Arthur Hayes: "Bitcoin will reach $50,000 by end of year"

Despite the recent bloodbath in cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin bull Arthur Hayes said the popular digital coin will reach $50,000 by the end of the year.

Bitcoin's price has been on a wild roller coaster with investors, but "something that goes up to [around] $20,000 in one year can have a correction," Hayes, the co-founder and CEO of BitMEX, said on "Fast Money" Friday. BitMEX, or Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange, is the largest cryptocurrency trading platform by volume.

"We could definitely find a bottom in the $3,000 to $5,000 range," he said. "But we’re one positive regulatory decision away, many an ETF approved by the SEC, to climbing through $20,000 and even to $50,000 by the end of the year."

In May, Hayes told CNBC that bitcoin would reach $50,000 by the end of the year. He remained bullish on his forecast about the coin, despite a deep retrenchment in the digital currency's price.

Last week bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell below the $6,000 mark. The coin was priced around $5,900 Friday 5 p.m. ET, a steep decline from the December 2017 highs of around $19,500. Bitcoin is down 57 percent in 2018.

Meanwhile, ethereum, litecoin, bitcoin cash and ripple are down for the year as well. But Hayes pointed out that bitcoin's volatile nature — and the possibility of large gains —is what makes it so attractive to investors.

"We’ve done these kind of moves before," he said. With more people in the market comes more capital and the potential for faster jumps in price, Hayes added.

"Now that we have more visibility, more people talking about [bitcoin], the time between an aggressive bear market and an aggressive bull market, I think, is going to shorten," he said.

Source: CNBC

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