There is no viable way to gouge just how well bitcoin will perform in the coming weeks but analysts remain hopeful. Bitcoin’s performance last year was marked by a meteoric rise to the tune of £15,597.42 ($19,999) per token in mid-December and an equally spectacular crash days later. The price movements attracted a lot of attention and more recent dips this month have reminded investors of the cryptocurrency’s volatility. Today, BTC is exchanging hands for £2,889.47 ($3,704.87) per token, at 4.47pm GMT (UTC), according to crypto tracker CoinDesk.
Bitcoin’s price today marks its lowest point since September 2017 and comes off the back of losses sustained at the start of last week.
On Monday, November 19, bitcoin broke the £4,672 ($6,000) support level to drop below £3,899.55 ($5,000) for the first time in 13 months.
Mati Greenspan, a crypto analyst at eToro, has now told Express.co.uk he was looking at bitcoin’s next testing level in the £2,339.73 to £2,729.68 ($3,000 to £3,500) range.
And though he is hoping for one more bull run before the end of the year, there is nothing analysts can do to predict if bitcoin will end 2018 on a high note or suffer losses greater than those witnessed a year ago.
The bitcoin expert said: “In the short term it’s really impossible to know.
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Bitcoin price forecast: A crypto analysts is hoping for one last bull run before the year ends (Image: GETTY)
“I’ve been saying from the beginning of the year when people were asking for my end year predictions, is that I can say with a 99 percent certainty bitcoin will be between $100 and $1million on December 31.
“I’m hoping there will be a Santa Claus rally especially now that we’re looking at the entire year as one defending triangle on the charts and we’ve now broken out of the triangle and hopefully bitcoin’s got it out of the system now.”
Bitcoin’s latest bear comes after three months of relative peace on the markets.
Since about mid-September, the virtual currency stayed above its £4,672 ($6,000) support level without major hiccups.
But prices went tumbling on November 15 – a sudden sell-off some analysts connected to a hard fork in the bitcoin derivative currency bitcoin cash.
I’m hoping there will be a Santa Claus rally
Mr Greenspan, however, argued against linking bitcoin’s market movements to what he believes are coincidental events in the cryptocurrency sphere.
He said: “If you recall on August 1, 2017, the original bitcoin cash hard fork triggered a bull run.
“I don’t know that this one specifically triggered the market sell-off – it was definitely one of the side stories among the many that may have influenced sentiment.
“I don’t think this was something that tanked the markets but was rather coincidental.”
Bitcoin price forecast: BTC is at the lowest prices in 13 months (Image: COINDESK)
Whatever the scenario may have been, the market analyst said price movements are not unique to bitcoin and other virtual tokens.
And it is hard to narrow in on what exactly makes tokens like bitcoin valuable in the first place because the field is “still under construction”.
Wall Street investors can use price-to-earnings ratios to value stocks in the traditional sense but this is not applicable to bitcoin.
As a result, Mr Greenspan thinks, price speculation will remain a big part of the crypto markets.
Bitcoin price forecast: Bitcoin spectacularly peaked and crashed in December last year (Image: GETTY)
He said: “In crypto, these things are still being built – there is no industry standard.
“The only metric that we can go by is the price. What is somebody willing to buy it for and what is somebody willing to sell it for?”
And because price remains the most valuable metric at the moment, it will then to reflect technical analysis.
An example of this is the apparent sell-off and rapid buying of BTC tokens every time a support level is breached or a technical level is surpassed.