A Veteran Trader Set Bitcoin A $100,000 Target In Market 'Like No Other'

Bitcoin has been on a tear lately, powering above the $10,000 mark last weekend just under two months after crossing the $5,000 level and causing analysts and investors to ask whether this time really could be different.

The bitcoin price gained a further 5% over the last 24-hour trading period, hitting $11,350 per bitcoin on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, and pushing the wider cryptocurrency market higher.

Now, 72-year-old veteran trader Peter Brandt, who made a name for himself by predicting bitcoin's incoming bear market in January 2018, has said bitcoin is taking "aim" at $100,000 and described the bitcoin market as "like no other".

"Bitcoin takes aim at $100,000 target," Brandt wrote via Twitter.

"[Bitcoin] is experiencing its fourth parabolic phase dating back to 2010. No other market in my 45 years of trading has gone parabolic on a log chart in this manner. Bitcoin is a market like no other."

Bitcoin's most recent "parabolic" phases saw the bitcoin price jump to over $1,000 per bitcoin in late 2013, then to almost $20,000 per bitcoin in late 2017. A parabolic move, in relation to trading and markets, means that an asset is expected to increase sharply in value.

Many believe the most recent bitcoin rally is due to interest in crypto from some of the world's biggest technology companies including social media giant Facebook and iPhone maker Apple, while others have also pointed to institutional adoption from the likes of the New York Stock Exchange-owner backed bitcoin and cryptocurrency platform Bakkt, and Fidelity Investments, one of the largest asset managers in the world.

Bitcoin is also now less than a year away from its next so-called halvening event, where the number of bitcoin tokens awarded to miners will be cut by half—something some bitcoin and cryptocurrency watchers are expecting to cause a "supply shock" in the market.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices remain hard to predict, however. Earlier this month research from data provider Indexica found bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets do not respond to any of the things that usually move traditional currencies, stocks and shares, or commodities.