Currently trading at $7,477, according to Coinmarketcap, bitcoin needs to hit $7,800 and push above $8,000 for momentum to be maintained, but Barry Silbert has called the bottom.
However, with signs of resistance at $7,500, bitcoin's climb may take a little longer than seemed likely to be the case earlier in the week.
Analysts cite competing reasons for the bullish charge. Some point to short-sellers being caught in a squeeze where they are forced to buy to close their losing positions. Others see rising trading volumes as evidence of new money coming on tap. The
News that asset manager BlackRock is eyeing the crypto space has also lifted sentiment.
BitMEX exchange co-founder and chief executive Arthur Hayes thinks another drop, towards $5,000, is in the offing before the bottom is definitely set. He predicts prices rising to “just shy of $10,000” before the testing of the bottom at $5,000.
“I would like to see us test 5,000 to really see if we put a bottom in,” Hayes told CNBC.
Hayes has a price target for bitcoin of $50,000 by the end of the year.
The $5,000 level would take the market back to where it was in October and the "irrational exuberance" began to flourish.
With the bitcoin price now 30% higher from recent lows at around $5,800 and trading volumes up 100% this week from $2.9 billion on 14 July to $6.1 billion on 18 July, the worst of the bull market does feel like it is done. However, with volumes falling back to a little over $5 billion yesterday the retracement to $10,000 is not a foregone conclusion.
Weekend price action will be closely watched for evidence that momentum is being maintained.
One industry influencer who sees the bottom is Barry Silbert, the chief executive of the Digital Currency Group, a company with its fingers many crypto pies, as witnessed in its investments in Coinbase, Circle, CoinDesk and much more.
“I think the bears just kind of ran out of energy,” says Silbert, who went on to assert that more institutional money was entering the market. Silbert based his thoughts on a report from Grayscale Investments, another company of which he is the chief executive. Grayscale is the provider of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (BIT) and in a report published this week related that “56% of $250m raised till date [first half of this year] came from institutional investors”.
Grayscale has launched a number of other crypto-based investment trusts but it is the bitcoin product that attracts most funds.
Institutional interest may be attracted by the ease with which BIT be bought and the fact that it is a regulated product. The trust holds bitcoin directly but it trades at an outsized premium to its net asset value of 48%, which makes it an expensive way to gain exposure, especially when the management fee of 2% in added on. It is currently priced at $11.06 with total assets of $1.45 billion. As to be expected, the trust has lost 50% of its value this year in line with the performance of its underlying asset, bitcoin.
Hedge fund manager Marc Lasry is another bullish voice this week. Lasry, who has skin in the game with bitcoin, thinks the price will be in the $20,000 to $40,000 range by year end on the back of growing adoption, “as it gets more into the mainstream and as more markets end up allowing it to trade”.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://coinintelnews.com/bitcoin-bottom-silbert/