By Sead Fadilpašić
After earlier estimations that bitcoin (BTC) might hit USD 115,000 by August failed to materialize, Dan Morehead, CEO and Founder of Pantera Capital, lowered the estimated price tag for this year and said that ethereum (ETH) will keep outperforming BTC.
Bitcoin might end the year with a price between USD 80,000 and USD 90,000, Morehead told Reuters, adding that the price could rise above the USD 120,000 level within a year and hit USD 700,000 per coin in the next decade, pushed up by the increased mainstream adoption.
In March, when BTC was at USD 55,700, the CEO said that BTC is ahead of his firms forecast schedule to hit USD 115,000 in August. Meanwhile, in May, before a sharp correction in the market that month, Morehead estimated that BTC might still double this year, surpassing USD 100,000, despite the ecology-related concerns.
And back in June, the CEO argued that investors should go against the urge and buy bitcoin when the market is below trend, thus benefiting from the fact that it was at that price level or below for only one-fifth of the previous eleven years. BTC was at the USD 40,300 level at the time.
Today, at 09:39 UTC, BTC trades at USD 38,598 and is down by more than 2% in a day, trimming its weekly gains to less than 4%. The price is up by 11% in a month.
Morehead said that the funds of Pantera Capital, which manages USD 2.8bn in blockchain-related assets, have attracted institutional investors who are less momentum-oriented than retail investors, and who see current prices as a buying opportunity.
He also compared BTC and ethereum (ETH) in the sense that the latter has further to run than the former, given that its a younger coin. However, Morehead also suggested that the upcoming technical improvements, such as the upcoming London upgrade and the Ethereum 2.0 rollout, as well as Ethereums use in decentralized finance (DeFi), will help the coin continue to outperform bitcoin.
Youll see a transition of people who want to store wealth, doing it in ethereum rather than just bitcoin, he said, without providing a price forecast.
ETH is currently trading at USD 2,496, after it fell more than 3% in a day. Its up nearly 12% in a week and a month.