Bitcoin flies over $4000, target price $5000 within 2018 is near

8 years ago - Published in Finance, Fintech Land, Technical Analysis

A month ago, a single Bitcoin was worth around $2,000. It has doubled in value since then. The price of bitcoin broke through $4,000 on Sunday, a new record, and has largely stayed above that level since, according to digital currency news site CoinDesk.

The dramatic price rise marks the latest milestone in bitcoin’s stellar growth in 2017 — it’s already worth more than four times its value at the start of the year.

The digital currency is riding a "fifth wave" of an "impulsive" rally that could run as high as $4,827 in the short term, technical analyst Sheba Jafari said in a Sunday report of charts to watch for the week ahead.

However, "once a full five-wave sequence is in place, the market should in theory enter a corrective phase," she said. "This can last at least one-third of the time it took to complete the preceding advance and retrace at least 38.2 percent of the entire move."

Although Jafari didn't explicitly name it, the five-wave principle of technical analysis is known as the "Elliott Wave." In July, The Elliott Wave Theorist newsletter also pointed out that bitcoin is "making a final fifth wave from six cents" after predicting the digital currency's surge seven years ago.

That said, other analysts predict bitcoin can climb into the tens of thousands in the next few years. They expect that growing investor interest in a digital currency with a limited circulation of 21 million coins should naturally drive prices higher.

According to CNBC, during this time, the sheer interest in bitcoin has seen it add more than $15bn in market capitalisation – or, to put it into further perspective, it has increased by more than 320pc in the space of a year.

Much of the interest in bitcoin has grown since its hard forking on 1 August into two distinct currencies: bitcoin and bitcoin cash.

The splitting of the cryptocurrency occurred following months of debate over how it could keep up with demand in the years to come, with the previous blockchain technology limited to just seven transactions per second.

Both currencies proposed different methods of expanding their technological powers and, since the split, the original bitcoin has flourished, whereas bitcoin cash currently stands as an outsider with a fraction of the value of its older sibling.

Independent analyst Ronnie Moas, who previously set his 2018 bitcoin price target at $5,000, said Monday he’s upgrading that to $7,500. His 2027 price target of $50,000 remains unchanged, but said there could likely go up in the next two years and even get pushed forward to 2024-2026.