The CEO of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes has stated that he believes the bear market could last for another 12 to 18 months based on previous experience, an abrupt departure from his previous prediction of $50,000 by the end of 2018.

Arthur Hayes caused a stir back at the beginning of the summer when he appeared on CNBC’s Fast Money programme, announcing his end-of-year prediction as a bullish $50,000 for the crypto asset. Despite the downward trends in trade volume and volatility, Hayes was confident that “an aggressive bull market” could emerge at any time before the end of the year and it would not take long for it to break through its previous all-time-high of just under $20,000 and head up towards $50,000.

Speaking on CNBC in June, Hayes stated:

“Something that goes up to $20,000 in one year can definitely have a correction down to about $6,000 … but we’re one positive regulatory decision away – maybe an ETF approved by the SEC – to climbing through $20,000 and even to $50,000 by the end of the year.”

#Bitcoin sitting at its lowest levels since November, but #crypto bull @CryptoHayes is sticking by his call for Bitcoin heading to $50K. pic.twitter.com/pOL2ekBP0w — CNBC's Fast Money (@CNBCFastMoney) June 29, 2018

Nuclear Bear Market

He is however now reneging on his prediction. In conversation with Yahoo Finance UK yesterday, Hayes stated:

“My view is the volatility environment that exists right now could persist for another 12 to 18 months, the flatness.”

Hayes explained that his reassessed prediction is just based from “previous experience” rather than hard data. BitMEX (Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange) is the largest derivatives trading platform in the world and Hayes has headed it since 2014.

“I started in bitcoin in 2013 when the price went from $250 to $1,300 and then 2014 to 2015 was sort of the nuclear bear market. Price crashed, volume crashed — very, very difficult to make money.”

Bullish Long-term

Hayes maintains a bullish mid-term outlook on crypto, but even to the most ardent crypto-believer, $50,000 by the end of the year, with the market’s current trends would be a tall order.

Despite this short term drag, most pundits remain very bullish on bitcoin in the long term.

Will Warren of 0X, a decentralised exchange, also speaking with Yahoo, stated:

“The market is probably going through some healthy consolidation, but I do believe the long-term trend will be greater adoption of bitcoin and similar technologies.”

Jonathan Levi, CEO of HACERA, a privacy-focussed blockchain solution start-up echoed Warren’s point:

“The price of bitcoin is undoubtedly in a bear market, but in the application of bitcoin and other blockchain projects we are in fact in a bull market. Most of the EU banks are actively investing in blockchain, and that all originally stems from bitcoin.”

The bitcoin price today stands at $6,364 at the time of writing, up 0.5% on the last 24 hours.

Image Source: “Flickr”