Tom Lee Believes BTC Price to Triple This Year, Community Skeptical

After Tom Lee, a popular crypto analyst, cut his Bitcoin price forecast for this year to USD 15,000, the cryptoverse is still not convinced that the price might triple in less than two months.

According to Lee, the level at which mining costs match the trading price is down to USD 7,000 from an earlier estimate of USD 8,000 for the S9 mining machine by Bitmain, CNBC reported last Friday. The head of Fundstrat Global Advisors, a market analyst company, estimates that fair value for bitcoin would be roughly 2.2 times the new USD 7,000 break-even price, therefore Bitcoin should stand at around USD 15,000.

Less than a month ago, he was convinced that Bitcoin could still surpass USD 20,000 – even in spite of the almost year-long bear market.

Bitcoin price chart:

The analyst also stressed that the recent drop in the market led to a renewed wave of pessimism: “We believe the negative swing in sentiment is much worse than the fundamental implications”.

However, according to Lee, a price recovery is possible. He believes that the wave of institutions (Bakkt, Fidelity) – that are expected to enter the market at the end of 2018 – could bring Bitcoin bulls back.

Meanwhile, Sven Henrich, founder of NorthmanTrader, a market analysis firm, published this chart that compares Lee’s predictions and Bitcoin price:

(Click on Henrich’s tweet to see the whole chart below.)

Henrich’s followers on Twitter reacted:

Other members of the cryptoverse have also offered their opinion:

Back in 2017, Lee stated that he believes “Bitcoin is your best investment until the end of the year.” According to him, people see Bitcoin as the older generations have been seeing gold in the 1980s: a hedge against fiat currencies. If Bitcoin captures the “5% of just the gold market, it’s USD 25,000. But 5% seems like an awfully small number. Let’s say it’s 10 or 15. Then bitcoin could easily be in the USD 100,000 range,” he said back then.