Recently, two very interesting and probably related forecasts have been published regarding the price of Bitcoin and the use of stablecoins.
The researcher from Bitwise, Ryan Rasmussen, has published them.
Summary
Bitcoin price predictions and its relationship with stablecoins
According to Rasmussen, by 2024 the price of BTC will exceed $80,000, thus setting new all-time highs.
This forecast is mainly based on two considerations: the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs at the beginning of the year, and the April halving.
It should be noted that already during the year of the last halving, 2020, the price of Bitcoin reached new all-time highs in December.
The previous all-time highs were still those of late 2017, namely $20,000. The halving occurred in May, and in November the price returned close to the highs.
In December, it not only rose above $20,000, but reached up to $29,000, marking the beginning of the latest major crypto bull run.
Rasmussen’s hypothesis is therefore that 2024 could replicate the trend of 2020, with new highs by the end of the year.
The forecast on stablecoins
Rasmussen’s second prediction concerns the use of stablecoins.
This forecast is based on some data revealed yesterday by Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire. According to Allaire and Rasmussen, there will be a higher volume of money settled using stablecoins rather than Visa.
It also states that stablecoins are one of the “killer apps” of the crypto world, so much so that in the last four years they have grown from zero to a market of 137 billion dollars.
2024 should be another year of significant growth.
It should be noted that USDC actually experienced a contraction during 2023, due to the depegging issues that occurred in March and were only resolved thanks to the intervention of the Fed.
During this year, its market capitalization has gone from 44.5 to 24.5 billion dollars, which means it has almost halved. However, it is also important to remember that in 2021 it had risen from 4.5 billion to 42 billion, so the current value is still much higher than the one at the beginning of 2021.
The lion’s share continues to be taken by USDT, as it has just set its new all-time high market capitalization record of over 90 billion dollars.
The other forecasts
In reality, Rasmussen’s predictions are a total of ten, plus an additional “bonus”.
If the first one concerns the price of Bitcoin, the second one, for example, concerns the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the USA, which he predicts will be the most successful ETF launch of all time, so much so that within 5 years they could even attract 1% of the entire US ETF market, equivalent to $72 billion in AUM.
The third one concerns Coinbase, which is Circle’s partner in the USDC project, which according to Rasmussen will double its revenue, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations by at least 10 times.
The fourth one is about stablecoins that will surpass Visa, and the fifth one concerns fund tokenization.
These are always very positive forecasts, to the point that they can hardly be considered objective and impartial.
For example, the fifth prediction concerns the doubling of the commissions collected by Ethereum stakers, and the eighth prediction concerns the use of cryptocurrencies in artificial intelligence systems.
It even predicts that a major Ethereum update could reduce the average transaction costs from the current $11 to $0.01. This specific prediction, as it always refers to 2024, seems so daring that it is almost considered absurd.
The final additional forecast is that one in four financial advisors will add cryptocurrencies to the recommended assets for their clients.
The success probabilities of predictions related to Bitcoin and stablecoin
The same Rasmussen then states that these are predictions, and not guarantees, but they represent Bitwise’s best estimate at the current state of affairs.
It also says that the future is complex, and that only if everything goes well these predictions can happen.
However, there are still largely very positive forecasts, if not too much.
In particular, the hypothesis that by 2024 the cost of average fees on Ethereum could drop to one cent seems truly science fiction.
However, if we consider not only the on-chain transactions on Ethereum, but also those made, for example, through layer-2, the assumption ceases to be absurd and becomes at least plausible.
Moreover, an increasing number of ERC-20 tokens are being traded through layer-2, and this means that the path envisioned by Rasmussen is actually already underway.
