Vetle Lunde, a crypto markets analyst at K33 Research, has made some bold predictions about Bitcoin price and how it is similar to what happened in 2019. While speaking on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” program on Monday, Lunde noted that the price movements of Bitcoin in 2023 are similar to what was recorded from 2018 to 2019.
He said that the crypto market has succeeded in removing so many bad seeds, and this has stabilized many cryptocurrencies. He highlighted that the little bearish trends and bullish signs are the same as the Bitcoin price in 2019. He termed the whole situation "remarkably similar."
Before speaking about the current Bitcoin price movements and how it relates to 2019, Lunde had made a bold prediction that Bitcoin might be touching the $45k level in May 2023. While this is yet to be seen, there's pretty much time for this prediction to pass. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at a little over $30k. Going by Lunde's predictions, Bitcoin would have to add about $15k to reach it. While speaking to CoinDesk, Lunde explained why the crypto market had undergone massive changes. He mentioned that investors were the top contributors to the market situation.
"We saw throughout the latter part of 2022 a lot of forced selling, and also selling from investors who grew cautious. This has led people to be underexposed. And has also enticed a lot of people to short (crypto) being conservative with adding exposure. This creates this dynamic where bitcoin feeds on your short squeezes and moves higher," Lunde said.
He also blamed crypto firms as also one of the top contributors to the bear market. He said that the top crypto companies, such as FTX, exposed themselves, leading to the market collapse. The FTX collapse brought so many negative changes in the crypto market as it led to the collapse of other crypto firms.
"It was a lot of spending, a lot of focus on growth. So you had this environment where miners took a lot of fiat that held a lot of bitcoin and then were exposed to falling prices, in addition to all the crypto banks starting to neglect due diligence," Lunde explained.
The Crypto Market Has Learned Its Lessons
But the Bitcoin analyst has said that the crypto market has started a massive recovery and could be on its way to a bull market. In the words of Lunde, he noted that the market has washed out the bad fruits and has started recovering from the losses it suffered.
Apparently, the bad fruits which Lunde was referring to were the failed crypto projects and exchanges such as FTX. "A lot of these rotten fruits have been washed out of the market. So the entire market is in a more robust stage right now where it can handle higher interest rates for longer," Lunde added.
In his closing remarks, Lunde added that the crypto market has learned from the events of 2022 and has made positive progress." The industry has learned. I'm pretty sure that we will experience similar kinds of crises in the future, unfortunately. But for now, those kinds of risks feel washed out of the market. So the market feels a lot more safe at the moment," Lunde said.