Why bitcoin could rocket to $225,000 in the next two years, according to one Wall Street analyst
The bitcoin rally is nowhere near over, according to one analyst who sees the cryptocurrency more than doubling in price over the next few years.
Mark Palmer, a senior analyst at the New York-based investment bank The Benchmark Company, said he foresaw bitcoin soaring to $225,000 by the end of 2026. That implies a 136% gain from current levels, with the cryptocurrency’s price trading around $95,000 on Wednesday.
That rally will mainly be driven by institutional investors, who will continue to ramp up their appetite for bitcoin in the coming years, Palmer told Yahoo Finance in an interview this week.
For comparison, Palmer pointed to the price of gold, which began to soar when investors and pension funds began to buy gold exchange-traded funds in the early 2000s. That development opened the door to gold becoming a more mainstream investment, with the precious metal up 845% since the start of the century.
“The reality is you’ve got a lot of under-funded pensions. Bitcoin is a non-correlated asset with a lot of potential upside. So adding, you know, a portion of the portfolio in terms of Bitcoin makes sense,” Palmer said.
“If that continues and we continue to see institutions finding ways that they can fit bitcoin and crypto into their portfolios, well, that’s going to significantly increase the demand for bitcoin, and that’s how you get to a significantly higher price.”
Palmer also pointed to previous bitcoin halvings, quadrennial events where bitcoin miners’ rewards are slashed in half. In the last three halving events, bitcoin saw a “significant uplift” over the following 14-16 months, he noted, attesting to how supply and demand shifts can affect the price of the crypto.
Bitcoin’s price could also be supported by a friendlier environment for cryptocurrencies, with investors hopeful that Trump may help boost crypto prices over his second term. Traders are looking for the president-elect — who’s known in the space as the “crypto president” — to dial back regulation and potentially create a national bitcoin reserve, which he proposed in the months leading up to the election.
Trump is also reportedly interviewing candidates for a new crypto regulatory position in the White House, who could take on the title of first-ever “crypto czar.” That role in itself is bullish for bitcoin, Palmer suggested.
“Just the fact that there would be someone who would be focused on making the United States a leader in crypto and bitcoin mining and other areas … is, again, a sea change,” he said.
Wall Street is also becoming more bullish on bitcoin, with forecasters setting increasingly ambitious targets as they prepare for Trump’s second term in office.
On Polymarket, the betting site that accurately predicted Trump’s election win, the likelihood that bitcoin will reach $100,000 by the end of the year has shot up to 73%.
Options traders are also laying bets that bitcoin will reach six-figure territory by the end of 2024, according to Deribit exchange data cited by Bloomberg earlier in the month.