Photo: Pavlos Giorkas / Flickr
In the controversial world of cryptocurrencies, everybody tries to make guesses and predict future market tendencies, prices, estimate the prospects of some projects, etc. Some of those predictions are true, some are not. It’s time for us to have a look at all the hopes and fears of 2018 and see what predictions were true, and what guesses were wrong.
Guesses that Came True
At the beginning of 2018, Ari Paul, the co-founder of the large-scale cryptocurrency hedge fund Block Tower, provided a number of crypto-related predictions on his Twitter account. In particular, he suggested that Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork would take place this year.
1/ Belated 2018 predictions. Here’s a list of forecasts for 2018. I offer these humbly. Most will probably be wrong at least on the specific numbers, if not directionally.
— Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) January 14, 2018
And Ari Paul was right. Bitcoin Cash hard fork took place in May. The latest hard fork was scheduled for November 15 but was disrupted by a competing proposal that was not compatible with the original roadmap. As a result, BCH community was split into three fractions: Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, and Bitcoin SV.
9/ Both BTC and BCH will continue to hard fork and >10% of the value of each (if held today) will reside in new offshoots.
— Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) January 14, 2018
As for Bitcoin, another BTC split has not yet happened.
In October, Former JPMorgan Chase executive Blythe Masters predicted a stronger connection of commodity markets with blockchain projects that would increase their performance. The prime examples of such interconnection are agriculture and oil industry, where companies have started integrating the distributed ledger technology for their activity.
ABCD, the largest agricultural companies, use blockchain to automize grain and oilseed post-trade execution processes. Such oil companies as BP, Shell, and Equinor have launched a blockchain-based platform Vakt for energy commodity trading. That’s why Masters’ prediction is absolutely right.
Another true prediction was related to ICO-regulation. In summer, the president of CBOE Global Markets Chris Concannon stated that the initial coin offering (ICO) market could soon face a two-fold regulatory “reckoning”. He said:
“The reckoning will come in two waves. First, the SEC will go after ICO market participants. Then, class-action lawsuits against the teams behind ICO projects will surge.”
Several months after his claim the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) imposed civil penalties against two Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) solely over their failure to register their token sales.
Later, SEC brought violations against Floyd Mayweather Jr. and music producer DJ Khaled involving ICO promotion, noting that using celebrity endorsers was a crucial part of the ICO issuers’ promotional strategy.
Further, an official of SEC said that some offerings are absolute frauds and called for international cooperation to bring the scammers to justice.
Of course, most of the predictions were related to prices, with Bitcoin in the limelight. However, some of them were not very optimistic. Todd Gordon from TradingAnalysis.com suggested that Bitcoin price would drop to $4,000 this year, and was right. Currently, the price of the digital coin makes up $3,668.
Predictions Not Destined to be Borne Out
Unfortunately, predictions that seemed to be very optimistic turned out to be false.
At the beginning of the year, Bitcoin’s expert Tom Lee forecasted Bitcoin to hit $125,000 benchmark by 2022 and reach $25,000 in 2018. Several months later, when the crypto market was experiencing hard times, he changed his mind and updated his Bitcoin price forecast for this year, predicting that it would reach $22,000 instead of $25,000.
Moreover, Lee is sure that Bitcoin is underestimated, and its fair price should be about $10,000 above where it is trading now. Well, 2019 will show whether he is right or not.
Mike Novogratz, an ex-Goldman Sachs partner and founder of crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital is known for his optimism towards Bitcoin. He believes that there will be an institutional FOMO with Bitcoin expected to cross $10000 by the end of the first quarter of 2019. He said:
“I think Q1 [or] Q2 [2019] if the institutions start coming in, we’ll put in new highs.”
At the beginning of December, when Bitcoin was down more than 80% from its all-time high, Novogratz remained confident about the coin’s comeback. He said:
“I do believe Bitcoin is going to be digital gold. We have a business that we think can break even next year, if not make money. We’ve got plenty of cash to run the business for a long time. I keep telling my guys we’re a surfer getting ourselves in shape for when the next wave comes, and when the wave comes we’d better be the Laird Hamilton of crypto.”
The “pretty face of cryptocurrency” predicted that Bitcoin’s price would stay somewhere between $3,000 and $6,000, and he turned out to be right. However, his optimism toward institutional players entering the crypto industry was premature.
One more unrealistic prediction was made in 2017 by John McAfee, a cybersecurity legend, and is relevant now. McAfee promised that he would “eat my d— on national television” if Bitcoin failed to move above $500,000 mark by 2020. As 2018 is coming to the end, only one year is left for McAfee’s prediction.
Interesting speculation was made by George Friedman, a geopolitical analyst for the online publication Geopolitical Futures, who said that blockchain would become obsolete. Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin has an opposite opinion. According to Lubin’s statement, the future of the crypto industry is so bright he has to wear shades.
Peaking into 2019, if you could see the landscape through my eyes, you’d have to wear shades.
Yours in Ethereal Serenity,
JML— Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) December 21, 2018
At the moment, the technology is far from being outdated and is right on the way to the mass adoption.
Despite recent crypto market massacre, VC billionaire Tim Draper also places huge bets on Bitcoin and believes the value of Bitcoin will keep going higher in the upcoming years. According to Draper, the transition to cryptocurrency will take place in the near future.
Billionaire investor Jim Breyer also believes that the promise offered by the technology is too great for it to be permanently buried by short-term market movements, that’s why cryptocurrency has great prospects.
The distributed ledger technology is on the way to mass adoption, and the investors may be right in their optimistic predictions. Only time will show that.
