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Bitcoin prices have fallen this year.
Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images
Bitcoin
could regain its all-time high in November 2021 by 2026 and rise even higher if the fundamentals change, according to high-profile cryptocurrency advocate Michael Saylor.
Saylor – Chairman of the board of the business intelligence software company
Micro strategy
(ticker: MSTR) — said at MarketWatch’s Best New Ideas in Money Festival Wednesday that Bitcoin could return to the $68,990 peak “sometime in the next four years.” He added that Bitcoin could reach $500,000 in the next decade if the market capitalization of the biggest crypto — often billed as “digital gold” — comes to match that of actual gold.
Bitcoin was trading around $19,200 on Wednesday, more than two-thirds below the all-time high from last year.
A dramatic rout has swept the digital asset market in 2022, with Bitcoin leading the price lower as the market cap in the space has collapsed to below $1 trillion from nearly $3 trillion less than a year ago. The decline has been driven by forces in crypto – such as the meltdown of a key token – as well as a broader sell-off in the stock market as investors shed risk-sensitive assets amid red-hot inflation and rising interest rates.
Now, Saylor said he’s looking at Bitcoin’s four-year simple moving average — which is around $20,000 — to look for a potential bottom for the crypto market. “I think this is stable,” he said. “The next logical stop for Bitcoin is to replace gold as a non-sovereign store of value.”
It is familiar rhetoric from Saylor, whose leadership of
Micro strategy
— which he co-founded in 1989 — has been characterized by a large investment in crypto in recent years. MicroStrategy began buying Bitcoin in mid-2020 to maintain its balance sheet and has emerged as an influential “whale” in the crypto market.
Saylor stepped down from his role as CEO of the company earlier this year to focus on its crypto strategy. He added at the MarketWatch festival that the company is also developing the Lightning Network, which is a payment network built on top of Bitcoin.
Crypto continues to polarize. On the same day as Saylor’s statements,
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon doubled down on his view that Bitcoin was “worthless,” saying crypto tokens are “decentralized Ponzi schemes, and the notion that it’s good for anybody is unbelievable.”
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
