2022 could be another banner year for Bitcoin, with experts seeing a massive boost by the middle of the year.
BTC is expected to surge to as high as $100,000 in value by around June or July, crypto lending platform Nexo co-founder and managing partner Antoni Trenchev said in a CNBC report.
On Tuesday, Bitcoin price is 1.04 percent lower at $45,986.23 in the last 24 hours, CoinDesk's real-time tracker showed.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: $100,000 'by the Middle of 2022'
In an interview with CNBC's "Street Signs Asia," Trenchev said Bitcoin is "going to reach $100,000 this year"--by the "middle of it," to be more specific.
Bitcoin rose significantly in 2021, soaring 60 percent and reaching an all-time high of about $69,000 early in the year.
However, not all experts share the same view. Some have cautioned investors that Bitcoin is headed for a steep fall in the immediate months, with Sussex University finance professor Carol Alexander forecasting that the token will plummet to $10,000 this year. If this happens, all of Bitcoin's gains it earned in the last one and a half years would be wiped out.
Continuing regulatory action on the market and the crypto's inherent volatility are the biggest factors behind any forecasts for Bitcoin.
Expert Points Out '2 Simple Reasons' Behind Bitcoin 2022 Breakout
But for Trenchev, there are "two simple reasons" why Bitcoin is set to break out further, the CNBC report noted. One is that institutions are establishing treasuries that contain Bitcoin. While he did not provide any example in the interview, the CNBC report named such firms as MicroStrategy and Square as companies that purchased enormous amounts of Bitcoin.
The other is that "cheap money," or amounts borrowed at low interest rates, is here to stay and this would signify a surge in cryptocurrencies, Trenchev added.
Trenchev's remarks come amid news that the U.S. Federal Reserve may raise interest rates multiple times this year for the first time since the pandemic began nearly two years ago to combat inflation. The U.S. Fed was among the major central banks around the world that initiated unprecedented monetary easing measures in 2020 to have financial markets stay afloat during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trenchev admitted he was against such easing of monetary policies and added most people "got it wrong" in their expectations for a Fed rate hike. He said such rate hikes would dip into equities and the bond market, and not much political will has been exerted to push any correction in the traditional financial markets.
Other bullish experts see a multitude of factors that could spring up Bitcoin price. These include wider acceptance by traditional institutions and the increasing demand for Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), Yahoo! Finance reported.
While these experts are confident that Bitcoin will reach $100,000 at one point during the year, others are cautious in their forecasts, arriving at a more attainable figure of $70,000 in the near term.
