If the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decides to approve a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the next few days or weeks, one analyst predicts that BTC prices will surge by more than six times, to $185,000.
Tom Lee, a frequent commentator on Bitcoin pricing, claimed in a recent CNBC interview that the creation of a spot ETF would cause a “imbalance” that would eventually lead to higher prices since it would consume all daily supply of the most precious cryptocurrency in the world. Since supply won’t be able to keep up with demand, prices will rise to $185,000 or higher.
Despite a significant decline over the past 20 months, Bitcoin’s market valuation still makes it the largest cryptocurrency in the world.
BTC reached a high of almost $69,000, but a change in investor opinion in 2022 caused prices to fall by more than half, to a low of below $16,000 in November of that year.
As of late July 2023, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were trading at over $31,000, a significant increase from their November 2022 lows. However, the crypto and Bitcoin communities are keeping a close eye on the SEC.
The strict regulator has proven unyielding, turning down prior requests for a sophisticated ETF derivative that tracks Bitcoin prices. The emerging sector requires a spot BTC ETF, despite the SEC’s approval of a Bitcoin Futures ETF that monitors an index averaging prices from numerous licensed exchanges.
The Bitcoin community has been overjoyed since a court ruled in Grayscale’s favor on August 29. The judgement confirmed that Grayscale had taken adequate precautions to ensure that their Bitcoin spot ETF was not susceptible to market manipulation. The SEC lost the case, but the judge didn’t say anything about whether or not an ETF based on Bitcoin should be approved.
Nonetheless, some optimists believe the SEC has little wiggle room and will have no choice but to approve a Bitcoin ETF in the coming weeks or months after the significant rise of Bitcoin prices from roughly $25,800 to as high as $28,000.
Two senior ETF analysts at Bloomberg, Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart, raised their prediction that the SEC will approve a spot ETF in 2023 from 65% to 75% on August 30. The possibility that the regulator will approve entities creating this product in the following year is 95%, even if it doesn’t happen this year.
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