Peter Boockvar, the Chief Investment Officer at Bleakley Advisory Group, sees the potential for Bitcoin (BTC) to be around for a long time, but with a significant price drop coming when the Bitcoin bubble bursts, according to CNBC.
Boockvar sees a possible 70 to 90 percent price drop for Bitcoin this year, saying:
“Over the next year I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s [BTC] down to $1,000 to $3,000.”
When asked if the stock market would crash in the event of a significant fall in Bitcoin’s price, Boockvar said that any corresponding drop would just be psychological, because Bitcoin is “not something that really is that relevant in a 19 trillion dollar economy.”
However, he adds that people in South Korea, Japan, and the US who have been taking on credit card debt in order to invest in cryptocurrency will be hit hard.
Boockvar told CNBC that the boom in crypto markets can be attributed to easy-money policies of central banks and money printing. These moves make some cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, more attractive to investors, due to the fact that they are both finite and safe from debasement and inflation.
People have long questioned whether Bitcoin fits the mold of a traditional “bubble.” Yale economist Robert Shiller, who won a Nobel prize for his work on financial bubbles, used Bitcoin as an example of a bubble in September 2017. However, in January 2018, Shiller then said that he didn’t know what to make of Bitcoin, adding that it could be around for another 100 years.
BTC is trading at around $11,820 at press time, down about 1.52 percent over a 24 hour period.