Zhitong
2024.03.12 07:11
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"Bitcoin faith" reignited! Wall Street remains bullish: the current uptrend is just the beginning.

Bitcoin hit a historic high on Monday, surpassing $72,000. Institutions such as Standard Chartered Bank, Fundstrat, and SkyBridge predict a future price increase for Bitcoin, with SkyBridge forecasting it to reach $170,000 by 2025. However, some Wall Street analysts argue that due to Bitcoin's lack of intrinsic value, it is difficult to predict its future price. Nevertheless, some financial companies have set Bitcoin prices far above current levels and are selling risk exposure products. The CEO of JPMorgan Chase likened Bitcoin to a "pet rock."

Zhitong App has learned that on Monday, Bitcoin surged to over $72,000, hitting a new all-time high, but this is still far from the peak expected by some Bitcoin investors.

Standard Chartered Bank predicts that Bitcoin will reach $100,000 by the end of this year; research firm Fundstrat's target range is $116,000 to $137,000; according to hedge fund SkyBridge's forecast, Bitcoin will reach $170,000 by April 2025.

Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and CEO of SkyBridge Capital, told foreign media, "People think we're crazy, but I don't think so. This is just to explain why we have such a large position."

On October 17, 2023, at the WSJ TechLive conference of The Wall Street Journal, Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, gave a speech. His company, SkyBridge Capital, holds a certain amount of Bitcoin and predicts that the price of Bitcoin will rise to $170,000 by April 2025.

However, some analysts on Wall Street say that because Bitcoin has no intrinsic value, it will be very difficult to estimate its future price. Most large companies with extensive research departments currently do not set target prices. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, even likened Bitcoin to a "pet rock." An anonymous Wall Street research analyst said, "Bitcoin is like art, and it is impossible to determine a target price."

Nevertheless, this has not stopped other financial companies from attempting to set Bitcoin prices far above the current levels. Some companies making optimistic forecasts are also selling products that provide digital asset exposure to investors.

VanEck is one of them. It is a fund management company that obtained approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January this year to launch a new spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). As Bitcoin has continuously hit new all-time highs in the past week, VanEck has recently scrapped its $80,000 target price for 2024.

However, the company's "mid-term" target remains at $350,000. Matthew Sigel, Director of Digital Asset Research at VanEck, said, "We are in uncharted territory." Another fund management company, Ark Invest, which has been approved to launch a Bitcoin ETF, has put forward a long-term bullish case, predicting that the price of each Bitcoin will exceed $1.3 million in the next ten years.

Yassine Elmandjra, the digital asset director of Ark Invest, admitted that such a high prediction seems "absurd."

However, he provided reasons for this. With the increasing use cases of Bitcoin, the ultimate market value of digital assets will also increase accordingly. He stated that Bitcoin can become an "independent store of value" separate from central banks and governments, can serve as a hedge against inflation, and may have a larger share in global payments.

Elmandjra added that demand is the key factor in assessing price increases.

Generally, Wall Street strategists typically predict the future price of a stock by multiplying the company's earnings per share by the valuation that investors are willing to pay for the stock based on the company's growth strategy. Elmandjra said, "Measuring earnings per share requires looking at the stock's balance sheet. Here, [for Bitcoin], what you need to consider is the demand for holding a non-seasonal, strictly scarce digital native asset."

Currently, the demand for Bitcoin is significantly greater than the supply, mainly due to the 11 new Bitcoin ETFs that have attracted billions of dollars since their launch in January.

According to Mark Connors, research director at the crypto asset management company 3iQ, these new ETFs have been buying an average of 4,000 Bitcoins per day since their launch in January, far exceeding the 900 Bitcoins created by the Bitcoin network daily.

Furthermore, considering that Bitcoin's "halving" is expected to occur between April 19th and 20th, it is anticipated that there will be more supply issues for Bitcoin this year. After the next halving, the daily new coin supply will decrease from 900 to 450.

Connors' company has set a base target price for Bitcoin to reach $110,000 in 2024 and $140,000 the following year. In addition, the company has a more aggressive prediction, in which case Bitcoin will reach $180,000 this year and $450,000 in 2025.