Bitcoin (BTC) could go as high as $160K this year, says Alex Mashinsky

After weeks of trading below $40,000, Bitcoin was finally able to break past the price level this week. With the crypto market shaking off the bearish sentiment, various crypto investors are now upgrading their price predictions for BTC.

For instance, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky earlier made a prediction that Bitcoin could be trading above $77,000 by the end of 2021. However, he actually increased his price projection for the crypto after the recent market correction.

“I do see us actually going higher,” Mashinsky told Kitco News about his upgraded price projection for Bitcoin this year. “I think we will go higher than a hundred thousand.”

The good thing about the correction is that it flushed out leverage. “The reason for that is that we effectively flushed all of the leverage in the system,” he added. “And we found our support at $30,000 or so. And now we’re rebuilding with additional long-term holders.”

One of the catalysts for the upward momentum of Bitcoin’s price is the increasing adoption. “I see price acceleration because of PayPal, Visa, and Venmo [bringing] all of these customers that are new to crypto,” Mashinsky explained.

The government’s money printing activities will continue to worry investors and push some of them to buy Bitcoin as a hedge. “As the government continues to print money, continues to devalue our currency, more and more people are realizing that the true inflation should include the increase in the money supply, which in the last year has been forty percent, forty percent of all the dollars that have ever been created were minted in the last 12 months,” he added. “That will create an increase in demand Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other alts.”

With leverage out of the system, there is very broad support for Bitcoin, according to Mashinsky. While there might be some variables further down the line such as China doing something that could dampen the crypto market, he believes that BTC’s price trend is upward.

“China may do something crazy and it's gonna crater Bitcoin tomorrow but overall, the trend is up to the right,” he explained. “If people hodl, if people sit on their coins, then we’re going to break $100K and we may reach all the way to $160K this year and I’m sticking with that prediction.”

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