As Bitcoin, along with the rest of the cryptocurrency market, began to rally heading into last weekend, the sentiment surrounding the future prices of crypto assets seemingly began to shift, as many optimistic investors claimed that an upside is in store.

Chris Kline, a community voice at Forbes and the co-founder and COO of BitcoinIRA, recently revealed a specific set of four factors that could push the price of Bitcoin over $40,000 by the end of 2019. In a piece that quickly gained traction (and its fair share of controversy) throughout the cryptosphere, Kline first referenced a prediction made by Marc Lasry and backed up what the billionaire investor had to say, writing:

“In my opinion — the price [of BTC] may well surpass $40,000 by the end of 2019 and could continue to climb as we enter 2020. I’ve noticed that 2018 has marked a year of major growing pains for the crypto sector. But with growing pains also comes great growth. As Lasry has purportedly said, I believe we will see bitcoin prices continue to climb.”

The Arrival Of A Bitcoin ETF And Institutional Interest Will Drive Crypto

Staying in line with the story line pushed by many advocates of this space, the cryptocurrency-focused entrepreneur explained that once an ETF application is accepted, there will be an influx of interest and capital allocations. “If the application is accepted, then I believe bitcoin will become far more accessible to a wider range of investors who wish to invest in a crypto fund rather than directly into crypto itself… ETFs will likely appeal to a wider group of investors in that they are traded frequently and, in my experience, highly accessible via investors’ brokerage accounts,” Kline explained, elaborating on why this would be the case.

He also claimed that this asset class won’t be subject to “the same stringent regulations” placed on traditional markets, due to the fact that an SEC employee has overtly stated that Bitcoin and Ether aren’t securities.

In a similar manner, the crypto proponent also explained that as institutions arrive in this industry, whether it may be via cryptocurrency-focused products, solutions, or services, investors from consumer and institutional backgrounds will begin to get heavily involved with Bitcoin, “which will reflect positively in the price,” the BitcoinIRA co-founder noted.

Kline also added that Mastercard’s patent that aims to speed up transactions by building a bridge “between blockchain-based assets and fiat currency accounts.” As reported by NewsBTC previously, Tom Lee, the head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisers, also believes that this is a catalyst that will drive the growth and adoption of this up and coming technology, as Mastercard’s solution, if implemented correctly, will help to speed up and secure crypto payments, while also utilizing “evaluating risk algorithms (that are used in credit cards) to evaluate the potential for fraud.”

Although this may be a step back from the true decentralized nature of Bitcoin and other prominent networks, as Mastercard did mention “crypto fractional reserves” in the patent, Lee still claimed:

“Something like the Mastercard news is positive because it’s really validating the idea that digital money, or blockchain-based money, is a valid form of transaction.”

“Momentum Is Building”

Closing off his piece, the BitcoinIRA executive discussed that the Bitcoin network is quickly picking up momentum, drawing attention to the amount of on-chain transactions. While his data is somewhat outdated, citing BitInfo, he claimed that the number of transactions on the Bitcoin chain per day had exceeded an average of 230,000, which is apparently the highest this statistic has been at since the start of 2018.

This indicates that while prices have been in a slump, there is still widespread demand for the use of crypto assets, like BTC or ETH. Closing off this piece, Kline wrote:

“I believe that this trend of more on-chain transactions is indicative of increased demand in the crypto space as a whole, which will only continue to increase as decentralized technology evolves and digital currencies grow increasingly accessible — and useful — to a group of people that once deemed them radical.”

While his point about the number of on-chain transactions is valid, he also fails to point out that off-chain scaling solutions, like the Lightning Network, are quickly growing as well. This aside, it is clear that there is a real bull case for this budding asset class, even though widespread adoption is still a few years away.

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