A Sunday Bitcoin rally, which took the price of a coin past $45,000, extended into Monday after positive developments for cryptocurrencies pushed the world’s most popular digital coin into positive territory on the year.

As of this writing, Bitcoin is now up roughly 4% year-to-date, and up 27% from its most recent lows of $37,000.

The recent action in Bitcoin has been widely attributed to increased institutional demand. Goldman Sachs (which became the first major US institution to trade in Bitcoin), Bridgewater and Blackrock have now shown keen interest in the acquisition and trade in crypto assets.

While roughly 46 million Americans own or trade in Bitcoin, it will take institutional investors, purchasing through the funds they control, for Bitcoin to begin reaching its potential longer-term price targets. Many of which are well over $100k per coin.

Tom Lee, the co-founder of Fundstrat believes Bitcoin could trade at $200k before the year is out.

He said in February, “The simplest way to see a big step-function occur in crypto, is getting existing investors in the U.S., not new investors, to allocate to Bitcoin. Seventy six percent of the wealth in America is controlled by people over the age of 65. That’s nearly $100 trillion…

“Just imagine if 2% out of $100 trillion allocated to crypto, you could see a five-to-10, 15 times increase in total network value.”

Much of that $100 trillion in assets are held within institutional investment houses and hedge funds, which now seem more interested in Bitcoin than ever before.

Even crypto is buying crypto…

Terra, the crypto network behind Luna has begun accumulating a $10 billion Bitcoin reserve to back its stablecoin, TUSD. On Monday alone, Terra purchased over $100 million in Bitcoin for its reserve.

With Bitcoin now trading in positive territory on the year, further influx of big investments could be coming.

Alexander Mamasidikov, the co-founder of MinePlex said, “The ongoing capital splash into the digital currency is a sign that investors do not want to take a back seat in a price movement that could push bitcoin to a height not seen since November 2021.”

And Yuya Hasegawa, a crypto analyst at Bitbank said, “From a technical perspective, bitcoin has broken out of an ascending triangle, which signals an upward trend, and likely will continue to rally in the short term.”

With its recent breakout, large purchases by Terra and institutional buying, could Tom Lee’s prediction of $200,000 Bitcoin in 2022 come to fruition?

Read on…

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/28/bitcoin-surges-above-47000-turns-positive-for-2022.html