2020 may have been a challenging year, but a rise in institutional interest and stablecoin support gave the cryptocurrency market its much-needed leverage to grow in Q4. Businesses are increasingly opening up to adopting blockchain technologies, and more countries are studying cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange. Moreover, media attention over cryptocurrency has convinced the mainstream market–from billionaires to ordinary individuals–to start looking into crypto investments as having an investor's foresight is one of clues to success
The high spirits at the end-of-2020 trickled into 2021, with a major start-of-year bear market fueled by Bitcoin’s bullish lead. Wall Street strategist Tom Lee claims that Bitcoin will likely experience a parabolic rise in 2021, and crypto enthusiasts are observing market trends as altcoins like Ethereum reach record highs. The market’s upward performance has led to many positive crypto predictions and forecasts for the year and beyond. Check out what analysts and crypto platforms have to say about crypto predictions today.
Bitcoin (BTC)
After peaking at $20,000 in 2017, Bitcoin’s performance has remained stagnant until the second half of 2020, when investors began putting funds into crypto and out of the stock market. 2018 saw the token’s price drop by over 70%, registering its worst performance yet. While prices rebounded in 2019, BTC’s performance remained unimpressive, leading to conservative predictions.
Surprisingly, 2020 registered an unexpected leap with the price of BTC closing at $28,889.61, matching crypto predictions made by Coinpedia and Prime XBT. The massive turnaround was caused by increased interest in the token after investors began looking for alternative assets to cushion the blow of the pandemic. Investors like Paul Tudor Jones, founder of Tudor Investment Corporation, are buying the cryptocurrency as an inflation hedge.
Just two days into 2021, BTC broke through the $30,000 mark. It hit an all-time high at $40,367 on January 7 but fell shortly after, with prices now oscillating in the $30,000 range. But experienced investors aren’t fazed by the drop in value. They’re riding on Bitcoin’s potential for a long-term bullish performance. As a result, Coinpedia predicts that the price of BTC will reach $70,000 to $80,000 by the end of 2021, and believe that it’s currently a good investment due to the token’s market potential. On the other hand, Trading Beasts makes a more conservative bitcoin evaluation of $36,654.19 by the end of the year.
Bitcoin has been dubbed as the best in its asset class, giving it a reputation for being digital gold–an investment-focused asset rather than currency. Coinswitch predicts that the sentiment will further boost the token’s adoption rates, which are expected to triple by 2022. As such, Prime XBT makes optimistic bitcoin value predictions, forecasting that BTC will reach $70,000 before the end of 2022 and $100,000 to $400,000 by 2025. With that said, other experts are positive that the growth will be more parabolic. For instance, Analyst Mike McGlone from Bloomberg believes that the price can reach $170,000 in as early as 2022.
Ethereum (ETH)
ETH is quickly becoming the next big cryptocurrency, especially as Ethereum has shifted its focus into developing the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. It surprised investors by outperforming BTC's growth in 2020, closing the year with a 450% increase over a 52-week period. The massive jump brought ETH prices up to $637.62 from its $129 start-of-year low. Coinpedia and Prime XBT made fairly accurate 2020 crypto predictions for ETH, coming close to its end-of-year performance.
So far, 2021 has proven to be a promising year for Ethereum, with prices peaking at $1,470.53 on January 25. Its performance is driven by the growing DeFi sector and the excitement surrounding the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. DeFi has been on the rise since 2020, with the total value locked (TVL) in projects increasing by over 2000% from $881 million in May 2020 to $26.41 billion in January 2021.
Most of the crypto predictions for ETH have remained conservative, with Trading Beasts forecasting an average price of $1,100.99 by the end of 2021 and $1,314.83 by the end of 2022. However, with its record-breaking performance in the first month of 2021 and the growing Ethereum 2.0 deposit contracts, Ethereum expert predictions are starting to bump up in value.
Fundstrat Global Firms argue that ETH is currently undervalued and has set a price target of $10,500 for 2021. With ETH currently trading at a little over $1,200, many believe that now is the perfect time to invest in the cryptocurrency. In the next few years, Ethereum will continue to transition into the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade and become a full-fledged Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network. Prices are expected to rise further as more investors start to see the value of blockchain.
Binance (BNB)
BNB was first launched in 2017 and has since grown to become a favorite among coin enthusiasts. BNB opened at $0.11 in 2017 and quickly rose to $24.46 in January 2018, but shortly plummeted by 81%, ending the year at $4.5. The token recovered in 2019 and registered an impressive growth of 125% from $6.19 to $13.95, outperforming most competitors that year. While BNB has only been in the market for a little over three years, the coin has made huge leaps to become the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap today. From a trading price of about $13 at the start of 2020, BNB ended the year at $38.13—a 193% increase that matched the crypto predictions made by Coinswitch and Trading Beasts.
The stability of the Binance exchange platform and the reputation of BNB as a utility token are driving the coin’s upward trend in value. Following the bullish trend in the past year, Trading Beasts predicts that BNB will reach $129.61 by the end of 2021 and $266.09 by the end of 2022. However, Coinpedia believes that the growth will be less exponential, predicting that BNB won’t make it to the $100 mark until 2025.
Given the climbing prices of BNB, many are speculative about its potential as an investment. The token’s rising prices can be linked to Binance’s unique feature of burning BNB. Each quarter, a certain amount of BNB is removed based on the number of trades that were performed on the Binance exchange in the previous quarter. This strategy reduces the BNB supply, which will, in turn, increase the value of each token. It’s scheduled to take place every quarter until 100 million BNB are removed. Binance’s coin burning feature is considered one of the most appealing aspects for investors since the supply reduction can lead to opportunities for a price increase.
The platform’s most recent quarterly burn has been its highest to date, with over 3.6 million BNB removed from circulation. According to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, the accelerated burn can lessen the time needed to reach the 100 million BNB mark. As such, BNB is certainly shaping up to be the cryptocurrency with the most potential to be an attractive investment.
Litecoin (LTC)
While Bitcoin is dubbed to be digital gold, Litecoin is often considered its sidekick–digital silver. Litecoin adopts most of Bitcoin’s best features but stands out for having lower transaction costs and a faster transaction speed. While LTC may not be trading close to the same value as BTC, analysts are still closely monitoring cryptocurrency Litecoin predictions to see how its price will change in the intermediate and long term.
LTC prices proved to be volatile in 2020, particularly due to the coronavirus-led panic crash. Its price reached the $66.65 mark in mid-August and plunged to below $50 before finding its footing and rebounding in Q4. By November, LTC was trading at the $80 mark, ending the year on a Bitcoin-led bullish term with a price of $130.04, close to the crypto predictions for 2020 made by Digital Coin Price. LTC has been performing relatively well in the 2021 bear market, making it a popular investment option for the year.
Coinswitch’s crypto price predictions for Litecoin remain optimistic, forecasting that it will reach $600 by the end of 2021 and hit the $1200 mark by 2025. Prime XBT, on the other hand, makes a parabolic prediction that LTC will reach $10,000 anytime between 2023 to 2025. Several experts believe that LTC’s similarity to BTC makes it valuable and potentially one of the most promising cryptocurrency today.
With that said, Litecoin also presents risks to investors due to the growing competition from other altcoins. Additionally, LTC founder Charles Lee made the bold move of selling his entire stake in 2017, naturally causing investor confidence to drop. Due to these risks, Trading Beasts and Long Forecast predict that LTC will only reach $286.67 and $334, respectively, by the end of 2024.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Bitcoin Cash was developed as a fork of Bitcoin to address its scalability issues. It was designed to be a faster blockchain that can handle more transactions at a faster rate by accommodating 8 MB of data compared to BTC’s 1 MB. As an extension of BTC, BCH has gained massive attention from cryptocurrency enthusiasts, causing its prices to skyrocket to $3,000 less than five months after its launch in 2017. However, the initial hype proved to be short-lived as 2018 saw prices plummeting significantly to the $300 mark before recovering in 2019.
Several experts believed that BCH would perform well in 2020 due to the developments planned for its infrastructure. These plans include Bitcoin Cash Wallet support and testing the Tipmebchbot, a bot that allows Telegram users to send tips with BCH. Given the hype surrounding these developments, Trading Beasts and Smartereum made optimistic crypto price predictions of up to $5,000 for the year, but BCH fell short and closed at $340.18 in 2020. Despite the token’s weak performance, experts are still hopeful that BCH will increase in value as it has a more robust network compared to its predecessor, Bitcoin.
Since Bitcoin Cash is a hard fork of the leading cryptocurrency, public sentiment remains optimistic for the coin. BCH is expected to undergo several innovations and developments in the next five years, which may drive its prices upward. Coinpedia predicts that BCH can reach $5,000 by 2025, but the forecasts for the preceding years are volatile. For instance, Long Forecast anticipates a negative long-term trajectory, with a prediction of $228 by 2023.
Most crypto predictions seem to show that BCH prices will plunge before improving, making it a risky short-term investment. Long-term investments that span at least five years may profit by 2025 to 2026, though this will ultimately depend on how Bitcoin Cash improves in the coming years.
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