Crypto price predictions for 2022 were so off
December can only mean one thing: ’tis the season for media outlets to churn out articles wherein crypto ‘experts’ share their bitcoin and ethereum price predictions for the upcoming year.
“$250,000!” one cries out. “No, $500,000!” another ‘analyst’ boldly bellows.
Hark! Thou art all mistaken. This time last year, the cryptocurrency market was sharply falling from an unprecedented all-time high. Bitcoin price had peaked at $69,000 on November 10, and began falling rapidly to under $50,000 by early December.
It made some in the industry a little wary — but from scouring last year’s articles about price predictions, it’s clear that a steep drop in just a month wasn’t enough to keep the loudest voices in crypto quiet.
Predicting bitcoin and ethereum’s price is a fool’s errand. Here’s what those who did it anyway had to say.
Bitcoin price predictions for 2022 were outrageous
Protos collected 22 separate bitcoin or ethereum predictions from various crypto players. Statements were made between December 2021 and February 2022.
From notoriously exuberant Tim Draper — who undisputedly has the worst track record in bitcoin price prediction history — to Ian Balina, and from Goldman Sachs to Thomson Reuters, institutions and individuals alike shared their lofty ideals.
Out of the 16 price predictions for bitcoin, figures ranged from $10,000 to a whopping $500,000 for 2022. For context, bitcoin’s price was $46,000 at the start of the year, fluctuated to a year high of $47,000 in March, and has since experienced three major drops. It plummeted to $26,000 in May following the collapse of stablecoin TerraUSD; went down to $19,000 in June; and stumbled to $15,000 in November, when FTX and Alameda Research collapsed.
Today, bitcoin is priced at $16,500 — a drop of over 65% year-to-date.
Several media outlets were quick to publish the predictions of a group of ‘experts’ surveyed by Finder in January 2022, who said that bitcoin would peak at $93,717 and be worth $76,360 by end of year.
Finder edited its article; it recently predicted bitcoin will be worth $21,344 by end of year.
Six major names all predicted that bitcoin would be around $100,000 at the end of 2022:
- Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo
- Cathie Wood, of ARK investments
- Frank Holmes, CEO of US Global Investors
- Hong Fang, CEO of OkCoin
- Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of Nexo
- Goldman Sachs
Investor Anthony Pompliano predicted that bitcoin would reach $250,000 by end of year. On-chain analyst Matthew Highland went one step further, predicting it would already reach that price by January 2022. But the loftiest prediction we could find priced bitcoin at a staggering $500,000 by end of year. This prediction was made by Julian Liniger, chief exec of bitcoin investment app Relai.
Read more: Top insights from Michael Saylor’s debate with Doomberg and George Gammon
Only a few foresaw that 2022 would be a year of crypto penance. Major crypto investing firm Invesco was bearish on bitcoin this time last year. It predicted that the bubble would burst in 2022, and that bitcoin would trade below $30,000. This was the most accurate prediction Protos found.
Professor of finance at Sussex University, Carol Alexander, also forewarned of a bad year for bitcoin. She predicted prices would tank as low as $10,000. While that never came to light, Alexander wasn’t far off the mark — bitcoin traded at a low of $15,600 this year.
Ethereum price predictions were less common last year
Protos collected six price predictions for ether, with estimations between $4,000 and $8,000.
Like bitcoin, ether rallied hard in 2021. It reached an all-time high of $4,878 on November 10. By January 2022, however, price dipped to $3,600. By June, ether was worth around $1,000 and has since fluctuated, landing on a price of $1,190 at press time.
It seemed that this time last year, ‘experts’ were less keen to predict ether’s price. The upcoming merge was regarded as a bullish indicator, but with so many uncertainties surrounding a launch date, it was less clear where its price would go in 2022. Some decided to share their predictions anyway.
Read more: The Merge on Twitter: Reactions from the crypto community
Crypto influencer Ian Balina boldly claimed that ether would reach $8,000 by end of year. The famed rapper recently turned down a plea agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for allegations of unlawfully selling Sparkster (SPRK) tokens.
Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg, said that it would be around $4,000 to $5,000 by 2023, while Thomson Reuters technologist Joseph Racynski also felt that it would reach $8,000.
Wet finger method a fan favorite among experts
This holiday season, Protos will leave you with a final outlandish prediction. According to Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future, the crypto market was meant to be worth $7.5 trillion by now. At press time, it’s not even worth $1 trillion.
Predicting crypto prices is tantamount to wetting your finger and sticking it in the wind. That said, by the end of 2023, bitcoin will be worth more than Twitter’s chief nightmare Elon Musk.
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