Bitcoin bull Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat, now predicts a massive potential for a higher BTC price right after the 17th of April, when tax day is over in the United States. Lee explained to Business Insider that recent drops might be caused by US investors who are selling off their cryptocurrency holdings in order to avoid paying taxes on them. According to Lee the selling pressure will ease up once taxation is over. His reasoning might be true, as if his estimations are correct, crypto investors owe around $25 billion in capital gains taxes for 2017, when the digital golds’ price shot up to almost $20.000 during late December. And we know that Uncle Slam is out for the money as the IRS has been doing everything it can to make citizens comply with their taxation obligations. Tom Lee stated the following:

“The $25 billion would represent 20% of capital gain tax receipts (payments) to Treasury, which explains why the IRS cares so much about collecting crypto taxes,” Lee said in a note. “Total receipts for capital gains should hit a record $168 billion (for income tax year 2017), exceeding the $137 billion of receipts in 2007.”

He also added that government regulations might keep digital assets under pressure and current market sentiment is still very awful. This is projected clearly in the Bitcoin Misery Index created by himself, which was explained in this Forbes article. It indicates whether the time is right to buy BTC by measuring how happy or sad people are by holding BTC. To be more specific:

“it is a numerical index that ranges from 0 to 100 and incorporates the win-ratio or percentage of days that Bitcoin is up, and the upside less downside volatility“.

Currently we reached the lowest point since 2011, thus if the indication is right, now is the best time to invest in BTC.

Lee is not new to the sector, he has been making Bitcoin themed reports regularly where he even adds price targets. Prior to co-founding Fundstrat, he was chief equity strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase. His current mid-year Bitcoin price target is $20.000 while he expects the high to be at $25.000 during the next rally.