As Bitcoin Nears $17K, A Citibank Analyst Projects $300K Levels Next Year

Bitcoin traded above the $16,600 mark at press time, having tested the $16,800 level in the trailing 24-hour period. The cryptocurrency touched an all-time high of $20,089 on Dec. 17, 2017.

What Happened: Citibank analyst Thomas Fitzpatrick said the apex cryptocurrency may reach $318,000 by December 2021, basing his argument on technical analysis of prior highs and lows, CoinDesk reported.

The analyst drew a comparison of Bitcoin with the 1970s' gold market in a report titled “Bitcoin: 21st Century Gold,” which was leaked by Twitter user @classicmacro. 

Fitzpatrick theorized that gold’s decoupling from fiat currencies, the pandemic, and aggressive quantitative easing pursued by central banks could lead to explosive growth in Bitcoin’s price.

All major altcoins by market capitalization traded in the green at press time. Ethereum traded higher by 3.5% at $464. XRP, Chainlink (LINK) and Litecoin (LTC) shot up 9.27%, 5.8% and 12.27% to $0.29, $12.80, and $73.70 respectively.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) traded 2.76% higher at $252.50.

On Monday, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC closed 5.01% higher at $18.86, Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETHE closed 0.74% higher at $64.03, and Grayscale Bitcoin Cash Trust BCHG closed 1.51% higher at $15.09.

Meanwhile, Coinbase, a major U.S. cryptocurrency exchange with a 24-hour volume of $678.26 million, faced technical glitches on Monday afternoon, which were resolved by 2:47 pm PT on the same day. 

Why It Matters: Institutional interest in Bitcoin has helped fuel the 2020 rally, according to Bloomberg, which noted that a cross above the $17,000 level would mark the apex cryptocurrency’s fifth-highest closing price ever.

PayPal Holdings Inc PYPL began offering BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC to its customers in October, which could have led to a 500% rise in the exchange trade volume of its partner Paxos’ itBit exchange.

Bryce Doty, a portfolio manager at Sit Fixed Income Advisors said that Bitcoin gets attention “when it looks like the world is coming to an end, it’s the anti-vaccine trade,” as per Bloomberg.

“As stocks and everything else have done better and people have forgotten about trade wars and things have been eclipsed by the pandemic, Bitcoin has taken a back seat to all of that,” said Doty.

Jason Lau, Chief Operating Officer at OKCoin, said last week that there was “minimal resistance” for Bitcoin to reach $20,000 levels before the current year ends.

Price Action: Bitcoin traded 4.05% higher at $16,639.95 at press time.

Related Link: Bitcoin Cash, Which Split From Bitcoin, Has Split Into Two Cryptocurrencies — Again