Bitcoin's rally has analysts scrambling to revise forecasts. Ronnie Moas, head of Standpoint Research, bumped his 2018 price target to $14,000 from $11,000 in a Monday note to clients, citing five mon
Bitcoin's rally has analysts scrambling to revise forecasts. Ronnie Moas, head of Standpoint Research, bumped his 2018 price target to $14,000 from $11,000 in a Monday note to clients, citing five months of tailwinds that have cleared obstacles from bitcoin's path.
Two developments drove the upgrade. The CME Group announced plans to launch bitcoin futures trading in mid-December. Square Inc., the payments company run by Jack Dorsey, began testing bitcoin support for its platform. Both moves signaled institutional interest in a market that had occupied the fringe until this moment.
Moas has tracked bitcoin's ascent since July, when he predicted the coin would hit $5,000 in 2018 at a price of $2,600. He called it a watershed moment. "People need to start taking this seriously because today bitcoin caught up with Goldman Sachs. Within five years, it's going to catch Apple which has (a more than) $800 billion market cap," he said then.
The analyst revised his forecast multiple times since. He pushed to $7,500, then $11,000, and now to $14,000. Bitcoin's current market cap stands at $136.5 billion.
Other major investors echo Moas's optimism. Catherine Wood, CEO and CIO of Ark Investment Management, sees bitcoin surpassing Amazon or Apple in value. Billionaire hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz told Bloomberg he expects bitcoin to break $10,000 before year's end and that the rally has much further to run. Novogratz compares bitcoin to gold, saying its value stems from consensus. "Bitcoin is the poster-child of the decentralised revolution," he said, adding that bitcoin remains in the second or third inning of its advance.
Wall Street, though, remains split. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, called bitcoin "a fraud" in September and dismissed it as "worth nothing." Yet his bank appears to be hedging its position. JPMorgan is exploring whether to offer clients the chance to wager on bitcoin's price through CME-listed futures contracts.
