Analysts are predicting that Bitcoin won’t experience any major price rises until at least 2024. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has been predicted to stay relatively flat until the next ‘halving’ event happens. This could trigger another ‘bull’ market and lead to the kinds of price rises that have made Bitcoin one of the biggest investment news stories of the past decade.
The predictions have been made by Du Jon – the co-founder of Huobi, which is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. He pointed to past price cycles of Bitcoin and noted that any value rises tended to follow a process known as halving. This is a process that happens every few years and it halves the amount of crypto rewards that miners get for validating the transactions that take place on the blockchain.
In the past, this halving process has occurred every four years and they usually trigger the kind of bullish market that sends the price of Bitcoin skyward. One of the first notable occurrences of this came in 2016 where Bitcoin’s value went skyrocketing to set a new record high. Recently, there was a halving in 2020 that was thought to have triggered the current all-time Bitcoin high of $68,000 that was recorded in 2021.
What’s significant is that these Bitcoin highs have been followed by the kind of fall in value that is currently blighting the cryptocurrency. At the moment, the value of Bitcoin is around 40% lower than it was when it recorded its record-high in November 2021. As such, Du Jon has predicted the cryptocurrency is only at the very beginning of the bear market that could see its price stay within the lower regions until the next halving event that is scheduled for 2024.
Are we in a crypto winter?
Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency that has suffered from a fall in value since the start of the year. Many other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum have also had a turbulent time on the markets after what was an exceptional 2021.
As such, there is a widespread concern that we might be entering a ‘crypto winter’ period where prices stay sluggish. This is all the more likely as a result of market uncertainty regarding everything from potential war in Ukraine to the impact of a series of interest rate hikes in 2022.
This comes amid a series of concerns that have yet to be addressed if Bitcoin wants to truly enter the mainstream. With ongoing concern about Bitcoin’s environmental impact, the cryptocurrency has been abandoned by leading tech firms such as Tesla in favor of alternative cryptos such as DogeCoin.
Plus there remain perceptions that Bitcoin investments are susceptible to scams and its inherent volatility has stopped the crypto from becoming a respected investment choice. All of which suggests that it could be tough couple of years ahead for the world’s first cryptocurrency.
