BITCOIN could reward its investors by hitting values of $25,000 (£18,069) by the end of the year and as much as $20,000 (£14,455) by the middle of 2018, the co-founder of a strategy and sector research company has claimed.Co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors Tom Lee declared that despite a period of free-falling prices, Bitcoin may see an incredible resurgence and hit figures that will please investors.
He stated: “We believe Bitcoin will see $20,000 by mid-year, so the next so the next five months, a real covering price and then $25,000 by the end of this year, so we see Bitcoin essentially tripling.
“So we’re still very constructive on cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is still the most important and liquid of those crypto assets.”
Mr Lee acknowledged that there could be a correlation between investors on global markets and cryptocurrencies seeing a “risk-on assets everywhere”.This means that as the value of virtual currencies plummeted, investors may have been dismayed from risky assets.
He stated: “I wouldn’t be surprised if those investors who saw risks on assets everywhere outperforming globally were also buying cryptocurrencies.
“So I think as Bitcoin began to weaken and they derisked, it could easily look like a chart that looks like the S&P because both had a parabolic move and then subsequently gave back some of those gains, but I think the connection between the two is really, really limited.”
Last week the benchmark S&P 500 fell 4.1 per cent and the Dow 4.6 per cent, suffering their biggest percentage drops since August 2011 as a long-awaited pullback from record highs deepened.Mr Lee added that as equities have seen a sharp increase in investors, so too have cryptocurrencies.
He continued: "In the past 12 months, not only did we have a strong rally in equities, we had a strong rally in cryptocurrencies.”
Back in December, Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $19,535.70 (£13,991.86) on December 17 before sharply declining.A brief resurgence of the cryptocurrency occurred on January 6 when the value hit $17,035.60 (£12,201.24) before dramatically going into free fall.
However, Bitcoin appears to be on the road to recovery after rising to $751.34 (£543.04) this week alone - a 9.86 per cent increase.
The current value of the virtual currency at the time of writing is $8,390 (£6,063.96), according to Coinbase.
