Bloomberg's Mike McGlone says BTC could be headed to $50K as gold loses appeal

Bitcoin will continue its bullish push towards $50,000 as investors move funds out of gold and into the digital asset, according to Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone. 

By 2024, he believes its volatility could even reach gold levels, driving the price much further.

In a report published on Wednesday, McGlone explained that BTC is showing strong support at $30,000, and “increasing institutional adoption and the potential for the benchmark to become a global reserve asset” could drive the price to $50,000 or higher.

The report cited evidence of funds moving to Bitcoin from gold, highlighting accelerating flows into Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and decline in total known ETF holdings of gold. The investment firm has grown its GBTC fund from 1%, to 10%, of the “$210 billion tracking-gold ETFs” across 2020.

“In a world going digital,” he stated, “it's logical to expect more funds to flow toward Bitcoin and away from precious metals.”

McGlone believes investing up to 5% in Bitcoin is becoming an increasingly wise decision:

“Absent a major technology glitch, old-guard gold allocators are primarily at risk if the crypto becomes a reserve asset and Bitcoin as 1-5% of one's investable assets becomes increasingly prudent.”

A rise in stock-market volatility has boded well for gold and bitcoin in the past the strategist explained, with a combined investment of Bitcoin and gold showing a lower 260-day volatility rate (30%) when compared to the S&P 500 (35%).

Despite this, McGlone believes that the digital asset has the potential for its resistance levels to rise to 100 times the resistance levels of gold. Current resistance levels for BTC ($40,000) are 22 times that of gold ($1,800).

During the 2017 bull run, the Bitcoin-to-gold price ratio shot up from 1x to 15x in a matter of months.

McGlone said Bitcoin was on track to match Gold's level of risk by 2024. In fact, he said Bitcoin could become even less volatile than gold due to its fixed supply.

“To approach this milestone, Bitcoin may have to simply maintain what it’s been doing: appreciating in price and maturing.”

The current 260-day volatility for BTC sits at 50%, which he equates to gold’s 1980 volatility levels.

McGlone also made mention of Ethereum, claiming it is turning the resistance level of $1,000 into a support level that is “unlikely” to break. He likened its trend to that of Q1 2017 in which it rose from $10 to above $40 before shooting up to over $1,000 nine months later.