Last Friday (March 11), Bill Barhydt, the CEO of investment and trading platform Abra, shared his medium and long term outlook for Bitcoin ($BTC) and Ethereum ($ETH).
The Arba CEO made his comments during an interview — on CNBC’s “Crypto World” — with reporter Tanya Macheel.
Regarding Bitcoin, he said:
“So, clearly, we’re moving sideways in a prolonged manner… Basically, you could say, we started moving sideways in… either February of last year, or maybe September of last year, depending upon your perspective but clearly, we’ve been in this kind of sideways channel between — let’s say — $35,000 and, and more or less $60,000, with a little bit of a band above and below for about a year now.
“And what’s interesting is iBitcoin had a massive infusion of cash, which was largely driven by a couple of different factors, We had this Grayscale arb… So there were a lot of money to be made there. And neither of those is true anymore. And yet, Bitcoin basically is still holding the kind of middle lower end of that band.“
However, he pointed out that he is bullish on both Bitcoin and Ethereum:
“I am bullish on both for an underlying reason that’s similar, which is network effects. They’re getting the network effects for different reasons, and they’re both in different cycles in my opinion, in terms of getting those network effects…
“Bitcoin is driving network effects around becoming kind of a reserve asset that is trustless, immutable, and can’t be stopped, can’t be changed, you know, hard money, etc. Those network effects continue to grow. They were interrupted via the China mining ban and actually I think that’s what initially caused the channel to actually stop in the high 60s. I think it would have stopped in the 80s or 90s, and we would have gone sideways from there.
“Not a huge deal if you’re looking, you know, in terms of exponential growth long term because I still think we get to $250K, but it’s the network effects of Bitcoin going to become hard money or on its way to becoming hard money that are driving its adoption.
“Ethereum is different. Ethereum’s network effects are based on this idea that it could become the world’s computer. It’s being used for stablecoins, it’s being used for NFTs, being used for DeFi. People looking at it for gaming now. With staking coming, I think… the rates are probably going to increase to 10ish percent, which is going to show a massive influx of people trying to hold Ethereum, which is going to create more of a lockup.
“So the network effects for Ethereum, in the short term, are actually more bullish to me because of these use cases, right? That are just starting to play out, and if the gas fees and the transaction fees come down, which is the promise of proof of stake, look out, because now all of the impediments to those network effects are taken out of the way.
“Now, we may have a little bit of a sell-the-news effect, after the initial kind of rush to stake happens with the upgrade in June or July, whenever it happens, meaning the upgrade to proof of stake. So we may see a kind of a sell-the-news pullback, but yeah, I think you’re talking about, you know, potentially $30,000-$40,000 Ethereum. It’s deflationary. The use cases are through the roof. It’s just all the stars are lining up for Ethereum in my opinion right now.“
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
