Strategists at the leading U.S. bank have been crunching the numbers and comparing Bitcoin to traditional store of value assets such as gold.
Led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the analysts suggested that Bitcoin’s current market capitalization of around $580 billion would have to rise by 4.6 times to create a theoretical price of $146,000. This would match the total private sector investment in gold via exchange-traded funds or bars and coins, according to Bloomberg.
Big Bank Bold on Bitcoin
JP Morgan made a similar prediction in November 2020 when analysts at the firm suggested that Bitcoin could rise as much as ten times as it competes with gold for institutional investors.
This latest prediction added that a crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies a big upside for Bitcoin over the long term. However, this would be a multi-year process as a convergence in volatilities between Bitcoin and gold is unlikely to happen quickly, according to JPM strategists who added;
“This implies that the above-$146,000 theoretical Bitcoin price target should be considered as a long-term target, and thus an unsustainable price target for this year.”
The Wall Street bank, which has had a hot and cold relationship with crypto, clearly sees a long term progression for Bitcoin prices with an increase in institutional wallets and funds such as Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust. The firm has just hit another record in terms of assets under management, which is now just shy of $23 billion;
01/04/21 UPDATE: Net Assets Under Management, Holdings per Share, and Market Price per Share for our Investment Products.
Total AUM: $22.8 billion$BTC $BCH $ETH $ETC $ZEN $LTC $XLM $XRP $ZEC pic.twitter.com/XLyZInUXsR
— Grayscale (@Grayscale) January 4, 2021
JP Morgan strategists suggested that prices could continue upwards as the FOMO mounts but added that they would be unsustainable at those levels:
“While we cannot exclude the possibility that the current speculative mania will propagate further pushing the Bitcoin price up toward the consensus region of between $50,000-$100,000, we believe that such price levels would prove unsustainable.”
BTC Price Update
At the time of press, Bitcoin was trading down 8% on the day at $30,900. Following yesterday’s sharp decline, prices dropped below $28,000 briefly before bouncing back to touch an intraday high of $32,800.
If a second daily red candle forms and support at $31k is broken, the asset could fall further as the correction accelerates. Previous bull market corrections have been as large as 30%, which would result in a fall back to the previous all-time high of $20k.
The long term outlook, according to JPM, among others, is still very bullish for the king of crypto, and corrections will serve as buying and accumulation zones for investors, retail and institutional alike.
