New Year Special
The world of cryptocurrencies is full of prophets and predictions of all ranges, just as any other financial market in the world. 2018 jumped right in with Bitcoin (BTC) hovering around $15,000 and investors being far too optimistic about the future of digital currencies. Some of the premonitions — especially related to BTC’s price by the end of the year — never came true, but many turned out to be quite realistic. Let’s take a look back at all of those hopes and fears.
Predictions that went wrong
Tom Lee: BTC will reach $25K
Seems that one of the world’s major crypto bulls, co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors Tom Lee, has had some bad luck predicting possible BTC rates. His main prophecy of the coin reaching $25,000 by the end of 2018, which he first expressed in January and then reiterated several times throughout the year, looks unlikely — as of December 2018, to say the least.
Lee himself admitted his stance was a mistake, first lowering the end-year mark to $15,000 and finally refusing to give any comments on the price of BTC:
“We are tired of people asking us about target prices. Because of the inherent volatility in crypto, we will cease to provide any timeframes for the realization of fair value.”
However, Lee still believes that the fair value of BTC is much higher than its current price. 2019 is almost here to prove whether Fundstrat’s co-founder is right.
Mike Novogratz: Institutions will dive into crypto
Mike Novogratz, an ex-Goldman Sachs partner and founder of crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital, was quite accurate in his 2018 predictions. In mid-December, after a significant market decline dubbed the “crypto winter,” he said that BTC’s price would not sink more, staying somewhere between $3,000 and $6,000, and he turned out to be right.
But his optimism toward institutional players entering the crypto industry was seemingly premature. “I think Q1 [or] Q2 [2019] if the institutions start coming in, we’ll put in new highs,” he said in October. Still, Bloomberg’s most recent report states that Wall Street’s dreams of crypto are now in a state of limbo, as the value of cryptocurrencies has fallen. The insiders told Bloomberg that financial giants — such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup — actually gave up their plans until a time when demand is higher.
Bloomberg: BTC is heading toward $1.5K
In fact, Bloomberg’s analysts themselves are prone to making mistakes when it comes to predictions. Just a few weeks ago, shortly after the first signs of the steep market drop, the media stated that BTC was heading toward the $1,500 mark, which would mean a 70 percent drop in the coin’s price. Well, the year is not yet over, but this forecast doesn’t seem realistic.
At least they get points for saying that “Bitcoin’s no longer boring.”
George Friedman: Blockchain will become obsolete
George Friedman, a geopolitical analyst for the online publication Geopolitical Futures, said in an interview back in June that blockchain technology would one day become obsolete, stating that the technology is just another fad.
While Friedman did not specify the time span he was talking about, as of late 2018, blockchain is very far from being outdated. The mass adoption is no longer a vain fantasy, as governments around the globe keep testing blockchain in different areas. Even China, which has continued to impose a strict ban on initial coin offerings (ICO) and domestic crypto exchanges, acknowledges the advantages of decentralized technology and has its own blockchain pilot zone.
It seems like the aging of blockchain in 2018 is more like a dystopian science fiction story rather than reality.
John McAfee: BTC will hit $500K in three years
An old-but-gold, unrealistic prediction by John McAfee, a cybersecurity legend and renown crypto enthusiast, was made in 2017, but is still relevant due to his extraordinary promise. Back then, McAfee promised that he would "eat my d--- on national television" if BTC failed to move above $500,000 mark by 2020.
As 2018 is almost over, there’s only one year left for McAfee not to split up with his manly parts. However, the cybersecurity pioneer’s spirit is still strong. He even raised the bar to $1 million and mocked his own bet in a recent Twitter post, claiming that — in the worst case — he would “probably subcontract the task to a relay team of Bangkok prostitutes.” Well, all there is to do now is wait and see what happens.
Predictions that came true
Ari Paul: BTC and BCH will have more hard forks
Ari Paul, the co-founder of the large-scale cryptocurrency hedge fund Block Tower, made a set of forecasts on his Twitter at the very beginning of 2018. Some of them were a bit precipitate, but Paul managed to predict Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork. The entrepreneur then wrote:
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