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Goldman Sachs: Bitcoin Price to Eye $5,000 then Crash

Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:58 PM
Josiah Wilmoth
Last Updated March 4, 2021 4:58 PM

The bitcoin price posted another record high during the early hours of August 15, but it has since experienced a steep drop. On Coinbase, the bitcoin price has fallen 5% to $4,025.

bitcoin price
Bitcoin Price Chart from Coinbase

Despite today’s downward movement, Sheba Jafari, a chief technical analyst at Goldman Sachs, says investors have a reason to be hopeful–at least in the short term. Two months ago, Jafari predicted that the bitcoin price would correct down to about $1,900 before approaching $4,000. Her forecast more or less proved correct, although the bitcoin price has extended past her maximum target during its bullish turn.

Bitcoin Price to Approach $5,000 then Crash

On Sunday, Jafari sent a note to Goldman Sachs clients updating her forecast. She anticipates that the bitcoin price will continue to rise to a maximum of $4,827 during its fifth wave.

Jafari is not the only analyst to forecast that bitcoin will approach the $5,000 mark. Max Keiser made that claim in June, and BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes recently told Business Insider  that Segwit implementation puts $5,000 “within striking distance.” Stock researcher Ronnie Moas is even more bullish, predicting that the bitcoin price will surpass $7,500 by the end of 2017.

However, Jafari does not believe bitcoin will reach $5,000 during its fifth wave. In fact, she expects the bitcoin price to crash by more than 38% at the completion of the wave. As she told  investors:

[O]nce a full five-wave sequence is in place, the market should in theory enter a corrective phase….This can last at least one-third of the time it took to complete the preceding advance and retrace at least 38.2 percent of the entire move.

This crash would reduce the value of bitcoin below $3,000. Jafari says bitcoin could correct down as far as $2,221, a level the market has not seen since the mid-July downtrend.

If the market does move as Jafari anticipates, investors should not panic. Even a drop to $2,221 would still give bitcoin a year-to-date increase of more than 130%. Despite claims to the contrary, bitcoin is not analogous to 17th-century Tulipmania in Holland, and the markets should experience an eventual recovery. After all, even Goldman Sachs has admitted that cryptocurrencies are “getting harder [for institutional investors] to ignore.”