Bitcoin Price Will ‘Easily Double’ in 2018, Says Wall Street Strategist

Tom Lee, co-founder of the market strategy firm Fundstrat Global Advisors and a well-known bitcoin bull, sees bitcoin’s price “easily double” this year. While speaking on CNBC’s “Futures Now,” the Wall Street strategist even considered the possibility of seeing bitcoin triple in 2018.

As reported by CCN, Lee initially set his bitcoin price target for $11,500 for mid-2018, and then increased it to $20,000 as the cryptocurrency’s intrinsic value had increased over the last few months due to the growth of new bitcoin wallets, according to him.

Justifying his increasingly bullish take on the cryptocurrency, Tom Lee stated that he thinks it’s still early for investors to “appreciate how much development and uses cases are being built around bitcoin.” To him, bitcoin’s current volatility is just a “price discovery process.”

Addressing those who say bitcoin has no intangible value, Lee said they may be losing some perspective. As a reference, he used the fact that some people said Amazon was worth nothing in the 90s as it wasn’t actually making any money. Taking this into account, the Wall Street strategist said:

“On a long-term basis, [the easiest way to look at bitcoin is] as a replacement or a store of value. So as millennials discover and generate income, they’re going to use it as a replacement for gold. If [bitcoin] gets 5 percent of the gold market, that’s roughly $50,000.”

Following his line of thought, Lee sees Bitcoin getting to $20,000 as it keeps gaining on gold’s territory. Over the last year, bitcoin surged over 1,400%, while gold remained at the $1,300 level. Moreover, as reported by CCN, Google search queries for “buy bitcoin” surpassed those for “buy gold.”

Lee has in the past stated that bitcoin is a good bet for millennials, after comparing this generation’s acceptance for cryptocurrencies as an investment to that of adopting gold among previous generations.

When asked if he would rather by bitcoin over stocks, Lee stated that “even on a risk-adjusted basis bitcoin is going to easily outperform the S&P.” On a near-term basis, Lee sees bitcoin reclaim its December all-time high close to the $20,000 mark. If the cryptocurrency can get to that level in the first half of the year, Lee said, he sees it making an even bigger move in the second half of 2018.

As such, Lee concluded, bitcoin is “something you should own [all year].” Lee, who was JP Morgan’s chief equity strategist from 2007 to 2014 before helping launch Fundstrat, had a “conservative” $25,000 bitcoin price target for 2022 that has now seemingly been increased, if bitcoin performs as he expects it to this year.