As it competes with gold as an asset class, Bitcoin has the potential to hit $146,000 in the long term, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Bitcoin’s remarkable ascent past $30,000 has stunned Wall Street — and one of the biggest U.S. investment banks thinks the digital currency could have much further to run. Bitcoin’s market cap currently stands at more than $575 billion. According to JPMorgan, it will have to climb by 4.6 times to equal the $2.7 trillion in private sector gold investment
The strategists wrote Monday, “A crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies a large upside for Bitcoin over the long term. A convergence in volatility between Bitcoin and gold, however, is unlikely to happen immediately and is a multi-year phase in our minds.” This means that the potential Bitcoin price target of above $146,000 should be viewed as a long-term objective and therefore an unsustainable price target for this year.
Bitcoin dropped as much as 17 percent on Monday, the biggest drop since March, after breaking $34,000 over the weekend for the first time. Swings are typical of the notorious volatility of the largest cryptocurrency, the price of which has more than quadrupled in the past year.
More institutions and noted investors have already started allocating funds to Bitcoin, from Paul Tudor Jones to Scott Minerd and Stan Druckenmiller, or have said that they are open to doing so. They argue that in a world filled with fiscal and monetary stimulus, the cryptocurrency provides a buffer against dollar weakness and inflation threat.
