Cryptocurrencies have been in existence since 2008, beginning from Bitcoin and leading to many other altcoins. Even though these new assets aimed to provide financial stability, the crypto market remains highly volatile.
Tim Draper is well known for his big predictions on Bitcoin. After predicting that Bitcoin will hit a price of $250,000 by the end of 2022, he further added that he is only underestimating Bitcoin’s market. Draper expressed that Bitcoin and AI have the potential to transform all industries, such as the banking sector as well.
In this article, we take a look at what we can expect from Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple in 2020 and beyond.
Bitcoin Market Overlook
The Bitcoin Halving took place on 12th May 2020, and we saw an instant drop in the price below $8,500. However, since then the price has slowly recovered to around $8,800.
A few days before the Halving, on 8th May, Bitcoin had surged to a high of $10K, the highest since February. Due to the global virus pandemic, the Bitcoin market was poorly affected, the price of 1 BTC had gone just below $5K, but the bullish pattern followed, and currently, Bitcoin is looking healthy and looking to break past $9,000.
Bitcoin also had a market cap of $178.26 billion, with a total of 18.38 million BTC in the market. Grayscale Q1 2020 report showed that approximately 88% of the investment into Bitcoin came from institutions, primarily through hedge funds. With increasing institutional investments, the price of Bitcoin should surge to new highs by Q3 of 2020.
Bitcoin Predictions from the Experts
A bitcoin investor and research analyst Tuur Demeester predicted that even with the Halving dropping the prices to a low of $4,000, the bullish pattern continued, and a price target of $50,000 – $100,000 does not seem insane. He also tweeted out saying that institutions will help to drive the price up as they rush to buy Bitcoin as a “land grab phase” .
Raoul Pal, the CEO of Global Macro Investor, released charts on May 8 that predicted Bitcoin would reach $40,000 and even $1 million. He used a log chart and standard deviation for his predictions of future Bitcoin prices.
Ethereum Market Outlook
Ethereum is at a market value of $203 at the time of writing this article, with a market cap of $22.62 billion and 111.09 million ETH in circulation. ETH is the second biggest cryptocurrency in the market right now.
Ethereum crossed the $270 by mid-February but saw a drop in prices in mid-March. But the bulls roared on, and the market has recovered ever since finding new resistance levels.
Ethereum 2.0 will be kicked off in the summer of 2020 and will go on for another year or two until three phases are complete. Here Ethereum 2.0 Staking involves locking up a certain amount of cryptocurrency in a wallet to participate in the staking of a blockchain for rewards.
Staking means validating blocks of the blockchain and earning rewards for it. In theory, anyone can stake a token, but practically a protocol will determine who can validate blocks and earn the rewards.
Ethereum worked on the proof-of-work concept and is switching to proof-of-stake, which is much more energy-efficient. It also leads to a more decentralized network. ETH has been following Bitcoin, and with Bitcoin reaching new highs, it also relates to altcoins reaching new highs and providing a chance to catch up.
Ethereum Prediction from the Experts
Alex Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, is highly positive about the Ethereum market. He expects ETH to have a value of $1,500. He even told Forbes that ETH is relatively new, and people are still building on it.
The CEO & Founder at Alchemist, Steven Nerayoff, who is known as the “architect of the ICO,” helped ETH to skyrocket in 2007, and he expects ETH to reach $3,000 soon. He bases this prediction on the reasoning that there is an exponential increase in the number of projects bringing billions of dollars to the ETH market.
Nigel Green, the CEO of deVere Group, one of the world’s leading independent international financial consultancy agencies, gave a future price prediction of $2,500 and could even go further in 2020. He backed his predictions with facts such as more platforms are using ETH as a form of trading, increased use of smart contracts, and decentralization of cloud computing.