Nic Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures and Coin Metrics, has predicted when Bitcoin might start its next ascent. In an interview with Bloomberg, he highlighted the potential impact of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) on Bitcoin’s price. Carter believes that the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States could trigger a price surge.
Carter mentioned the year-end tax sales and recent market retractions but emphasized the importance of catalysts against expectations. He suggests that the market is currently anticipating an ETF, and he attributes the significant rise in Bitcoin’s price from $20,000 to the mid-$40,000s almost entirely to ETF speculation. He anticipates a potential surge on the day of a BTC ETF approval but expects the impact to diminish over time.
The expert is excited about the medium-term prospects, where registered investment advisors (RIAs) and other financial institutions previously unable to recommend Bitcoin to their clients could do so through ETFs. He predicts a marketing push from a major ETF sponsor, which he believes will take off entering and throughout 2024.
Carter also expects the approval of spot BTC ETFs by January 8th and believes the ETFs’ impact on Bitcoin’s value will be far greater than the April 2024 Bitcoin halving event. He is less optimistic about the halving, considering it to have only a marginal effect on supply and thus not as exciting a development.
He speculates that the market is almost certain of an ETF approval in the coming days, with most analysts predicting it before January 10th. He foresees that ETFs will unlock new capital classes that otherwise couldn’t enter the market or allocate to Bitcoin, leading to positive structural flows for Bitcoin. However, he views the halving event as having a minimal impact on supply creation.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin has experienced a roughly 2% decrease in the last 24 hours, trading at $42,559.