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Co-founder and Fundstrat strategist Tom Lee has repeated his prediction that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $20,000 by mid-year and $25,000 by the end of the year. He also expects at least three publicly traded corporations to issue their own cryptocurrencies in 2018, writes CNBC, citing Lee’s Feb. 28 Fundstrat report.
Lee’s price prediction reiterates comments he made in early January 2018, predicting Bitcoin could “easily double” this year.
Despite BTC now trading at almost 53 percent of its December, 2017 high of over $20,000 — around $10,700 at press time according to CoinMarketCap — Lee maintains his $25,000 prediction for 2018.
In his report, Lee also commented on the phenomenon of traditional corporations creating internal cryptocurrencies, stating:
“ALREADY THREE MAJOR COMPANIES HAVE ANNOUNCED EFFORTS WITHIN CRYPTOCURRENCIES, WHICH DEMONSTRATE THAT CORPORATIONS MAY BE MOVING TOWARDS CRYPTOCURRENCIES BEFORE WALL STREET HAS EMBRACED THEM.”
Lee sees corporations entering the crypto sphere as support for his prediction of BTC’s future upswing, citing Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten’s Feb. 27 announcement that they will be launching their own cryptocurrency as just one case of the crypto world constructively developing this year, regardless of BTC’s price drop.
In the same vein, Lee mentions Japanese message app Line’s January announcement that it will open a crypto exchange and in-app trading space.
Lee’s report also predicts that several large companies like Starbucks, Facebook, and Amazon — none of which have yet entered the crypto world in a significant way — are likely to make implement Blockchain technology this year.
Lee referenced the Starbucks’ executive chairman hinting at a possible use of Blockchain for a consumer payments app in comments Feb. 27, and also hypothesized that both Facebook and Amazon are likely to “announce a crypto-strategy this year.” He speculated that if Facebook went public, it could reward users with an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), rather than only investors with stock options.
In the past, Lee has had relatively constant, bullish predictions for the price of Bitcoin. In August 2017, he predicted that BTC would hit $6,000 before the end of the year, a mark that was surpassed by 230 percent by December when BTC hit $20,000.
According to CNBC, Tom Lee is the “only major Wall Street strategist to issue formal price targets on bitcoin.”