There are now less than six months to go before the next bitcoin halving and, as a result, a number of price predictions have been published.
According to updated estimates, halving should take place on May 14th, 2020, which will cut the creation of new BTC below the threshold of 2% per annum of the total number of BTC already created.
As Jameson Lopp points out on Twitter, 2% is also the inflation target of the Federal Reserve (Fed), although these are two different parameters.
Less than 6 months until we enter the 4th era of bitcoin inflation, at which point BTC will fall below the 2% inflation rate targeted by the Federal Reserve.https://t.co/qnZjhALJBh
— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) November 17, 2019
In fact, for the Fed, it is a question of increasing the prices of goods that can be purchased with US dollars, while for bitcoin it is a question of increasing the BTC in circulation.
Precisely in view of the halving, given that the two previous ones that have already taken place (2012 and 2016) both led to an increase in the value of bitcoin, many predictions on the price of BTC for 2020 are upwards.
Actually, in the two previous cycles the historical high was not reached in the year of halving, but in the following year, i.e. in 2013 and 2017 and this suggests that also this time the new high could be reached in 2021.
While it seems that many analysts agree that the halving can lead to new price records, there is no agreement that this can happen in 2020 or that we must wait until 2021.
Limiting ourselves to the predictions for 2020, the year of the third halving, we can quote Tom Lee‘s forecast, published by Chuck Jones in Forbes, according to which the price could reach $91,000. It should be noted, however, that Lee himself had predicted BTC at $25,000 by the end of 2018.
The PlanB blog is more conservative and envisions a bitcoin market cap of $1,000 billion, with a BTC price of $55,000. Although there is uncertainty as to whether this new high will be reached in 2020 or 2021.
Even more conservative is Capital.com, which limits itself to trying to estimate the price for the end of 2020, without making any mention of 2021.
Some time ago they claimed that BTC could reach $23,500 by the end of 2019, while in 2020 it could reach $33,000.
Other predictions instead converge on the $100,000 as a new historical high after the halving of 2020, without indicating precisely whether this will happen next year or in 2021. Other more optimistic predictions bring this threshold to $150,000.
There are also much more optimistic forecasts, such as that of John McAfee, although while those mentioned above are supported by analyses that may seem solid, the latter seem instead to be bets supported only by intuitions that can not be defined as solid at all.
