Max Keiser, the host of RT’s Keiser report and prominent financial analyst, predicted bitcoin price to hit $5,000 within 2017, considering the imminence of the Bitcoin Core development team’s scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit), rising demand from institutional investors and increasing adoption of bitcoin globally.
Throughout June and July, Keiser continuously laid out possible factors that could push bitcoin price over the $4,000 region and potentially to the $5,000 mark.
On August 13, bitcoin price established its new all-time high at $4,168, moving closer towards Keiser’s $5,000 target. Other analysts within the bitcoin community and cryptocurrency industry including Tone Vays and Squeeze also noted that bitcoin price will likely sustain momentum throughout August and September.
For early bitcoin adopters, investors and users, as Cooley LLP attorney and Blockchain policy counsel Margo Santori, bitcoin price could be the least interesting aspect of the digital currency. “Serious question: Is the least interesting thing about bitcoin still the price?,” Santori said.
The majority of investors and users of bitcoin strongly believe that bitcoin will evolve into a major financial system which holds the potential to replace existing inefficient banking systems, third party service providers and financial institutions and hence, are not concerned with bitcoin’s short term price trend.
However, the price of bitcoin is still one of the more accurate indicators that can be utilized to demonstrate the market’s confidence in the digital currency relative to other assets. For instance, on CNBC, major Wall Street strategist Tom Lee emphasized that bitcoin will likely surpass the growth rate of all US-based stocks and assets, and outperform all reserve currencies by the end of 2017.
“I think bitcoin is an under owned asset with potential for huge institutional sponsorship coming. It has a lot of characteristics that are very similar to gold that I think will make it ultimately attractive as an alternate currency. It’s a good store of value,” said Lee.
The upward momentum of bitcoin price is well supported and will likely be sustained in the upcoming months because factors that are driving the strong rally of bitcoin price are evident. As of current, bitcoin price is increasing at a rapid rate mainly due to the drastic increase in demand towards bitcoin from institutional investors and the market’s confidence in bitcoin’s ability to scale.
The imminence of SegWit activation has given investors and traders confidence that bitcoin can scale in the mid-term and eliminated any sort of uncertainty at a technical level. The August 1 Bitcoin Cash hard fork had minimal impact on the bitcoin network and since then, the Bitcoin network has efficiently been preparing for the activation of SegWit.
Previously, bitcoin and security expert Andreas Antonopoulos stated:
The recent rally of bitcoin price is well supported by the abovementioned factors and hence, the market is demonstrating absolute confidence in bitcoin. More importantly, the demand from institutional investors will likely surge in the upcoming months with the integration of bitcoin by the Chicago Board Options Exchange in collaboration with US-based exchange Gemini planned for August.
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