Bitcoin had a bearish weekly close, as the price dipped further below $40,000. The benchmark crypto has experienced low volatility in the past week, but the market could see more action as the monthly close approaches.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Struggles To Breach $40,000 Level, Down 4% In Last 24 Hours

At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $38,900 with a 2% loss in the last 24 hours.

In the short-term, market sentiment seems to be turning bearish as market participants expect more downside price action. The long-term trends opposite and market participants seem more optimistic about BTC’s future performance.

A recent survey conducted by Finder asked 35 industry experts about their price expectations for Bitcoin by end of the year. The result put the first crypto by market cap back to $65,000 by that period.

In addition, the experts expect BTC’s price to continue its multi-decade long rally to $179,000 by 2025 and over $400,000 by 2030. As seen below, the long-term expectations for the cryptocurrency remain in the green.

As noted by Find, the panel changed their short-term views for BTC’s price. The same survey was conducted in January and experts predicted Bitcoin to hit a new all-time high at around $75,000 by the end of 2022.

The experts have different opinions on BTC’s short-term performance. Two experts believe Bitcoin could stay rangebound for the entirety of 2022.

In that sense, Bitcoin could stay stuck between $30,000 to $50,000 and frustrate the expectations of the entire market. The bulls expect new highs or at least a return to $60,000, and the bears expect it to go below $30,000.

BTC tends to move opposite of what the majority desires. One of the more pessimistic experts Dimitrios Salampasis, FinTech lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, believes BTC’s price could be negatively impacted by the energy consumption narrative in the short term. Salampasis said:

(…) the conversations around the environmental impact of mining may lead to blanket bans of crypto mining activities, which could additionally contribute to Bitcoin scarcity and the increased prices as a store of value. Last but not least, Bitcoin could be used as a hedge against fiat currency fluctuations.

Bitcoin To See More Demand As People Lose Trust In Central Banking?

In that sense, most of Finder’s expert panel believes BTC will be replaced as the number one crypto in terms of popularity. Most aim at Ethereum taking over as it becomes more “energy-efficient” if it can migrate to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus.

As seen below, 50% of the panel expects this outcome while 12% answered unsure of this question. Some experts believe Ethereum will become dominant because of its use cases, others because of its interoperability features, and more.

Optimistic experts believe Bitcoin could see as much as $100,000 by end of the year on the back of people losing trust in central banking and governments. In that scenario, people could turn to BTC as a decentralized asset to hedge against the legacy financial system.

Related Reading | Why Bitcoin Could Revisit $27K, Peter Brandt Says

Ben Ritchie, managing director of Digital Capital Management, said:

Increasingly, ‘trust’ is becoming a central consideration for investors – can we trust the economic system and the power brokers driving it? Trust has been lost and, with the economy in uncharted territory, Bitcoin is forming a viable alternative solution. Placing ‘trust’ in code and mathematics, with no intervention, has significant global appeal.

If you invested any kind of substantial amount and held Solana (SOL) or Shiba Inu (SHIB) about this time last year, you may be set for life by now.  In 2021, both tokens rose by more than 10,000%. In layman’s terms, that means a $1000 investment would have resulted in a $100,000 profit. Seesaw Protocol (SSW) is a thrilling new DeFi coin that has recently debuted on a few prominent decentralised exchanges.

Seesaw Protocol (SSW) Enjoys a Successful First Week

The Seesaw Protocol (SSW) presale was a huge success. The token’s value increased by 4000% from its initial price of $0.005 to $0.22. Some of the first investors have experienced a massive increase in the value of their cryptocurrency assets.

The coin is now available for short and long term trade after being listed on decentralised exchanges. Ethereum (ETH) and Filecoin (FIL) are two more cryptocurrencies that had spectacular presales and have now gone on to become 2 of the top 50 cryptocurrencies. Since launching, SSW has increased by another 100%. In other words, it has already doubled. For some, this would be enough to sell. However, there are many reasons to believe that Seesaw Protocol is one to HODL. 

Seesaw Protocol (SSW) is a completely decentralised multi-chain DeFi platform with big aspirations to shake up the cryptocurrency market in both the short and long term. With SSW, you will be able to connect to the BNB chain and bridge between the Ethereum (ETH) and Polygon (MATIC) networks, allowing you to conduct transactions on the most efficient blockchain.

Solana (SOL)

Solana’s (SOL) price surged by approximately 10,000% in 2021, owing primarily to its reputation as the number one “Ethereum killer“. The smart contract platform is similar to its competitors in many ways, but it is significantly more efficient in terms of speed and cost, making it popular among traders and developers.

Solana’s NFT marketplace, Solanart, is growing in popularity, thanks in part to Solana’s (SOL) low fees. Solana NFTs are currently available for testing on Opensea, the major NFT marketplace. Solana (SOL) continues to support hundreds of transactions per second despite recent performance issues. Ethereum (ETH), on the other hand, can only process about 13 transactions per second.

Solana’s (SOL) network is designed for the mass market, with a reported capability of 50,000 transactions per second and pricing as low as a fraction of a cent. With the NFT market predicted to reach billions of dollars, Solana (SOL) might become the industry’s go-to network, establishing itself as the number one smart contract platform.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) 

Shiba Inu (SHIB), a Dogecoin-inspired meme-coin project, has announced the birth of its own metaverse. The initiative, named “Shib: The Metaverse,” could supply over 100,000 plots of land, each of which would be distributed at a different time and for a different price.

The Shiba Inu team didn’t go into detail about the income mechanism for these plots. However, it has been said that investors will be able to generate passive income, amass in-game resources, and gain incentives.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) was one of the most popular tokens in 2021. If you had traded at the correct time, you could have increased your wealth by a whopping 74 million per cent. This demonstrates that with cryptocurrency, even the tiniest investment can make you wealthy.

If you lost out on the returns of Solana (SOL) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) last year, you won’t want to lose out on Seesaw Protocol’s prospective profits (SSW). The DeFi project has all the ingredients to be one of the most exciting investments you could make this year, with an ever-increasing price as well as $1 million in liquidity.

Buy SSW and find out more here:

Swap: https://swap.seesawprotocol.io/

Ethereum remains one of the most popular investment choices when it comes to the crypto market. The returns from the digital asset have outperformed that of top rivals consistently, making it not only a more profitable asset but a better inflation hedge by current standards. Its price though has been down since the market crash and despite the recovery is still yet to touch the $4,000 point again.

There have been some optimistic predictions made for the future of the digital asset. Some have even said that they see the asset touching as high as $12,000. However, others have taken a more conservative route when it comes to price prediction for ethereum. A panel of fintech specialists has recently put the price of ethereum at $6,500 at year-end, less than 50% higher than its previous all-time high.

Ethereum Headed For 100%

Finder recently updated its predictions for ethereum using that of a panel of fintech specialists predictions. The panel had a positive outlook for the digital asset which they put at $6,500 by the end of the year, an over 100% price growth from the current value of the asset. Not only were the predictions positive for the short term, but the long-term outlook saw some even more impressive numbers.

The same panel received that they expected the cryptocurrency to touch $10,810 by 2025. This price mark had been predicted by others to happen in 2022, however, the panelists give the asset another three years to achieve this.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Donations Are Aiding Ukraine In Fight Against Russia

Over the longer term, the predictions for ethereum are just as bullish. They put the price of ethereum at $26,338 by the end of this decade, which would be 2x from its predicted price point in 2025. “Ethereum is expected to hit $10,810 by 2025 before more than doubling to $26,338 by 2030, according to the average of the panel’s forecasts,” Finder wrote.

Although this year’s numbers were generally bullish, they fall short of the predictions made by the same panel the year before. The panel which consisted of 33 fintech specialists had previously put ethereum at $15,364 and $50,788 by 2025 and 2030 respectively.

 

ETH trending above $3,100 | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com

Finder also outlined that sentiment from the panel skewed generally positive for the asset, with the majority believing that the current price remains a great point to purchase the token. “Over half (52%) of the panel think now is the time to buy ETH, with 30% saying you should hold onto what you’ve got. Just 19% say it’s a good time to get out,” the report read.

What Does ETH Look Like On The Charts

Ethereum has since broken above the $3,000 resistance and has found a perfect balance point above it. However, momentum remains low across the market causing the price of the digital asset to stagnate.

Related Reading | FTX Teams Up With Sports Giants, Super Bowl To Prove Its Crypto Power

Sentiment still skews to majority sell, although only by 6%. It is up from the previous week which saw majority at buy, with only 40% looking towards sell. Current indicators point to a longer stretch of straggling prices giving the digital asset time to form enough momentum for another liftoff. Until then, ETH is more likely to hover around the $3,100 mark.

ETH is trading at $3,113 at the time of this writing.

Featured image from Tim Denning, chart from TradingView.com