The CEO of Binance does not discount the possibility of entering a new “crypto winter.” The businessman jokingly said that Elon Musk must be buying “a lot of Bitcoin.”
The founder and CEO of the Binance exchange, Changpeng Zhao, recently predicted that “Bitcoin may grow between 5 and 10 times this year.” He believes that the price of the pioneering cryptocurrency could reach between USD 150,000 and USD 400,000 in 2021.
The executive, also known by the initials CZ, remarked in an interview on Hong Kong digital media platform Forkast.News. Furthermore, he predicted that the price of other crypto assets would increase, to a greater or lesser extent than Bitcoin (BTC).
The businessman stated that “there is the possibility of entering another crypto winter.” He was referring to a prolonged bearish market like the one that occurred between 2018 and part of 2020. He believes that the chances of this happening at the moment are low. However, he assured that his company is prepared to face both scenarios.
In the conversation, Zhao mentioned the name of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. He did those hours before the Tesla founder expressed his support for the pioneering cryptocurrency on his Twitter account. The richest man in the world updated his biography, simply adding the word “Bitcoin”. That drove the price of the cryptocurrency higher by 13% almost immediately.
“It would not be a surprise if he announced within a few months that Tesla finally owns Bitcoin. If that happened, it would be good for the industry,” Zhao said. He jokingly added, “Elon Musk is probably buying a lot of Bitcoin right now.” Of course, he made it clear that he did not have any private information about it at the time.
Number of Institutional Investments in Bitcoin Grows in 2021
Changpeng Zhao believes that the institutional adoption of Bitcoin will increase in 2021 to a greater extent than in 2020. He said that corporate investors have a lot of money, and there may be around USD 60 trillion in the US equity market alone.
“If we look at derivatives and other things, the number will be even higher. For that reason, I think that only that could drive the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies up quite significantly,” explained the CEO of Binance.
In the interview on the above-mentioned platform, Zhao mentioned what he expects from decentralized finance protocols (DeFi) in the future. He expressed his skepticism towards the return of the “heat” of 2020: “I think it will continue to grow, but we do not need to see another crazy exponential jump.” At the time of writing this article, Binance is the exchange with the highest market trading volume. According to data from Coingecko, this measure is above USD 21,000 million in the last 24 hours. Regarding its participation in the cryptocurrency market, it also includes a Bitcoin mining pool (the second with the highest hash rate) and the CoinMarketCap database.
By Alexander Salazar
