A team of market analysts at JPMorgan told investors on Monday that Bitcoin could reach $146,000 or higher in the long run.
Led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, the analysts opined that Bitcoin could become a strong competitor to gold. According to an article published by Bloomberg on January 5, Panigirtzoglou wrote:
A crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies big upside for Bitcoin over the long term… a convergence in volatilities between Bitcoin and gold is unlikely to happen quickly and is in our mind a multiyear process. This implies that the above-$146,000 theoretical Bitcoin price target should be considered as a long-term target, and thus an unsustainable price target for this year.
With its current market cap of around $590 billion, Bitcoin would have to rise by at least 4.6 times to reach the theoretical price of $146,000. Considering Bitcoin’s precedence and the level of action happening around it, it doesn’t come as a surprise that such predictions are being made.
However, the analysts feel that there is too much speculation on the direction of Bitcoin in the short term. They admitted that current speculative momentum could push Bitcoin to a $50k - $100k range, but this would be unsustainable.
JPMorgan has consistently professed its pro-bitcoin stance in the last few months. This is a rather sharp turn considering the fact that Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of the company called Bitcoin a “fraud” in September 2017.