A senior analyst at Citibank has established a unique similarity between the gold market of the 1970s and the bitcoin current trend.
In a report to Citibank institutional clients, Thomas Fitzpatrick, the global head of Citibank’s FXTechnicals market insight product, said the world’s most dominant cryptocurrency price swings is “exactly the kind of thing that sustains a long-term trend.”
This he likened to what happened to gold in the early 1970s when it was allowed to float after 50 years of trading in a $20-$30 range.
“That period with regard to the Gold price was a structural change in the modern day monetary regime as it broke the orthodox relationship between fiat currencies and Gold, ushering in a World of fiscal indiscipline, deficits and inflation.”
“The Bitcoin move happened in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis which saw a new change in the monetary regime as we went to ZERO per cent interest rate (negative in some countries) and massive QE.”
He said because bitcoin is an asset with limited supply and moves across borders easily with opaque ownership (a very relevant point), therefore, the huge fiscal deterioration of today has a cost in the future, either directly or indirectly.
He explained that “Directly, it is that at some point the bills have to be paid which means at some time in the future the money needs to be found. While Bitcoin may become subject to more regulatory constraints going forward it is a natural store of money to avoid this. Indirectly, the argument can be the debasement of FIAT currencies by creating high nominal growth and inflation (effectively a soft default- I do not believe hard default, particularly in the World’s reserve currency is a real concern. However in lesser currencies it could well be).”
Fitzpatrick, through a bitcoin’s weekly chart, used technical analysis of previous highs and lows to predict a target of $318,000 by December 2021.
According to ClassicMacro, the Twitter handle that tweeted the Citibank project, “This kind of technical analysis is of little value. There is no edge in guessing targets so far in time with TA. All we know is that price is likely to continue going up.”
“Readers loves this,” commented ClassicMacro. “What matters here is Citi’s clients being exposed to the bitcoin moon.”
