Let us start off this interesting discussion. I hope you will enjoy this post and your opinions are welcome. Feel free to criticise and kindly up vote me if you like the post. This will encourage me to write other interesting posts about the best coins to hold for long term and the current market opportunities.

Why the Bitcoin seems to be stagnated for a while?

At current time, the Bitcoin price seems to be fluctuating between its highest price of 3000 USDs and 2000 USDs level. This stagnation in the past weeks is due to several factors, among which three most prominent ones are:

1. Huge potential gains which are offered by ICOs “initial coin offerings” as well as other altcoins which are very low priced and can potentially increase the wealth many folds as compared to Bitcoin and other established currencies like Ethereum. News like “someone bought a coin with .0001 USDs and the guy became a millionaire in a week when the price reached 1 USDs” really feed the greed and motivate people to invest in new coins which have more volatility.

2. Many platforms like Coinbase which previously offered Bitcoin as the only option to convert Fiat Currency like EUROS and USDs to Cryptocurrency, now also offer other cheaper alternatives like Ethereum and Litecoin etc.,. So it is logical that the money which could have been used to purchase Bitcoin is now been leaked out to buy other alternatives.

3. The third major factor was the current news about the fork of Bitcoin which really confused the newbies and people with little technical background but who saw the potential and economic need to store value in Bitcoin which has limited supply as compared to the FIAT currencies. I will write another article on the Bitcoin Scaling issues but for this article let us stick to the point “will Bitcoin price reach 5000 USDs and beyond? ”. So, in short, the fear related to the concerns about the consequences of the “possible – though not very probable” Bitcoin fork in August has led to the investors waiting or selling until August 2017.

Are we in a cryptocurrency bubble?

The simple answer is no we are not in a bubble, surely, we will undergo corrections from time to time. Also, many people will pump and dump “for short term profits” due to which the fluctuations in prices will surely happen as we saw recently “fluctuating between 2800 USDs to as low as 1900 USDs” on many exchanges. But in the background, due to wider adoption “i.e., Amazon, Subway and other global businesses are already using Bitcoin and some other crypto currencies. This is only going to increase the value of Bitcoin. But the retail is only a tip of the iceberg, Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies have plethora of use cases and could be used in many different scenarios. So, in short, as the adoption of Bitcoin increases, so will its value. It has a limited supply and is not a piece of paper which can come out of a Government led printing press.

Many currencies are failing due to ongoing inflation. One recent example is that of Venezuela where many businesses are now only accepting Bitcoins. If you think of Venezuela as a country which is an exception, go back in time and you find that before WW2, Germany went through a similar situation. Richard Nixon’s creation of Fiat currency machine some decades back has literally led to the printing press of FED to print currency like a printing press. With trillions of USDs of debt, and so much supply, USD is destined to fail soon as per experts.

Furthermore, the size of the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies market is still negligible as compared to the FIAT currency stuck in Hedge Funds, Bonds and so on and so forth. Still like any new paradigm shift in society, we are witnessing the dawn of a new era where people will have much more control over their finances. Also, people are fed up with low returns of funds, bonds and real estate so they are looking for a better way to store value. So just imagine, if even 5% of total FIAT currency makes its way to the cryptocurrency space, we will see a market capitalization of well over 1 Trillion USDs. You do the math! Currently the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is about 120 Billion USDs.

Furthermore, Bitcoin being the most established player and on many exchanges for many years to come Bitcoin markets will have the most wider options to purchase other cryptocurrencies like Steem, Litecoin, Stratis and so on, therefore people must first buy Bitcoins to invest in these Altcoins. So, you see the point! implicitly, you first hold Bitcoin to be able to able to invest on most other cryptocurrencies and this trend will go on for some years. Therefore, this will push the Bitcoin price higher since Bitcoin will still be bought by many people even if their intent is to buy an Altcoin “coins other than Bitcoin”. Right now, many hedge funds are reluctant to invest in Bitcoin but with time, more and more hedge funds will pour their money into Bitcoin causing its value to increase.

Here is a very interesting video explaining why we are not in a crypto bubble.

Opinion of experts about future Bitcoin Prices.

Here is an interesting video showing the way well known hedge fund managers, entrepreneurs and financial experts think about the prospects of bitcoin.

This is probably the most amazing video in which the price of Bitcoin has been accurately predicted. Even the way graph of Bitcoin will evolve has been accurately estimated.

Conclusion “Will the Bitcoin reach the 10000 USDs Mark”:

It is possible and highly probable. Of course, the price of Bitcoin has seen many crashes along the way but each time it has emerged even stronger. This is a very interesting picture showing the way Bitcoin prices dropped sharply three times before but each time it outperformed the previous highs by many times. As per the opinion of Max Keiser, this trend is going to continue until the price of Bitcoin reaches 10000 USDs.

The chart has surprisingly similar shape during the previous instances of sudden drops. Each time people thought “oh it has crashed and it is never goanna be the same and each time they were proven wrong.” Even during the past month, the value of Bitcoin has increased by over 20 %.

Apart from wider adoption “as explained before”, media and influencers are giving Bitcoin way more attention than ever. Many popular magazines like the Wall Street Journal showed it on front page and it is hard to find a program related to world’s financial markets which does not mention Bitcoin or Cryptocurrencies.

Therefore, the insights and observations converge to the conclusion that it is likely that the price of Bitcoin will hit 5000 to 10000 USDs during the first six months of 2018. We are at the tip of the iceberg and as more online retailers, digital platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, Food Chains and other businesses start accepting Bitocins as paymens we will see a sharp increase in the price of Bitcoin taking it to new highs. The decreasing purchasing power of the USDs, low ROI of bonds, funds and real estate will also increase its price since people will see it as a better way to store value. In the past 12 months Bitcoin’s price increased from 600 USDs to 2500 USDs which is an ROI of 4 times. Therefore, considering these facts and as per opinion of experts, I can confidently state that the Bitcoin’s price can hike to somewhere between 5000 USDs and 10000USDs during the first six months of 2018.

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Sources for Images and other salient sources for gathering information:

http://www.shopperculture.com/point_of_sale/page/2/

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/bitcoin-price-hedge-funds-not-investing.html

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-bullish-uptrend-climbs/