Bitcoin and crypto investors have been holding out hope for the better part of 2018 that bitcoin prices will bounce back to upwards of $10,000 once again. Price predictions have been all over the place, Wall Street hotshots and crypto CEOs have all taken turns whipping out their crystal balls, making their best guesses at what the future holds for bitcoin.
Bitcoin is down 70% since it reached its apex last January and cryptos Ethereum and Ripple, holding the number two and three spots on Coinmarketcap, have displayed even more of a downturn, having dropped near 80% since their peak.
Now Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance is chiming in on the endless bear market. He predicts that the markets will return to last year’s glory “sooner or later” when talking with CNBC’s Crypto Trader program.
While Zhao can’t point to what might trigger this event, he does believe it is coming. Could he be any vaguer? Despite the downward movement, Zhao points out that from a business perspective both Binance and the cryptocurrency markets are actually thriving.
“We’re still trading at huge volumes. Business is still okay, we are still profitable, and we are still a very healthy business,” the CEO said.
New users are signing up for Binance daily and the trade volume has been steady, those who have held onto their investments despite the bear market is also noteworthy. Zhao even reports an increase in investors depositing bitcoin to the exchange in recent months.
Research firms have uncovered that institutional investors are trading crypto on the over-the-counter (OTC) market, which shows a volume two times larger than the crypto exchange market. This translates to millions of btc traded daily that goes unnoticed. The blockchain only shows 100,000 daily according to Eric Wall, crypto researcher.
While we are all perhaps sick of baseless price predictions, Zhao’s appearance on CNBC leads us to believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that currently, btc is displaying healthy trade volumes.
