Attention Bitcoin bulls: Wall Street is expecting the cryptocurrency’s crash to get worse.
60% of the 950 respondents to the MLIV Pulse survey said that the token is more likely to plummet to $10,000 and cut its value in half. Forty percent predicted it going the opposite way. The week ended up at over 12%, with the average price of $21,850 being reached late Friday afternoon.
This lopsided prediction demonstrates how bearish investors have turned out to be. The crypto industry has been hit hard by the financial crisis, collapsed currencies and the end of the easy money policies that fuelled speculative madness in financial markets.
According to CoinGecko data, some $2 Trillion has disappeared from the market value for cryptocurrencies since last year.
Retail investors were more cautious about cryptocurrency than their institutional counterparts. Nearly a quarter of them declared the asset class to have been garbage. Professional investors were more open to digital assets.
However, the sector is still polarizing: 28% of respondents said that cryptocurrencies were the future of finance; 20% stated they are worthless.
Bitcoin has lost over two-thirds of its value since November close to $69,000 and hasn’t traded below $10,000 since September 2020.
Jared Madfes is a partner at Tribe Capital Venture Capital. He stated that “it’s very easy right now to be afraid, not just in crypto but also generally in the world.” He stated that the expectation of a further decline in Bitcoin is a reflection of “people’s inherent fear” in the market.
Further pressures will be placed on governments to increase regulation of the crypto industry after the crash. Most respondents consider such supervision positive, as it can increase confidence and acceptance by institutional and retail investors.
Consumers who were hurt by the collapse in TerraUSD, and other troubled middlemen such as Celsius Network or broker Voyager Digital Ltd will likely welcome government intervention.
The central banks are also looking at developing their own digital currencies to be used in digital payments.
However, neither recent price drops nor the possible challenge from central banks is expected to dramatically disrupt the industry by dethroning Ether and Bitcoin. The majority of respondents believe that one of these two will continue to be a driving force over the next five years, even though a large number see central bank digital currencies playing a major role.
“Bitcoin is still powering large portions of the cryptoverse while Ethereum is losing its lead,” stated Ed Moya (senior market analyst at Oanda Corp.), a foreign-exchange broker.
There was more consensus on one part of the market: Nonfungible tokens. During the peak of the crypto boom, NFTs were well-known for their attraction valuations of millions of dollars for images of monkeys. They are considered status symbols or art projects by the vast majority of respondents, while only 9% see them as investment opportunities.
People looking for the next asset-price boom may be better off looking elsewhere. Speculative manias are rare to strike the same asset class twice. Most respondents believe that the next major run-up will not be related to cryptocurrency. NFTs, web3 (the next generation of the internet), and other blockchain developments are seen as unlikely to trigger the next frenzy.
Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co, stated that “the next financial bubble will always be something different than the previous bubble.”
