Launch Time? 82% of Institutional Crypto Investors Believe Bitcoin Price Has Bottomed

Institutional investors that have already invested in cryptoassets and are long-term bullish on the industry believe that the Bitcoin price has already bottomed out and will end the year above where it is currently trading.

That’s according to an informal survey conducted by Wall Street strategist Fundstrat Global Advisors, who administered it at a recent lunch attended by institutional cryptocurrency investors.

The survey found that 82 percent of investors believe that the Bitcoin price has bottomed and 53 percent believe it will end the year between $10,000 and $20,000. Another 41 percent anticipate that it will trade between $20,000 and $30,000 at the end of 2018, while six percent predict it will ring in the new year above $30,000.

Significantly, 40 percent of attendees responded that John McAfee will win his bet that the Bitcoin price will reach $1 million by the end of 2020, though it is unclear whether they are actually that bullish or they just do not want to have to see what will happen if he loses.

For his part, Fundstrat founder Tom Lee — who has set a year-end Bitcoin price target at $25,000 — said that he believes $1 million is possible but that the firm isn’t placing money on that wager.

“We are not staking anything on that, but I think $1mm is possible,” Lee said on Twitter, adding that it’s “not our base case, but certainly possible.”

Two-thirds of respondents said that they do not think Ethereum will be classified as a security token, though nearly half also said that they do not believe the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will provide regulatory clarity regarding tokens and securities regulations in 2018.

This is notable, given that former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Gary Gensler recently said that he believes both Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP token are “noncompliant securities,” though he theorized that Ethereum was the more likely of the two to evade that classification.

The investors also predicted by a wide margin that Goldman Sachs will be the first major bank to offer cryptocurrency trading for institutional clients, which increasingly appears likely given that the firm recently hired an executive to develop its digital asset market strategy.