A fund manager at investment giant VanEck has predicted that the price of the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin ($BTC) could rally to $30,000 in the second half of 2023 after falling to a low near the $10,000 to $12,000 mark.

In a blog post making crypto predictions for next year, VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Matthew Sigel wrote that he believes a wave of bankruptcies of cryptocurrency miners will “mark the low point of the crypto winter” and will see BTC’s price bottom around $10,000 to $12,000.

Sigel added that Bitcoin is then expected to surge as “lower inflation, easing energy concerns, a possible truce in Ukraine, and a turnaround in M2 supply” will help it grow. Per Sigel, one reason BTC reacted poorly to interest rate hikes is that the “political response to higher inflation in developed markets has been to attempt to cap energy prices, widen sanctions, and micro-manage economic activity to facilitate” the energy transition.

In developed markets, the analyst wrote, VanEck believes consumers will see the cryptocurrency act as a store of value and a hedge against M2 inflation rather than overt inflation. In emerging markets, it will focus on remittances and neutral alternatives to a “dollar hegemony.”  Sigel added:

Meanwhile, should our recession expectations materialize, the Federal Reserve would likely pause raising rates amidst softening inflation, while money printing and government budget deficits continue. Merely a lack of bad crypto-specific news, under the above scenario, could cause the price of Bitcoin to climb a wall of worry back to $30K again.

M2, it’s worth noting, is a measure of the money supply that includes both M1 and so-called “near money” assets. M1 consists of cash and checking deposits, while near money refers to savings deposits, money market securities, and other term deposits under $100,000. These assets are less liquid and not as easily used for exchanges as M1, but can be quickly converted into cash or checking deposits.

The analyst’s predictions for the coming year include institutions employing blockchain technology to “simplify custody and settlement” and the tokenization of more than $10 billion in off-chain assets.

Moreover, Sigel sees a nation announcing it’s adding BTC and other digital assets to its sovereign wealth fund next year. His prediction pointed out that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth funds are “already mining Bitcoin, though at a small scale.”

He also sees Ripple lose its legal battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ethereum ($ETH) enabling withdrawals from the Beacon Chain. As CryptoGlobe reported, Ethereum’s core developers have set March 2023 as the provisional date for “Shanghai,” which is Ethereum’s next network upgrade, and could bring in Beacon Chain withdrawals.

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