Tim Draper, the founder of Draper Associates and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent financiers, has reiterated his $250,000 Bitcoin ($BTC) price prediction, saying the cryptocurrency will reach that mark by June of next year.
CNBC reports that despite the failure of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, Draper still expects the price of the flagship cryptocurrency to increase by nearly 1,400% in under a year. According to his statement, the $250,000 forecast was pushed back from its original date of late 2022 or early 2023 by six months.
A bank run on FTX’ caused the exchange to freeze withdrawals and admit it did not have users’ funds, leading to its eventual collapse. The exchange declared bankruptcy earlier this month, and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, admitted he “screwed up” but insisted he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud,” expressing his shock at the exchange’s demise.
Its demise had repercussions for competing for digital currency exchanges. U.S.-based lender BlockFi has declared bankruptcy, citing “significant exposure” to the failure of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. To reorganize, settle its debts, and recoup money for investors, BlockFi has suspended most platform activity and filed for bankruptcy.
According to CNBC, veteran investor Mark Mobius predicted last week that Bitcoin (BTC) could fall to $10,000, a drop of over 40% from its current price of $17,000. Mobius’ prediction that Bitcoin’s value would fall to $20,000 this year was spot-on.
Draper, however, is fixated on Bitcoin’s (BTC) potential for growth in the coming year. He predicted that investors would flock to more secure, decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, while others would fade away.
Tesla, Skype, and Baidu are just a few of Draper’s most profitable investments. The billionaire made headlines in the cryptocurrency community in 2014 when he paid $18.7 million to purchase 29,656 bitcoins that had been seized by U.S. Marshals from the now-defunct dark web marketplace The Silk Road. Over $500,000,000.00 can be said to have been gained from those coins since then.
The billionaire predicted in 2014, when Bitcoin’s price was between $300 and $600, that it would reach $10,000 in three years. In 2017, the flagship cryptocurrency nearly reached the $20,000 mark.
Draper predicts that bitcoin’s value will skyrocket next year because women represent an untapped market for cryptocurrencies. “The dam is about to break,” he predicted because women “control 80% of retail spending and only 1 in 7 bitcoin wallets are currently held by women.”
It’s not just Draper who is betting big on cryptocurrencies. After delaying his prediction due to the Federal Reserve and other central banks raising interest rates to rein in inflation, billionaire investor Mike Novogratz revealed, as reported by CryptoGlobe, that he still believes BTC will trade at $500,000 per coin in the future.
According to Novogratz, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has found “his central banking superpowers,” and as a result, he expects Bitcoin’s price to reach $500,000 “not in five years.”
According to Novogratz, “the overall confidence in crypto shall pass” despite setbacks caused by the demise of FTX and other companies, such as the hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and the lender’s Celsius Network and BlockFi.
Draper predicts widespread adoption will occur when merchants realize they can save “roughly 2% on every purchase” by accepting cryptocurrency payments instead of those of credit cards because payment processors like Visa and Mastercard won’t be able to tack on their transaction fees.
Draper thinks the upcoming halving of Bitcoin’s coinbase block rewards for miners could be positive for the price of BTC. In 2024, the Bitcoin supply will again be cut in half.
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