The price of bitcoin has rallied this week, as the world's number one cryptocurrency continues its recovery from its worst ever start to a year. (File Photo)
Bitcoin (BTC) has recovered from its recent price slump, mirroring an annual trend that envisions a cryptocurrency surge in value following a major conference in May.
The price of bitcoin has risen by 5% in the 24 hours since the
Consensus Conference kicked off Monday in in New York. And, the fourth annual blockchain technology summit once again provided a boost to the volatile cryptocurrency.
Analysts predicted the price rally earlier this week, after bitcoin had fallen to a three-week low.
“We expect the Consensus rally to be even larger than past years,”
Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, said in a note to clients ahead of the conference. Bitcoin has already hit its lowest price point of the year, according to Lee, having fallen to around US$6,500 in early February.
According to the note:
“In general, we see 2018 being a strong year, but we see the larger and more established blockchains growing in dominance in 2018,” the research note said, highlighting
Ethereum (ETH) as one of the other cryptocurrencies set to benefit…Bottom line: We expect bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to behave similarly to prior years and rally during Consensus.”
The turn-around in fortunes has been reflected across cryptocurrency markets, with Ethereum,
Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and
Ripple (XRP) all seeing significant gains since early April.
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The latest bitcoin price is still less than half of the heights it reached in late 2017, when it peaked close to US$20,000. Since then, bitcoin has suffered from its worst ever start to a year, aligning with some analyst theories that the world's most valuable cryptocurrency was experiencing a bubble.
The rapid decline was followed by a relative period of stability that many cryptocurrency experts predicted would precede more gains.
How high could the crypto prices go?
Cryptocurrency analysts vary dramatically in their predictions for bitcoin's price.
Ethereum founder
Vitalik Buterin said in February that cryptocurrencies "could drop to near-zero at any time," telling his Twitter followers to not put in more money than they can afford to lose. Since then, Ethereum's price has fluctuated between US$350 and US$950, currently hovering around US$720.
Others have been far more optimistic, with
bitcoin expert and the former COO of Skype Michael Jackson saying he believed bitcoin would recover to its heights of last year, and even go well beyond.
As bitcoin's price approached US$10,000 this week,
one Twitter user noted that its average daily growth rate since 2009 is around 0.5 per cent. If it continues this growth pattern, it was speculated one bitcoin would be worth US$5.6 million by 2021.