Bitcoin Price Has Peaked For Now, $20,000 Plunge Possible: Guggenheim CIO

Scott Minerd, chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners, said the current Bitcoin bull run may have already ended and it’s possible for the price to retrace all the way back to $20,000.

In an interview with CNBC, Minerd said the top has already been reached for Bitcoin, referring to the price peak of $41,940 on Jan. 8. Since then, Bitcoin has slid downward and closed Thursday at $30,855 on Coinbase. This is a roughly $12,000 retracement.

Bitcoin rallied from March 2020 lows of $3,800 to breach its psychological resistance of $20,000 in December, making it arguably the most successful asset last year amid the backdrop of a global pandemic and political uncertainty. Minerd said this rally has peaked and price pullbacks are normal in big rallies like what Bitcoin experienced.

“When we have a doubling of a price of an asset in the course of a month, we are prone to having a setback,” he said.

Much of the uptrend was when Bitcoin breached $11,000 in October.

“We’re likely to see a full retracement back toward the $20,000 level,” he added.

Minerd doubled down on his Bitcoin analysis on Twitter. “Time to take some money off the table,” he said on Jan. 11.

Just a month ago, when Bitcoin was at $20,000, Minerd appeared on Bloomberg and stated that Guggenheim’s fundamental work on Bitcoin put its valuation at around $400,000 per BTC. When asked to expound why that was their price target, Minerd said it’s based on Bitcoin’s scarcity and its relative value to gold as a percentage of the gross domestic product.

Minerd said Guggenheim was buying Bitcoin at $10,000, and at the price level of $20,000, purchasing the cryptocurrency became a little more challenging.

It should be noted that Guggenheim is waiting for approval from the SEC to let it invest in Bitcoin via the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) on its mutual fund. The filing stated that the “Guggenheim Macro Opportunities Fund may seek investment exposure to Bitcoin indirectly by investing up to 10% of its net asset value in GBTC.” This filing would become effective on Jan. 31.