JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) wrote a note to investors Thursday saying that Bitcoin (BTC) could reach a long-term price of $130,000 if its volatility continues to decrease. The financial giant said Bitcoin is becoming more appealing to institutions seeking low-correlation assets that provide portfolio diversification, arguing that high volatility serves as a "headwind towards further institutional adoption."
But the bank noted signs that Bitcoin's volatility is declining could help it "crowd out gold" in investors' portfolios: ""Considering how big the financial investment into gold is, any such crowding out of gold as an 'alternative' currency implies big upside for Bitcoin over the long term." The bank's $130,000 price target is based on the idea that Bitcoin's volatility will diminish to match gold's, which stood at 16% in the last 3 months, compared to 86% for Bitcoin.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Bakkt finally began launching its long anticipated digital wallet app with big companies such as Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) among its list of merchant partners. Bakkt said: "Customers can now use Bakkt to reload their Starbucks Card through the Starbucks app for iOS." The crypto services subsidiary of exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE) announced that the new app took in 500,000 users in its invitation-only trial run before its public launch Tuesday. The app was first unveiled back in October 2019, with plans to originally roll out in the first half of 2020. But the onset of the coronavirus pandemic seemed to have dashed Bakkt's original timeline, given the app's focus on partnering with the hospitality and travel sectors, which the virus decimated. Bakkt aims to aggregate crypto assets with other digital items of value like airline miles, gift cards, and loyalty points. The wallet app's other partners are electronics retailer Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), hospitality firm Choice Hotels (NYSE: CHH), fintech firm Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV), and NBCUniversal's golf booking service GolfNow.
Binance Futures, the crypto derivatives platform under major exchange Binance, continues to surge in popularity as more and retail customers pile on to the historic bull run of 2021. Open interest on Binance Futures reached a record high of over $10 billion on Saturday, representing immense year-over-year growth of almost 3,900%, according to data source CoinGecko. The explosion in open interest, or the value of derivative contracts traded but not settled with offsetting positions, reflects a greater inflow of capital into the young market. Binance launched its derivatives platform in September 2019 with a USDT-margined perpetual futures contract for Bitcoin. Binance futures has since expanded its product suite to over 180 trading pairs, 34 coin-margined futures, 36 Binance leveraged tokens, and 6 options. Binance is now the largest Bitcoin futures exchange by open interest, attaining $4.33 billion or 18.44% of the global total.
Crypto prices climbed to $1.9 trillion this week, fueled by Ether's (ETH) jump to a record high near $2,100. For the majors, all except Cardano (ADA) ended in the green. In the top 100, the biggest losers were BTMX, down 35%, Voyager Token (VGX), down 18%, and Harmony (ONE), down 14%. The biggest gainers were WazirX (WRX), up a whopping 775%, Holo (HOT), up 180%, and BitTorrent (BTT), up 137%. Next week traders will see if Ether can stay above $2,000.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.