Bitcoin may be on its way to touching $42,000 by the end of 2019: Pantera CEO

One thing is consistent in the Bitcoin market: With every [price] low, comes a [prediction] high.

Bitcoin dropped to its four-figure mark for the second time in a week, with the collective market struggling. On the back of several setbacks emanating from Facebook’s Libra project, the bears have been unleashed on Libra.

However, that does not stop the business that is price predictions. The latest one, despite the not-so-bullish market, was made by Dan Morehead of Pantera Capital.

Speaking to Laura Shin on the latest episode of the Unchained podcast, and joined by his colleague and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Joey Krug, the Pantera duo commented on Bitcoin, blockchain, and their future prospects. Morehead said that the price of the king coin could potentially surge to $356,000 in the next three years, on the basis of the coin’s price movements on a logarithmic scale.

When asked for a more short-term perspective, the Pantera CEO called a $42,000 price for Bitcoin by the end of 2019.

Morehead added that from the perspective of the cryptocurrency industry, the signs are positive. Pointing to the Gartner Hype Cycle, an indicator which graphically details the maturity of a fledgling technology or the application of the same, he said,

“A small kernel of something very important gets people to be crazed about [the crypto-industry] and then the trough of disillusionment [takes place]. And we’ve already gone through two of those cycles in the six years that we’ve been investing in it,”

In his opinion, the 10-year old decentralized currency industry that wants to take on fiat currencies that have existed for centuries, is still in its infancy. Morehead gives the industry, at the very least, two decades to completely solidify, before major strides can be made.

He added,

“We still have another solid ten years to go before this is fully fleshed out.”

The hype around Bitcoin has also resulted in a major push for the adoption of blockchain technology as well. However, the Pantera CEO does not believe one can be a proxy for the other, especially when the price of Bitcoin is viewed as a substitute for the value of the distributed ledger technology industry.

From a price perspective, Morehead added that Bitcoin in the long-run, if one were to zoom out of the price charts, was on a steady rise, and the same would not be noticed if a myopic monthly rise were to be observed. He said,

“If you ever go back and zoom out your lens more than a year, Bitcoin as a proxy for the industry is always going up….We’re always trying to look three to five years out and be thinking about where the industry will be then rather than worrying about these kind of manic phases of bubbles.”