving just doesn’t have the same oomph as the others. It’s like Islands by King Crimson; the Fourth Album Curse is real, and Friday’s halving was met with a smattering of applause at best, pushing the price of Bitcoin from just under US$64,000 to just under $67,000 by Monday.
As we go to press Tuesday evening here in the Pacific Northwest, Bitcoin appears to have stabilized somewhat in the $66K range. And judging by the latest crypto odds at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review), there’s reason to believe the betting market expects to wait a while for Bitcoin to finally reach that $100K mark that everyone’s dying for.
Where Will Bitcoin Close at the End of April?
The over/under at BetOnline is $67,000.50, with the Under favored slightly at –120. It seems reasonable to forecast continued price stability with just one week left before May rolls around; we already saw those expected price corrections heading into Friday’s blessed event, with Bitcoin dropping from its all-time high of $73K to just over $60K last Wednesday.
We’ve also seen the trading volume for Bitcoin level off somewhat. Action was hot and heavy between Friday and Saturday, with volume up 45%, then it plunged 68% between Saturday and Sunday. Again, things have been relatively stable since, with daily volume dancing around $25 billion – a pedestrian amount in today’s market.
Where Will Bitcoin Close At The End of 2024?
Probably, somewhat higher than it is right now. BetOnline has their total set at $71,000.50, and this time, the Over is a –150 favorite. That’s the equivalent of a 60% implied probability.
It’s not exactly the Klondike Gold Rush we’re talking about here. However, this total is for Bitcoin’s price at one minute before New Year’s Day; that’s still eight months away, leaving plenty of time for the price to reach $100K at some point before the clock strikes midnight.
Will Bitcoin Reach $100K This Year?
It certainly could. Even if we see a modest 2x bump in price from the latest halving – each one delivering less bounce than the previous –, that would still put us well into six figures. Geoff Kendrick at Standard Chartered told BNN Bloomberg last week that his firm is sticking with its Bitcoin price target of $150,000 for the end of 2024.
Before you open that wallet and/or purse and bet it all on the Over for those Bitcoin props at Bitcoin betting sites, keep in mind that Standard Chartered has a track record of bullish estimates. Given the previous post-halving timelines, hitting $150K sometime around mid-2025 seems more reasonable – or at least that’s what analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra at Bernstein have as their target.
Again, that doesn’t mean Bitcoin can’t hit $100K before 2024. A Business Insider report from March 12 showed daily inflows of around $370 million into Bitcoin ETFs, for a total of $9.5 billion since the SEC gave them the green light in January. This has already helped drive the price of Bitcoin to record highs.
One day earlier on March 11, CoinDesk reported that Bitcoin’s market cap had reached US$1.42 trillion, putting it ahead of silver ($1.387T) and into eighth place among the world’s most valuable assets. There’s still a long way to go before Bitcoin overtakes gold ($14.7T) for the No. 1 spot, but it could happen if the price of Bitcoin goes to the moon and hits $720K.
I’m sure many of us would be content with $150K, and for the price to stay somewhere in that neighborhood rather than dip back down around $40K. There isn’t much more bounce left for us to expect when the next halving takes place roughly four years from now; Bitcoin’s future will depend on how people view it as an asset – and as a medium of exchange, which is ultimately what it was designed for.
It’s easy to be optimistic about the former, now that Bitcoin has left silver in the dust. However, I’m waiting for the day when people are using Bitcoin to buy pizza again. Yes, that was a thing. Some people even put pineapple on theirs.
