Price forecast for Bitcoin (BTC / USD) for 2019: most likely option for the long-term bear market

The pessimistic forecasts of some analysts predict a declining market for the next year.
The most optimistic positions underline that the BTC could exceed the peak reached in 2017.
What do analysts predict the price of bitcoins for 2019?
The year 2018 has already entered its last stretch, so it is a tradition that in this month of December people will seize the opportunity to draw up a budget for the year that ends and try to predict the main events of # 39; year that begins.

This practice is not an exception in the field of cryptographic coins, so it is normal that personalities and spokespersons of different companies, both inside and outside the ecosystem, make predictions, largely linked to the price and the future of cryptographic coins.

The attention of this year is focused, above all, on the price of bitcoin, in view of the significant fall of the cryptomarket in November.

After waiting for almost the entire course of 2018 to bring prices back to the levels reached at the end of 2017 (when the BTC peaked at almost $ 20,000), let's see what some analysts expect for next year.

A FEW FAVORABLE EXPECTATIONS

In the most pessimistic group there is the security company Kaspersky Lab, which a few days ago launched its forecasts for 2019, presenting an unfavorable perspective for the ecosystem.

According to the company, the price of encrypted ones is likely to remain at low levels and the use of cryptographic coins as a means of payment will diminish, as well as to believe that expectations on the benefits of blockchain technology will diminish.

The company establishes a direct relationship between the price of cryptographic coins and the public interest. Based on this, it ensures that the public interested in cryptographic coins is limited and "once this limit is reached, the price will no longer increase".

In the same line of ideas, Arthur Hayes, CEO of BitMEX, said that the bearish market that characterized 2018 changed the hope that the BTC will reach $ 50,000 this year. Therefore, last July, he said the currency did not see the worst, when bitcoin dropped briefly below $ 6,000 at the end of June. At that time he had predicted that the crypto currency would reach levels between $ 5,000 and $ 3,000 this year.

In his most recent statements he says that the bear market will be dominant throughout 2019, a trend that could last until early 2020. Hayes referred to one of BitMex Research's analysis of the historical performance of bitcoin, where it is estimated that the current bearish period has started on March 12 and is likely to last at least 200 days longer.

ANALYZE VALLI AND PEAKS

A similar approach to Hayes exposes the founder of Morgan Creek Capital Management, Anthony Pompliano, one of those who predicted that bitcoin would reach $ 50,000 by the end of 2018, although he later admitted that his prediction was wrong.

Based on the valleys and bitcoin peaks along their price history, Pomplao assured, in one of the bulletins published on his blog last August, that the bitcoin could first fall to $ 3,000, before seeing a positive trend in the market, something that he believes could happen in the third quarter of 2019.

Pompliano explains that bear markets tend to last longer, remembering that the first bear market lasted 160 days (in 2011) and the second 400 days (2013-2014). As a result, he estimates that the current bear market, if it follows the historical trend, could last 650 days.

With similar arguments, the foreign exchange market analyst Willy Woo explains that the BTC is in a valley and will end up in the coming months. To make its prediction, Woo uses the NVT indicator (BTC market value between the daily trading volume in USD), created by him in 2017, and the average price of that cryptographic asset in the last 200 days, or average mobile.

POSITIONS EXPECTING SIGNIFICANT RISKS

In May 2018, Fundstrat analyst Thomas H. Lee predicted that the bitcoin would reach US $ 36,000 by the end of 2019, based on the likely growth of mining infrastructure.

At that time, the expert on Wall Street explained that his thesis on the price of bitcoin had a risk, related to the trajectory of the hash index (a measure of the processing power of the bitcoin network), which could change the ability to support prices. Even so, he considered that the growth of this index could support a value of USD 36,000, with a range from USD 20,000 to USD 64,000 up to the end of 2019.

Although the market remained on a downtrend in the months following this statement, Lee maintained its forecasts in July 2018, also calculating that by the end of the year the price would have been around USD 9,000 and even USD 25,000.

Mike Novogratz, a former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund manager who founded the Galaxy Digital cryptocurrency bank, said he expects another bitcoin rally in the second quarter of 2019, which could break the $ 10,000 barrier.

However, he believes that this time the increase would be driven by institutional investors and not by members of the community. The main reason for this situation is that there will be a generalized case of FOMO (fear of losing) at the institutional level.

In the short term, the entrepreneur's expectations were not very optimistic for the date of these statements (before the collapse of prices last November), as it ensured that the crypt would not reach $ 9,000 again in 2018.

THE MOST OPTIMISTIC

The CEO of the research company Brave New Coin, Fran Strajnar, predicts that the price of bitcoin will reach USD 200,000 by 1 January 2020.

In an interview published last May he made his calculations, taking into account that the rates of adoption were constant, in a process that, in his opinion, grows at a rate strongly correlated to the price.

The same optimism was shown by John McAfee, founder of the company of the same name, after the famous bet last year, in which he assured that the bitcoin would be valued at one million dollars in 2020. Although it has not indicated a specific price for 2019 , the business man calculated that on December 31, 2019 the BTC could have been around 170,000 USD, to be on track to reach the milestone of 1 million dollars a year later.

INTERMEDIATE POSITIONS

At an intermediate point between optimism and pessimism there is another group of analysts, such as Todd Gordon, founder of TradingAnalysis.com, which in various media had shown, shortly before the current decline, to expect a decline in bitcoin that would have asked him for $ 4,000. But it also predicts that a subsequent rebound will take him to $ 10,000 at the start of 2019.

More moderate expectations have been reported by the professor of monetary and financial economics at the Complutense University of Madrid, Pedro Durá, who considers it difficult to foresee the evolution of bitcoin next year.

Everything can depend on expectations on the evolution of its use, which in turn are linked to innumerable variables such as, for example, the regulatory response in different countries, the behavior of traditional currencies, the evolution of other cryptocurrencies , and so on .

Pedro Durá
Professor, Complutense University of Madrid

In general, the predictions above show a kind of polarity in the analysis of market behavior, which makes some very optimistic and others very pessimistic.

As a result, it is difficult to know what to really expect in terms of the price of cryptographic coins for the coming year. For this reason, placing itself between the extreme positions, there are those who do not even have the courage to make any prognosis, as Professor Durá did.

However, there is a point that most analysts agree on, namely that the cryptochromat and blockchain technology are already part of a reality and their influence in the world of finance, economics and technology is more and more evident, a sign that they have come to stay, independent of the increase or the fall of bitcoins.