Analysts from private wealth management firm, Bernstein have reaffirmed their previous Bitcoin prediction, emphasizing that the cryptocurrency has a greater chance to reach $150,000 by 2025. 

Bitcoin $150,000 Price Forecast Grows Stronger

Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra said in a note to clients on Monday that they were now more convinced of Bitcoin’s exponential surge to new all-time highs at around $150,000 by mid-2025. The analyst’s statements were a reiteration of their earlier Bitcoin forecast in November 2023, when they predicted the price of Bitcoin to surge to $150,000.

At the time, Bitcoin was trading around a price of $35,000, putting the analysts’ estimate at around five times the price of BTC. Now with BTC recently witnessing remarkable surges to new all time highs above $71,000, and potentially continuing its upward momentum, Bernstein analysts’ forecast seems more probable.

Analysts from the private wealth investment firm have disclosed several factors that could trigger BTC’s bullish momentum. Highlighting the success and surging demand for Spot Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETF), the company boldly affirmed that large volume of inflows into Spot Bitcoin ETFs could significantly contribute towards increasing the value of BTC. 

“We estimated $10 billion inflows for 2024 and another $60 billion for 2025. In the last 40 trading days since the ETF launch on Jan 10, Bitcoin ETF inflows have crossed $9.5 billion already,” Bernstein analysts wrote. 

Sharing the sentiment of most crypto analysts in the market, Bernstein analysts believe that the price of BTC could experience a fresh “break out” after the halving event in April 2024. At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency is trading at $68,218, witnessing a slight price correction of about 6.96% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Miners To Become Top Beneficiaries Of BTC Surge

In their note, Bernstein analysts highlighted that investing in Bitcoin miners could be the best equity proxy to BTC. According to their analysis, BTC miners typically outperform during BTC bullish cycles and conversely underperform during bearish periods.

As Bitcoin rapidly rises to all time highs above $71,000, Bernstein analysts expect that institutional interest in Bitcoin related equities could top over, with BTC miners becoming one of the largest beneficiaries. Despite various analysts predicting that the next Bitcoin halving could potentially become a death sentence to small mining companies and solo miners, Bernstein analysts have revealed that the rising price of BTC and elevated transaction fees could serve as a cushioning mechanism for miners during the halving period. 

BTC price at $67,700 | Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview.com

Featured image from CryptoSlate, chart from Tradingview.com

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Ethereum and Cardano are two popular smart contract platforms. While the latter is peer-reviewed and led by research, Ethereum enjoys a first-mover advantage and has the largest total value locked (TVL) if decentralized finance (DeFi) is a leading metric.

However, one user on X thinks Cardano is ahead of Ethereum on features. This position was highlighted following a paper released by Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, on November 14.

Is Ethereum Playing Catch Up With Cardano?

Taking to X on the same day, @JaromirTesar, a Cardano supporter, said Buterin’s paper pointed out liquid staking and touched on the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model complete with a solution that the user thinks is similar to Hydra.

Hydra is a layer-2 scaling solution in Cardano that uses state channels, similar to the Lightning Network (LN) architecture. The goal of this solution, like in layer-2 scaling options in Ethereum like Arbitrum and OP Mainnet, is to increase throughput and lower transaction fees.

Cardano is anchored on the UTXO system, the same architecture used by Bitcoin. However, Input Output Global (IOG), the lead developer of Cardano, overlaid smart contracts, allowing for the deployment of dapps in a scalable, secure environment.

To achieve this, Cardano uses the Extended UTXO (EUTXO) model, a data structure that allows the blockchain to track transactions more securely and efficiently. There is also a level of flexibility with the EUTXO system since it provides for processing complex transactions.

According to the details laid out by Buterin in the paper, “Exit games for EVM validiums: the return of Plasma,” Cardano supporters now claim Buterin appears to be proposing a system that works similarly to Hydra. Herein, the Ethereum co-founder said the team could build a system that considers the traditional UTXO system to prevent the double-spending problem while also helping scale the base layer.

With Plasma, Buterin said there will be enhanced security for platforms looking to scale Ethereum while bypassing lapses like the data availability problems in roll-ups. 

There is Room For Innovation; ETH Stabilizes Above $2,000

The speed at which this proposal will be implemented remains to be seen and could be years. However, with the development of ZK-EVMs, pushed by Polygon and set to feature heavily in their Polygon 2.0 roadmap, the Ethereum co-founder thinks there is room for “more effective constructions to simplify the developer experience and protect users’ funds” in the days ahead.

Ethereum prices remain stable at spot rates, trading above the $2,000 psychological support level, looking at the candlestick arrangement in the daily chart. ETH is up 34% from October 2023 lows but capped below 2023 highs at around $2,100.

Feature image from Canva, chart from TradingView