CNBC is analyzing recent bullish claims on the price of Bitcoin from billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper.
Draper recently said Bitcoin will likely hit a quarter million dollars per BTC as early as next year and as late as 2023.
According to CNBC trader and analyst Brian Kelly, Bitcoin’s trendline since 2013 shows the leading cryptocurrency is on a long-term track toward Draper’s big number.
“It sounds bizzaro, but it wouldn’t be out of the realm of what Bitcoin has done in the past. That’s why I wanted to bring up this chart. And to be clear, this is not my call, but I just want to take a look at what Bitcoin does. The chart we have here is a log chart of Bitcoin since 2013. And as Carter Worth will say, the lines draw themselves.
You have this channel going all the way back to 2013, and it’s traded nicely in that. If you go all the way here to the top of this channel, that’s about $200,000 or $250,000. So if Bitcoin just stayed in this pattern, and this is normal analysis that people do on all asset classes, the top of that channel is about $200,000 or $250,000. So that’s the technicals behind it.
Kelly says the prediction depends on whether Bitcoin emerges as a digital alternative to gold. If BTC hits the big price target, Kelly points out it will have achieved half of gold’s market cap.
The fundamentals, let’s call it, is that if Bitcoin were at $250,000 that’d be about a $4.5 trillion market cap, which would be half the market cap of all the gold in the world. So I think Tim Draper thinks, and I certainly have some of this view, is that Bitcoin is going to take market share from gold. So if you think in two years it can take 50% of that market share, then that prediction isn’t too far out of whack.”
Fundstrat analyst Tom Lee says he thinks BTC could hit Draper’s big prediction, but isn’t so sure on his timeline.
“When you look at this on a log basis, the idea that Bitcoin would get there would be consistent with the idea that it’s a generational trade.
I don’t know if 24 months is how long it would take. If it took five years, I think it would still be considered a huge, massive, surprising success.”
Scott Melker of West Texas Capital says if you zoom out, Bitcoin is locked in a relatively tight range.
“When I left for vacation last Saturday, the price of Bitcoin was $7,170. Right now it is $7,140. Zoom out, not much is happening…
Tread lightly. That amazing bull div on the daily has been followed by hidden bear divs. The rally from a few days ago still looks more like relief than reversal for now. Mixed TA depending on the timeframe. Real potential bullishness starts above $7,800 or so.”
Meanwhile, analysts are looking for signs of life in the altcoin market.
A crypto trader and technical strategist who goes by the name CryptoDude tells his 12,000 followers on Twitter that Ethereum must now cling to a historical level of support against Bitcoin.
The analyst marks 0.017799 as the key number to watch, a line that held back in August but was broken in September.
“Chances of Ethereum overperforming Bitcoin ends if we get a close below the box.”
As for XRP, a fellow analyst known as Magic remains bearish on the third-largest coin by market cap.
The strategist tells his 31,000 followers that XRP is forming a potential inverted Adam and Eve pattern, which suggests that a breakdown to new lows could be on deck.
“Looks like XRP is forming a textbook inverted Adam and Eve on the lower time-frame. A breakdown below the red support level will confirm it.
An inverted adam and eve is a bearish pattern. Regular is bullish, but this one is inverted.”