This has been quite a traumatic year for crypto, to put it mildly. If you’re a holder that has managed to go the entirety of 2022 without ending up in the fetal position, consider that a win. But hold your hands together for the investors and traders whose 2022 predictions missed the mark. They’re going to need it.
BeInCrypto understands that predicting price movements is difficult at the best of times. But particularly hard when you’re about to be overtaken by the most dramatic year in the history of crypto. However, we have compiled a selection of some of the market’s failed prophecies. Always remember: take predictions and investment advice with a pinch of salt, and only invest what you can afford to lose. With that being said, let’s get started.
Tim Draper
Tim Draper is a renowned venture capitalist with a history of ballsy predictions. He has previously said that bitcoin (BTC) would hit a whopping $250k by the end of 2020. However, the price actually closed just below $29K USD. So a little off. Not perturbed by his own wild enthusiasm, he once again predicted that bitcoin would hit the $250K mark at the end of 2022.
Following dramatic market turbulence and the fall of FTX, he told CNBC in an email that “I have extended my prediction by six months. $250k is still my number.” Please, find someone who looks at you the way Tim Draper looks at the number 250,000. That, my friends, is true love.
Willy Woo
Willy Woo, the author of The Bitcoin Forecast Substack newsletter, is another expert with egg on his face. Hong Kong-born Woo first invested in Bitcoin in 2013 and has become a well-known presence in the space ever since. He has leveraged his expertise as an on-chain Bitcoin analyst to amass over 1 million followers on Twitter.
Woo was bold enough to predict that BTC would hit a new ATH of 100,000 this year. In an edition of his newsletter, he said:
“I would say we will be right in the middle of it. It’s like $100,000 by the end of next year. And whether we whip up or down, it could go much higher and come back, but roughly the middle line is somewhere around $100,000.”
Bad luck, Woo.
Nathan Sloane
Unlike some of our other mentions, Nathan Sloane is a more conservative forecaster than many of his colleagues. With a background in marketing and financial services, his CV is also less glamorous than many others. However, he does command a large following of 198K subscribers on his popular YouTube channel Investing Made Simple, which provides investment and trading advice for viewers with a range of expertise. One of his most interesting calls this year was regarding the SOL price.
Being “conservative”, in a video published Jan 8 of this year, Sloane said SOL’s price could jump by 3X. At the time, SOL was trading at $149. That would mean SOL could reach $447.
In his defense, he did hedge his 2022 prediction by saying that a significant exogenous shock could mean SOL falls by 80% this year. It didn’t. Since his video, the price has fallen by 93%. Kudos for a degree of moderation and getting closer than most.
Mike McGlone
Mike McGlone is generally at the drier end of crypto forecasters. He currently works as a Senior Macro Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, where he provides regular analysis of the markets. On January 6th, McGlone predicted that ETH would end the year within the $4,000-$4,500 range. At the time of writing, ETH sits just above $1.2K USD. A significant difference.
However, this is a relatively conservative estimate when compared to other analysts, traders, and influencers. For example, Coinpedia predicted ETH could end 2022 between $6,500 and $7,500 if the market continued on a positive trajectory. The site later changed its prediction for 2022 to $2,500. So only double the actual price.
It just goes to show that even the most cautious of 2022 predictions can be wrong. Crazy things can and will happen.
Scott Melker
The Wolf Of All Streets aka. Scott Melker is one of the best-known thought leaders in the space. He is also the author of the Wolf Den newsletter and a regular contributor to various publications. Melkor has made our job easy by publishing a list of his own failures in his newsletter here. A commendable act of transparency and accountability.
One of his most regrettable calls was that 2022 would see “new all-time highs.” Unfortunately for holders, none of the major cryptos reached a new ATH this year. In fact, since the market’s high in late November, the industry had lost over $2 trillion in value.
Antoni Trenchev
In April of this year, the CEO of crypto lender Nexo told CNBC that the world’s biggest cryptocurrency could rise above the fabled $100,000 mark “within 12 months.” This technically isn’t a 2022 prediction, but considering BTC would have to surge 6x in the next four months, I think we can put this prediction in the “in your dreams” column. Trenchev himself has since acknowledged that this is unlikely to happen.
Trenchev made this prediction in April 2022, before the first major market downturn in May. He told CNBC’s news channel that “Absolutely, I am sticking to my guns. I do seek bitcoin at $100k in 12 months from now. It will not be the craziest thing bitcoin has done. It has just to triple.”
Well, Antoni, at the time of writing this, a price swell of 6X in four months would be the craziest thing bitcoin has done.
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