Here’s What Analysts Are Saying Bitcoin’s Price Will Be By End of Year

While a variety of reasons are given for expecting bitcoin to rise even higher this year, forecasts tend to belong to one of two groups: 1) those that look to the world’s macroeconomic situation and bitcoin’s place within it; and 2) those that look at historic increases in order to extrapolate where bitcoin ‘should’ be by the start of 2022. Either way, most professional traders and analysts are expecting bitcoin to reach new heights.

On top of this, we should also expect a number of major altcoins to hit new all-time highs by 2022, including Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot and Avalanche, among others.

Here’s What Present and Historical Data Says About Bitcoin’s Price

Let’s start with historical data. Looking solely at bitcoin’s price increase from January 1, 2020 to January 1, 2021 ($7,197 to $29,000), we would expect it to reach about $116,000, if it were to increase by the same percentage (302%) between the start and end of 2021.

This more or less chimes with other forecasters looking at other kinds of historical data. For instance, in its October 2021 report, Kraken Intelligence noted that the fourth quarter of this year is exhibiting a strong 0.88 correlation with the fourth quarter of 2017, when crypto experienced one of its most famous rallies. And because Q4 2017 saw BTC increase by 220% (compared to Q4 2016), we would expect the cryptocurrency to rise all the way up to $96,355.

Source: Kraken intelligence

Of course, there’s no guarantee that Q4 2021 will be exactly like Q4 2017. Nonetheless, other historical data supports Kraken’s analysis, with a report published by Pantera Capital in June showing bitcoin’s 11-year historical price trend. And based on BTC’s historical price data up until this point, we would expect an end-of-2021 price of $100,000.

Source: Pantera Capital

This extrapolation of bitcoin’s average growth over time is eerily similar to what’s predicted by the stock-to-flow model, which is most famously associated with the online analyst PlanB. What this measures is the current stock of bitcoin against the flow of newly mined coins, with the model basically calculating how long, given the current rate of production, it will take to replenish bitcoin’s current supply. This is then used to arrive at an estimation of bitcoin’s price growth over time.

Well, much like with Kraken Intelligence, the stock-to-flow model forecasts a bitcoin price of $100,000 by the start of 2022. And while many would be (understandably) skeptical of a model that looks at supply levels and price trends alone, it has been roughly accurate this year, and for much of its history.

Source: PlanB/Twitter

Here’s What the Analysts Say

Again, historical data on its own is no guarantee of anything, but a fair amount of analysts do also see bitcoin rising to new highs for more fundamental and macroeconomic reasons.

For example, JPMorgan’s JP Morgan, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou has forecast a price of $73,000 for the end of the year (and $146,000 in the longer term), based largely on the following assumptions:

• Fears surrounding inflation — which reached a 30-year high in the US in October — have renewed investor interest in using bitcoin as a hedge.

• Similarly, millennials are more drawn towards bitcoin than gold as an inflation hedge, while gold hasn’t responded as strongly to inflation fears as bitcoin. As such, we’re going to see bitcoin taking more of the gold market in the coming weeks and months.

Likewise, crypto-economist Alex Krüger predicted an end-of-year-price for bitcoin between $75,000 and $85,000 in a recent interview. This is based on two main factors: the increasing acceptance of ETFs, and inflation and (effectively negative) interest rates.

“We just had a slew of ETFs (exchange-traded funds) approved and that changed everything, I think. So my base-case scenario is more like $75,000 – $85,000,” he told host Scott Melker.

Krüger also suggested that bitcoin could potentially hit $100,000 by the end of the year, although this would be a best-case scenario. In a sector full of bulls, his voice is a relatively sober one, yet there are some analysts at established institutions that are aiming for a $100,000 target for bitcoin next year, or higher.

Most notably, Bloomberg’s senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone has been predicting $100,000 for bitcoin by 2022 since at least March of this year, and he renewed his commitment to this end-of-year target last month. In particular, he suggested that the US’ desire to be at the forefront of the cryptocurrency industry will lead it to introducing constructive regulation and also to approving more Bitcoin ETFs, which in turn will help BTC reach $100,000.

Source: Twitter

Taken together, these predictions suggest that we can expect an end-of-year price for bitcoin somewhere between $73,000 and $100,000. This obviously doesn’t narrow things down very much, but it’s encouraging to note that pretty much everyone agrees that BTC will reach a new ATH by the start of 2022. Seeing as how financial institutions such as US Bank, BNY Mellon and Commonwealth Bank of Australia increasingly embraced bitcoin this year, and not to mention governments in El Salvador, Ukraine and elsewhere, this is probably as safe a bet as you can find in crypto.

At the same time, we can likely expect new all-time highs by the end of the year for a range of major altcoins. Goldman Sachs, for instance, has said in a recent note to investors that it expects ETH to double by 2022, to somewhere in the $8,000 region. While few other altcoins have entered the radars of institutions such as Goldman Sachs, a doubling of price for some of the biggest (such as Solana, Avalanche, Polkadot and Cardano) wouldn’t be out of the question, if only because they’re starting from considerably smaller bases.