Bitcoin Price Prediction for 2020 [Updated]

Today, we are nearing a point that is more than likely to be the last time in history in which most of the world’s population will be able to afford to own an entire Bitcoin.

The main challenge for those trying to make Bitcoin price predictions in 2020 is to understand more than just technical patterns, and to take into account other factors such as an unprecedented up-tick in global awareness, and the integration of new mechanisms that will allow trillions of dollars in institutional money to flow into crypto markets.

As well as the recent ups of the past few years, there have also been some brutal downs. For anybody holding any cryptocurrency during a large part of 2018, they will know that making predictions on the future value of Bitcoin is complicated, and even with all of the information available to us at our fingertips, it is fraught with danger.

Now though, we do stand at a point in time which will likely be remembered for the comparatively large number of people on the planet that know about Bitcoin, versus the significantly smaller number of people that are actually invested in cryptocurrencies today.

The writing is on the wall for 2020 to be a year in which we see unprecedented and staggering growth in not only Bitcoin’s price, but the marketcaps and prices of most digital crypto-assets. Developments that have happened, or are happening soon, will drive multiples-higher amounts of trade volume and investment into cryptocurrency markets.

2020 will not be like 2013, or 2017. It will be the year that crypto unrecognizably changes, forever.

What is Bitcoin and Why Does it Have Value at all?

Bitcoin, like any other cryptocurrency, any product, service, or any other medium of exchange, requires a logic-based reason for people to be happy to exchange something of value that they own in return for it.

When it was created, Bitcoin was envisioned to become exactly the financial tool that it is today:

“Bitcoin is a digital medium of exchange, and value storage mechanism, which does not require or permit administration by any one authoritative group, or groups, and which allows for globally-dispersed, trustless transactions to take place reliably, and without molestation by outside parties”.

Initially, Bitcoin provided something totally unique. Users could, for the first time, quickly and easily send value to peers, no matter where on Earth they are, without the need to use a trusted intermediary such as a bank.

Bitcoin has rapidly and consistently grown in value in the past decade, because of the resilience of the system to both malicious actors and to authorities that may have an interest in shutting the network down.

As Bitcoin has grown, there have been additional factors that have driven its value to where it is today, primarily that it is the most widely-known cryptocurrency, the first cryptocurrency, and arguably, the most trusted cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin’s value today depends heavily on its reputation and longevity, and that although there have been innumerable alternative coins and tokens created that all provide different functionality, that the core goals of cryptocurrency, the transfer and storage of value, have always been comprehensively satisfied by Bitcoin.

Where has the Price of Bitcoin been, and Where is it Today?

Let’s start with Bitcoin’s current all-time high, work back from there, and then jump forward to what has happened since the last major cryptocurrency bull run.

On December 17, 2017, the price of Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $19,783.06, following a months-long media and hype-driven parabolic trend, and an increase of the price of BTC by 5% in the 24 hours preceding.

At this point, hundreds of thousands of novice retail traders had flooded the market with long positions after seeing an endless bombardment of news coverage and stories from friends as to the incredible daily profits they were making.

Cryptocurrency markets had hit peak hype, and with almost every digital asset being insanely overbought, an ensuing market collapse began which saw 40% of Bitcoin’s marketcap eviscerated in under 5 days.

This was, in itself, proof of the difficulty of making bitcoin future value predictions, as although many of the novice traders that swarmed into cryptocurrency markets in 2017’s bull run were watching the Bitcoin price live as it happened, still a vast majority lost significantly over the course of the first half of 2018.

Prior to the events of 2017, largely ignited by the Ethereum-spawned ICO boom that began in 2016, cryptocurrency markets were fairly forgettable for most of the previous 4 years.

2013 saw two different significant periods of the growth of Bitcoin’s price, and as had happened in 2017, drew in a multitude of new traders and investors with the promise of unparalleled ROI’s.

Following 2017’s bull run, 2018 saw continuous shorting, sell-offs and capitulation by bulls, with the loss of over 87% of the total marketcap for all cryptocurrencies from a high of $822B on January 7, to a low of just below $101B on December 15.

What are some of the Signs that 2020 Could see New All-Time Highs?

Since the reversal of 2018’s long-term downward trend and 2019’s strong recovery, Bitcoin’s trade volume has dwarfed even that which was seen during the end of 2017.

A telling sign of the huge growth in the volume of trading taking place in the cryptocurrency macrocosm, is the growth being seen in many of the individual microcosms in which traders meet.

A multi-asset, margin trading platform that operates in the intersection between cryptocurrencies and traditional assets, PrimeXBT, has been one platform that has led the pack in 2019, and mirrored the huge growth in overall trade volume.

For point of reference, where it has taken other major exchanges years to grow their liquidity into the hundreds of millions, PrimeXBT has ridden the wave of expanded trade volume to reach a daily trading volume in the hundreds of millions, with just over 6 months.

Saying this, the platform also provides a diversified range of features and assets, including 35+ FX, stock indices and commodities, which draws in many users that trade both cryptocurrency and traditional assets.

However, PrimeXBT, in a similar way to many of the new breed of cryptocurrency trading platforms, is also acquiring a huge amount of market share from older platforms.

This is largely because of their ability to provide the waves of new traders with features that make generating revenue in crypto markets easier, for example, the ability to invest into user-created, peer-to-peer funds, and mirror the trades of the most profitable traders, as is possible on PrimeXBT.

The influx of new and improved trading platforms is a sign of the availability of a wider market following the media attention generated in 2017’s infamous bull run.

But there is also a range of other factors that are pointing to the formation of the beginnings of 2020’s bull run.

What are the Biggest Positive Factors on the Price of Bitcoin?

2017 saw an unprecedented expansion in the number of retail traders involved in cryptocurrency markets. This expansion was as an immediate reaction to the hype and media coverage surrounding digital currencies, and the barrier to entry for retail traders was, of course, very low.

Once a retail trader decides to invest into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, they simply need to set up an account at a trading platform, make a deposit, and initiate a trade.

But while retail traders were able to dive into the markets head first, and catch some of the profits seen during 2017, large scale institutional investors typically operate within heavily regulated environments, and because of their legal responsibilities and obligations to their investors, have not been able to move into cryptocurrency markets as fluidly.

From 2018 onwards, some of the biggest excitement within the cryptocurrency industry has surrounded two mechanisms that will allow institutional investors to pour billions of dollars into crypto-assets. Bakkt and the various Bitcoin ETFs being considered right now are two of the most decisive indicators that 2020 will see enormous growth in the value of Bitcoin.

Bakkt

Bakkt is the trading platform for Bitcoin futures and other crypto-asset variants, that had intended on launching in 2018, with that being delayed until September 2019.

Bakkt looks very promising. It is owned and operated by the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which is the parent company of a number of major international financial marketplaces including the ICE futures exchanges, the Liffe exchange, and perhaps most famously, the New York Stock Exchange.

The launch of Bakkt is set for September 2019, and barring all delays, will allow institutional investors a new investment vehicle to access cryptocurrency markets, which is provided by one of the central organizations of global trading, and who are both regulated and widely trusted.

The Bitcoin ETFs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering 3 separate Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), which if any are approved will provide a vehicle for mainstream investors to safely speculate on the price of Bitcoin.

The 3 companies that have proposed Bitcoin ETFs are Bitwise, VanEck/SolidX, and Wilshire Phoenix.

ETFs are instruments that allow investors to trade on the value of an asset without having to specifically own it. Currently, investors typically need to interact with unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges in order to trade Bitcoin. For retail investors, this is not an issue. Small individual investors have been the backbone of the cryptocurrency industry since its beginnings.

For large institutional organizations, however, they have legal and fiduciary responsibilities to their investors, which often prevents the kinds of risk from being taken that are common in the cryptocurrency industry today. Unlike traditional trading platforms, cryptocurrency platforms have had a history of sporadic collapses and exit-scams, which institutional investors cannot risk being a part of.

The launch of any of the 3 Bitcoin ETFs currently being considered would allow for trillions of dollars of institutional money to safely flow into cryptocurrency markets.

2020’s Bitcoin Halvening

Parallel to the launches of Bakkt, and (potentially) a Bitcoin ETF, 2020’s Bitcoin halvening is yet another indicator that there should be a huge increase in the price of the world’s number one cryptocurrency in the near future.

Every 4 years the reward that Bitcoin miners receive for mining a block halves, with the next “halvening” occurring on 17 May 2020, and the mining reward dropping from 12.5BTC to 6.25BTC.

Traditionally the cryptocurrency market experiences a bull run lasting approximately 18 months following each halvening, with the halvening in 2012 being closely followed by two major bull runs in 2013, and the halvening in 2016 being followed by the now-renowned 2017 bull run.

This 4-yearly event will coincide perfectly with a gargantuan wave of investment from traditional markets, and pundits universally expect 2020 and 2021 to follow the same patterns seen previously.

What do Bitcoin Price Prediction Experts have to say?

Opinions vary widely on an exact Bitcoin price prediction for 2020, although there seems to be a general consensus that there is likely to be new all-time highs during the year.

Crypto-evangelist and well known digital security pioneer, John McAfee, stated that:

“I am still positive about my $1 mil BTC price by the end of 2020”.

Thinkmarkets Chief crypto analyst, Naeem Aslan, has predicted that Bitcoin’s price will reach between $60,000 and $100,000 during the next bull run, but also stated that:

“In order for us to do that, we need to break two major hurdles. The first one is all time high, because once we’ve broken that it will no longer be about $30,000 or $35,000, because the market is just going to start pricing it at the next important level, which is $50,000.”

Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano, founder of crypto-asset management firm, Morgan, has made a Bitcoin price prediction that it will reach $100,000 by the end of 2021, stating that:

“Yeah, I don’t think the (2020) halvening is priced in at all, to the current prices today. When you speak to these institutional investors who are going to bring large dollars to the table in the next 12–36 months, they don’t even know what the halvening is.”

Pomp’s prediction range is shared by crypto analyst, PlanB, who had developed a Stock-to-Flow model that tracks at 99.5% accuracy against Bitcoin’s historic price, and predicts that by the end of 2021 that Bitcoin’s price will reach $100,000.

In Summary: Bitcoin Price Prediction for 2020 and Beyond

As at any point in the history of Bitcoin, to a degree, predicting its price can be taken with a grain of salt. Many experts previously have been far off the mark, and many have been somewhat accurate in their predictions, who may easily have not have been.

Saying this, there does seem to be a consensus that expectations for 2020 are high. There aren’t many voices in the public arena that are predicting 2020 to be a flop. This makes sense considering the range of different upcoming events that all point to another bull run to be on the horizon.

And, as we watch to see how the launch of Bakkt affects the markets, if any of the Bitcoin ETFs are approved, and the effect they will have, what is for sure is that the cryptocurrency industry is preparing for an inevitable tidal wave of investment from traditional institutional players globally.

The trillion-dollar question is whether 2020 will be the year that the flood gates open?