Analysts expect Bitcoin to top at $350,000 by 2022

Comparing the ongoing Bitcoin bull run with the 2017 rally suggests that institutional investments are on the rise. Top institutional players are transferring their Bitcoin holdings off exchanges. 

Bitcoin long-term prospects look extremely bullish, according to analysts

William Clemente, the author of the "Bitcoin supply shock" narrative and on-chain analyst, has predicted that the outlook for BTC price at the end of the year is highly bullish. Clemente expects a pullback in the short term before BTC resumes its upward climb. 

Clemente argues that whales have started profit-booking, and speculators or highly liquid entities (traders known to sell their Bitcoin holdings within a short period of time) are buying BTC. There is a vulnerability in terms of market capitalization, and this may change within the next few weeks. 

Clemente is quoted as saying:

Macro: highly bullish. Supply dynamics [HODLing behavior] remain strong, hash coming back on the network, retail still out of the market. Still standing on my thesis for a strong Q4.

Though numbers indicate that Bitcoin's ownership is highly concentrated, proponents argue that not all BTC addresses should be treated equally. 

Exchanges and institutions hold BTC for their clients in their wallets, and counting these addresses as whale addresses leads to a skewed outcome. Therefore, despite consistent accumulation by large wallet investors and illiquid BTC holders, Bitcoin ownership is not as concentrated as most altcoins. 

Daniel Joe, a cryptocurrency analyst, recently tweeted about Bitcoin accumulation by whales and noted that there is no sign of whale exit liquidity. 

James Seyffart, an ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, believes a Bitcoin ETF approval is likely in October 2021. Seyffart states, 

We are pretty bullish on approval here. We just can't see Gensler and the SEC going out of their way to state positive comments about a 1940-act Bitcoin futures ETF at the end of September and then denying all of them less than a month later.

A set of Bitcoin ETF applications are lined up at the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) yet again. Applicants plan to hold Bitcoin futures rather than the asset and have filed the applications under the Investment Company Act of 1940 for the highest investor protection. 

The approval of a Bitcoin ETF product opens up the $6.7 trillion US ETF economy to BTC, fueling a bullish year-end narrative for the asset. 

Kevin Svenson, a cryptocurrency market analyst and YouTuber, has set a target of $350,000 for Bitcoin at the end of the ongoing bullrun.

FXStreet analysts have analyzed the Bitcoin price trend and predicted a brief correction in BTC before the asset hits a new all-time high.