- Cryptos are rebounding as the spring approaches, brushing aside fears of a long “crypto winter.”
- Crypto chartmaster Forrest Przybysz shared where bitcoin, ether, and solana are headed.
- Here are three altcoins to watch with crypto set to revolutionize the global payments system.
Winter appears to be finally coming to an end — both in the Northern Hemisphere and in the cryptocurrency market.
Back in late January, crypto chart maker Forrest Przybysz couldn’t write off the possibility of a crypto winter, which is a
bear market
where enthusiasm and investment dries up for crypto companies and tokens. And while the founder and CEO of the crypto-charting software company CryptoStackers still can’t rule a downturn out, he notes that interest is rising again.
Bitcoin, the largest token by market capitalization, has now advanced 22% off of its mid-March lows. The original cryptocurrency is often viewed as a barometer for smaller cryptos. Sure enough, top altcoins like ether and solana are up 31% and 55%, respectively, in that span. For context, bitcoin and ether are still 30% away from all-time highs while solana is 53% away.
Crypto skeptics have warned that such wild swings are a textbook sign of a bubble. And — perhaps surprisingly — Przybysz wouldn’t disagree. The former crypto research director at Token Metrics told Insider in a recent interview that, like last fall, digital tokens are in a bubble.
“I think the market right now is extremely, extremely speculative,” Przybysz said. “I liken this to the dot-com boom.”
In the late 1990s, investors were euphoric about the internet’s potential to change the world. And, as both Przybysz and MI2 Partners head Julian Bridgen recently told Insider, they were completely right. The issue is, they were too early to the party. Buying dot-com stocks in the early 2000s was a bad bet, as most tech firms either folded or saw their shares plummet.
“When you look back to the dot-com boom, and you look at pets.com or dogs.com — whatever crazy domains — just had no business plan and had just super, super high valuations just because it was the dot-com boom,” Przybysz said. “It was a speculation-driven market. But then what emerged after the dot-com bubble burst was real demand for actual utility that did arise.”
Just over 20 years later, Przybysz sees a parallel between dot-com companies and cryptos, though that doesn’t diminish the latter’s potential. Many cryptos will likely get wiped out because of weak use cases, he said, just like dot-com bubble companies with no viable plan. But also note that Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet survived the dot-com crash and now dominate.
Where are cryptos headed? Check the charts
If Przybysz is right in believing that history is repeating itself as a crypto washout causes many tokens to disappear as a lucky few survive and thrive, then the multi-billion dollar question is: Which cryptos will be the winners?
That’s impossible to know, but many believe that today’s biggest crypto players are likely to be leaders in the future instead of getting displaced like Yahoo and AOL did.
Though Przybysz is bullish on a trio of relatively unproven altcoins, the three crypto charts he opted to discuss are three widely followed ones: bitcoin, ether, and solana. Charts are especially useful in analyzing cryptos because traditional valuation metrics used for stocks, like price-to-earnings ratio, don’t apply to digital assets. That makes cryptos both hard to value and highly volatile.
Bitcoin hasn’t shot up to the lofty heights that Przybysz once predicted, but the technical analyst has still been remarkably accurate in his prognostication for the token. Its price bottomed in late January at just over $35,000 — right on the edge of what Przybysz had called “bubble territory.” And the crypto has stayed neatly in the high-$30,000 to high-$40,000 range that he predicted.
“We’ve pretty much nailed it in terms of buys and timing the market,” Przybysz said, adding that he personally bought bitcoin dips “aggressively” in the first few months of 2022.
Przybysz’s current bitcoin outlook is rosy as he believes that investors will continue to diversify away from the US dollar with inflation running at 40-year highs. Though the original crypto hasn’t yet shown signs of acting as a hedge against inflation, Przybysz thinks that can change. Either way, the chartmaster said bitcoin is undervalued relative to itself and can continue its run.
“We’ve broken through some big resistance at $46,000,” Przybysz said. “And I expect some chop here in the near term between probably $45,000 and $53,000 to give it an extra $1,000 on either side. But our levels are $46,000 and $52,000 right now. $49,000 is a big resistance level as well.”
Forrest Przybysz, CryptoStackers
Ether, which is the native token of the ethereum blockchain, can rise from $3,400 and hit an overextension target of $5,200 to $7,000 if it can keep its positive momentum going, Przybysz said. A network update for the crypto called “ethereum 2.0” will reduce supply and may push the token to a range of $5,000 to $10,000 in the longer term, the CryptoStackers CEO said.
Forrest Przybysz, CryptoStackers
Solana, which proponents have labeled as an “ethereum killer” because of its lower fees, can rise from $125 to $220 or $294, Przybysz’s charts show. Dips under $100 should be bought.
Forrest Przybysz, CryptoStackers
3 altcoins that could revolutionize global payments
Contrary to popular belief, not all cryptocurrencies are effective payment mechanisms. For example, bitcoin’s
volatility
and fees that last year spiked to over $60 per transaction, according to YCharts, make the crypto less effective for sending money than some of its competitors.
Przybysz named three altcoins that he thinks have the potential to transform the global payments system, which is plagued by high fees and long wait times to settle transactions.
“It’s still very inefficient,” Przybysz said of the global payments system. “All things considered, there’s a lot of counterparty risk and there’s a lot of parties involved — not only to send remittances person-to-person across borders, but for entities like companies and banks to settle and transfer money across borders as well. And it can also oftentimes take anywhere between one to three days for that money to settle. It’s very, very inefficient.”
Of the three altcoins — nano, XRP, and stellar — Przybysz said that nano is by far his favorite. It’s the only one of the three that he owns, though he’s eyeing the other two. Below is a chart of each altcoin along with its symbol, market capitalization, and Przybysz’s thesis for each.