Bitcoin Bull Tom Lee Maintains His $25,000 Prediction for 2018

BITCOIN

Uber Bitcoin Bull Tom Lee was back in his favorite seat on CNBC’s Fast Money defending his reputation after a small hedge on his $25,000 BTC year-end prediction had critics calling him bearish.

Lee Rankles at Being Labeled Bearish
The Founder of Fundtsrat and the only major Wall Street strategist to issue bitcoin price targets said he made a slip of the lip earlier when he said that “Bitcoin has historically traded at 2.5 times its mining costs. It’s not out of the question that it could be over $20,000 by the end of the year at fair value,” on Squawk Box earlier.

Critics of Lee honed in on the statement as it falls short of his previous year-end prediction by 20%. Some even having the audacity to say he was taking a bearish stance. Lee sought to correct himself on Fast Money by saying “(I) may have misspoke a little bit – What I was trying to illustrate was that given where mining costs will be and applying the historical average of 2.5 times mining costs, that would imply fair value over $20,000, roughly $22,000.” He then reiterated his original claim:

Making the point afterward that whether the number is 20 or $25,000 its still a 200% gain from where BTC is today. Lee’s prediction is partly based on future Bitcoin mining costs. He explained his thinking by saying “The reason bitcoin looks really good here is the cost of mining around $7,000 fully loaded. And the difficulty is rising. So by the end of the year, it’s going to be $9,000.”