Start the conversation
Comment on This Story
Or to contact Money Morning Customer Service, click here.
A Bitcoin price prediction of $250,000 by 2025 sounds like quite a stretch. After all, the current price of BTC is mired in the neighborhood of $3,600.
But that hasn't stopped many prominent cryptocurrency personalities from making Bitcoin price predictions of $250,000 or even higher.
The latest comes from Bitcoin entrepreneur and author Mark Jeffrey, who has written two books on the No. 1 cryptocurrency: "Bitcoin Explained Simply" (2013) and "The Case for Bitcoin" (2015).
During a Jan. 17 interview with the Australian podcast "The Next Billion Seconds," Jeffrey acknowledged the $250,000 prediction to host Mark Pesce and explained his reasoning.
He compared the Bitcoin boom and crash to the dot-com bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s, noting that crypto investors "got very over exuberant and maybe extended themselves a little bit too far, and then they got scared."
Jeffrey then said that what we've just experienced is only the "second act," with the best yet to come. "The third act is 'Return of the Jedi,' and we're not there yet. That is coming."
Jeffrey did not specify in the interview when he thought Bitcoin would reach $250,000, a point he clarified on Twitter. But his thinking is not unusual within the crypto community.
In fact, such lofty Bitcoin price predictions are surprisingly common...
Pick Your Favorite Bitcoin Price Prediction
Jeffrey isn't alone in calling for a Bitcoin price of $250,000. Venture capitalist Tim Draper agrees with the target but went one step further by attaching a date to it: 2022.
See Why Bitcoin Is Far from Dead: Cryptocurrency legend Michael Robinson just revealed why Bitcoin could be poised for a record-breaking rebound. Before the mainstream public gets any wiser, you need to see this now.
Cameron Winklevoss - who, along with his twin brother, Tyler, operates the Gemini Bitcoin Exchange among other crypto ventures - has predicted Bitcoin will reach $300,000 within 10 to 20 years.
And there's cybersecurity pioneer John McAfee, who has steadfastly stood by his forecast of the price of Bitcoin reaching $1 million by 2020.
Other high-flying Bitcoin price forecasts have been derived from chart patterns. One recurring theme in Bitcoin charts shows the price in the context of its "halving" events.
(The software that controls the Bitcoin network is set up to cut the reward - the amount of Bitcoin a miner receives for solving a block - in half at regular intervals. The first halving in 2012 cut the reward from 50 bitcoins to 25. The second was in 2016 and cut the reward to 12.5. The next halving is expected in May of 2020.)
The charts typically show cycles in the price of Bitcoin that suggest the halvings occur near market bottoms. They also show large jumps in the price of Bitcoin over the next several years.
Here's one such chart that suggests Bitcoin will reach $226,200 by July of 2023:
Other charts vary a bit on the timing and how high the next peak will be, but they all foresee peaks much higher than the just-under-$20,000 all-time high reached in December of 2017. A similar chart projects the price of Bitcoin in August of 2023 at $160,000.
The accuracy of these charts in predicting the price of Bitcoin is debatable, but this digital asset has seen some seriously dramatic moves in its 10 years of existence.
And the charts generally jibe with the predictions of the cryptocurrency experts, most of whom use one or more fundamental catalysts as the basis for their forecasts.
People who don't follow cryptocurrency closely may not realize that the decline in prices through 2018 has barely slowed development of this technology. And on Bitcoin in particular, work on several game-changing upgrades has continued at a rapid clip.
Likewise, interest from the investing sector has continued to deepen over the past year despite the crypto bear market.
Here's what I see happening that justifies those six-figure Bitcoin price predictions...
Why the Price of Bitcoin Could Actually Reach $250,000
About the Author
David Zeiler, Associate Editor for Money Morning at Money Map Press, has been a journalist for more than 35 years, including 18 spent at The Baltimore Sun. He has worked as a writer, editor, and page designer at different times in his career. He's interviewed a number of well-known personalities - ranging from punk rock icon Joey Ramone to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Over the course of his journalistic career, Dave has covered many diverse subjects. Since arriving at Money Morning in 2011, he has focused primarily on technology. He's an expert on both Apple and cryptocurrencies. He started writing about Apple for The Sun in the mid-1990s, and had an Apple blog on The Sun's web site from 2007-2009. Dave's been writing about Bitcoin since 2011 - long before most people had even heard of it. He even mined it for a short time.
Dave has a BA in English and Mass Communications from Loyola University Maryland.
