Analysts Divided on Near-Term Bitcoin & Crypto Outlook as Market Stabilizes

cryptonews.com:

With the Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto market appearing to stabilize after last week’s brutal crash caused by the collapse of Terra (LUNA), analysts are offering their takes on where the market may be headed next. And as usual, opinions are divided, with some predicting the bear market is “complete,” and others arguing that we are still “early in the Fed’s tightening cycle.”

Perhaps most optimistic about the digital asset space among analysts from traditional finance was a group of analysts led by Alkesh Shah from Bank of America.

Writing in a private note to clients on Tuesday, Shah said that concerns over a so-called crypto winter have little basis other than the negative influence that currently comes from the crypto market’s correlation with stocks.

Cryptoassets still trade like an “emerging tech asset class” similar to high growth, speculative risk assets, the note said. It added that crypto is thus suffering from the same headwinds as traditional assets, including increased interest rates, higher inflation, and a rising risk of recession in the US.

Notably, Bank of America’s take differed from that of the Zurich-based private bank Julius Baer Group. According to a Bloomberg report, the bank’s CEO, Philipp Rickenbacher, said during a presentation to investors on Thursday that we could be seeing “a bubble-burst moment of the crypto industry.”

Despite the gloomy short-term outlook, Rickenbacher still maintained a positive outlook for the longer term, saying “we all know what happened after the dot-com bubble […] It paved the way for the emergence of a new sector that indeed transformed our lives.”

The comments from Rickenbacher came one day after one of the most high-profile investors in crypto, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike