If you’re starting the new year without any cryptocurrencies to your name, you may be wondering how to get started. Is it too late? Has the boat already gone? The good news is that 2021 is poised to have a lot of upside potential this year, with institutional players entering the market throughout last year, 2021 is likely to be a bull year
Bitcoin
The largest, first and most talked about cryptocurrency is currently experiencing price action in all time high territory after over two years in a bear market.
JP Morgan predicts a long term target of $146,000 per Bitcoin, but end of year price predictions have typically been more conservative.
2021 follows a halving year, which has historically been a great booster to Bitcoin’s price, which is another indication that Bitcoin will have a great year.
Ethereum
Ethereum has been flirting around the edges of its all time high since the beginning of year, with many investors calling for a short term target of $4,000 to $10,000, while longer term calls have placed the smart contracts platform at $75,000. This price is much higher than Bitcoin’s current all time high, so we will likely have to wait for BTC to break into this uncharted territory before ETH can muster up the strength to follow suit.
ETH 2.0’s phase 1 is also set to launch this year, which will improve one of the current hurdles faced by ETH — scalability. Currently, gas fees are driving up the price of network transactions and with the emergence of DeFi and ERC-20 tokens built on the Ethereum blockchain, this congestion is even higher than previous levels. Therefore ETH 2.0 could have a major impact on the price of ETH as head further into the year.
Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin Cash was recently given an endorsement by influencer Kim dotcom. Kim claims that Bitcoin Cash solves many of Bitcoin’s network congestion problems and could prove popular as more payment service providers, such as PayPal, become more heavily involved in processing crypto transactions.
If he’s right, then Bitcoin Cash could offer some incredible upside, with it trading at around $500 currently at the start of the year, there is massive upside potential. BCH previous all-time-high was $3,785 in December 2017, so if this was chosen as an initial target, then we could soon see over 80% gains for today’s buyers.
XRP
This is a risky one to add to this list, but hear me out! With the recent news of the SEC court battle with Ripple Labs to determine if XRP can be considered a security or not.
Several exchanges have already delisted the asset which has sent its price plummeting to lows of $0.2. However, some have pointed out that a speculated risk could be to bet on what will happen to the price if the SEC loses the court battle.
This could result in a temporary buying frenzy that could give the price of XRP a big boost.