Bullish finance boss Brian Kelly said pricing suggests the cryptocurrency is “getting closer to the bottom” of around $2,900 – indicating there could soon be an upward trend. Mr Kelly, founder of Brian Kelly Capital, told CNBC: “For me, the bull case and the investment case is that everything that you can say is wrong with bitcoin is going to get fixed.
“Similar to with the internet when it was super slow and yet and you had dial-up internet and people didn’t want to shop online and all of those things.
“As the technology progressed, it got better and it got a higher adoption rate.”
Mr Kelly insisted bitcoin price has “got to get better” and in order to do so, the adoption rate of Americans having invested in the cryptocurrency will need to sit at around 10 percent.
The crypto expert also said the price indicates bitcoin is close to a bottom. He said: “Directly right now we are about neutral and probably we have a net short position on at this point in time.
“But I think we are getting closer to the bottom. We have the preconditions for the bottom, kind of the mania that we had last year – you are seeing that reflecting here in a pessimism. So the preconditions are there.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we popped down to 2,900 on bitcoin before we bottom. That’s kind of what I’m looking at as the next level.”
Bitcoin price decreased to $3,803.79 at 11:30 (GMT) on Wednesday, according to CoinDesk. It saw its highest value before Christmas when it reached the monumental price of just under $20,000.
But bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have faced criticism by banks and finance experts, with billionaire Bill Gates telling CNBC he would bet against the bitcoin and short it if he could.
The Microsoft co-founder said: “As an asset class, you’re not producing anything and so you shouldn’t expect it to go up. It’s kind of a pure ‘greater fool theory’ type of investment.”
He added: “I agree I would short it if there was an easy way to do it.”
Former PayPal CEO Bill Harris also claimed bitcoin is the “greatest scam in history”.