Tom Lee: until the end of the year the price of Bitcoin will rise to $15,000

Financial analyst and co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors Tom Lee changed his forecast for the price of Bitcoin by the end of this year, cutting the figure almost twice.

Lee believes that predicting future quotes need to build on the cost of mining. Analysts at Fundstrat report that earlier the return on Bitcoin mining on the S9 Antminer device was $8,000, but now the figure has dropped to $7,000. According to Lee, the first cryptocurrency rate should exceed the payback index 2.2 times, so his forecast is $15,000. 

This week, after a long consolidation at a level slightly above $6,000, Bitcoin fell by more than 10%, pulling the rest of the market with it. On some exchanges, the price fell below $ 5,400, thus setting a new annual minimum, which used to be at around $5,800.

However, Lee believes that the price should recover. As an argument, he cites historical data, namely, the behavior of the Bitcoin price in the period from 2013 to 2015. As Lee explains, at the time, the Bitcoin rate "never fell below the level of break-even mining."

"While Bitcoin broke below that psychologically important $6,000, this has lead to a renewed wave of pessimism. But we believe the negative swing in sentiment is much worse than the fundamental implications." he said.

Lee noted that the reason for such a strong price decline was the recent hardfork Bitcoin Cash, which resulted in the split into Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV versions. On the social network Twitter between the representatives of these forks broke out a real war. It is worth noting that Bitcoin Cash itself also appeared as a result of Bitcoin hard forks held in August 2017.

Still, Lee is bullish on more institutional involvement bolstering prices into the end of this year. The launch of ICE, Starbucks and Microsoft-backed Bakkt and Fidelity entering the market is "part of a broader creation of infrastructure necessary for institutional involvement," he said.