Bitcoin go down? Bitcoin go up? Bitcoin go really up?
It’s a parlour game of predictions that crypto pontificators love to play.
As 2024 comes to a close, the industry’s leading lights are again sharing their conjectures about the new year.
VanEck, the investment management firm, said that 2025 will continue to bring new highs to Bitcoin and the crypto market.
And Noelle Acheson, a crypto analyst, said that Bitcoin’s price will pass $125,000.
But, as the rush of predictions come in, let’s not forget to dole out grades to our past prognosticators.
Here’s an incomplete list of previous forecasts for 2024 from crypto luminaries like Mike Novogratz, Arthur Hayes, and Tim Draper.
Bears
Crypto executives aren’t crypto pessimists. After all, they’ve devoted their careers to the industry.
Still, compared to over-the-moon Bitcoin price predictions for 2024, Arthur Hayes, VanEck, and Bitwise were bearish.
Hayes, co-founder of crypto exchange BitMEX and the founder of family office Maelstrom Fund, predicted in October 2023 that Bitcoin would rise to around $70,000 by the end of 2024.
Bitwise, the institutional crypto investment firm, said in its end-of-year note in 2023 that it expected Bitcoin to trade above $80,000 and set a new all-time high.
And analysts from VanEck, the financial firm that has waded into crypto, predicted in December 2023 that Bitcoin would hit an all-time high in the fourth quarter of 2024. They did not provide a price target.
With their more carefully worded predictions, Bitwise and VanEck proved to be correct. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Bitcoin did hit all-time highs and crossed $100,000 for the first time.
And while Hayes underestimated Bitcoin’s forthcoming bull run, that doesn’t mean he’s bearish.
By the end of 2026, Bitcoin will hit somewhere between $750,000 and $1 million, he proclaimed.
Bulls
Tim Draper, Standard Chartered, or Matrixport tapped into the hopium slightly more than Hayes, VanEck and Bitwise.
In 2018, Draper, a prominent venture capital investor, predicted that Bitcoin would rocket to $250,000 in 2022.
Bitcoin didn’t hit the quarter-million mark that year, so, in January 2023, he said the cryptocurrency would rise to $250,000 by the end of the year.
Bitcoin failed to comply, but Draper wasn’t deterred.
In April 2024, he again re-upped his prediction and proclaimed that, on the heels of momentum from the launch of spot exchange-traded funds, Bitcoin would finally reach $250,000 by the end of 2024.
In November, Draper backtracked and said Bitcoin would hit $120,000 by December.
Similarly, an analyst at Matrixport, a crypto financial services platform, predicted in July 2023 that Bitcoin would rise to $125,000 by 2024.
And analysts at Standard Chartered, one of the UK’s biggest banks, first forecast that Bitcoin’s price would rise to $120,000 in 2024, then $150,000, before finally settling on $125,000.
While not far off, Draper, Matrixport, and Standard Chartered overshot Bitcoin’s ending price in 2024 by about $20,000.
Dreamers
Can a crypto exec overdose on “hopium?”
Cathie Wood, Michael Saylor, and Mike Novogratz have tried.
In 2021, Novogratz, the CEO of the crypto investment firm Galaxy Digital, proclaimed that, in 2024, Bitcoin would hit $500,000.
But in March, he said, in one of the more accurate predictions of the year, that Bitcoin would hit $100,000.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, the investment firm that has gobbled up crypto stocks and cryptocurrency, has been more bullish.
The firm has said Bitcoin would hit $500,000 by 2026 and $1 million by 2030.
But Wood and Novogratz pale in comparison to the laser-eyed Michael Saylor.
The founder and chairman of MicroStrategy has proclaimed that Bitcoin will hit $13 million a piece by 2045.
Maybe Saylor will be right. Or maybe, like most other crypto executives, he’ll be way off the mark.
Ben Weiss is DL News’ Dubai Correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.
