Yahoo Finance Investors expect bitcoin price to drop, Deutsche Bank survey reveals
Over one-third of participants in a Deutsche Bank survey expect the bitcoin price to drop below $20,000. The recent poll also revealed that a majority of respondents expressed concerns about a potential cryptocurrency collapse.
"We conducted a survey among 2,000 consumers in the US, the UK, and Europe, and despite bitcoin prices hovering above $40,000 for several weeks now, over one-third of our respondents still hold the belief that bitcoin prices will dip below $20,000 by the end of this year," said the research analysts who compiled the survey.
The analysts said that survey participants had a high level of uncertainty when considering bitcoin's long-term prospects. "39% of participants believe that it will bitcoin will remain in existence in the coming years, while 42% anticipate its disappearance," the analysts added.
Read more: Crypto live prices
An analysis of the survey results revealed a significant lack of understanding among participants regarding cryptocurrencies in general. "Two-thirds of consumers possess minimal or no understanding of these digital assets," the analysts said.
The research also found that more than half of the respondents expressed concerns about a major cryptocurrency experiencing a collapse within the next two years. "This sentiment may be attributable to past events, such as the collapse of FTX in 2022, as well as recent instances of depegging among stablecoins like the collapse of TerraUSD, and the depegging of TrueUSD on January 18," added the authors of the Deutsche Bank survey, which was conducted from the 15th to the 19th of January.
Bitcoin price volatility increases
Bitcoin's price has fallen by over 6% in the past week. The recent price fluctuations of the digital asset have resulted in substantial liquidations of leveraged BTC positions, following the approval of multiple spot ETF filings by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday, January 10.
A spot bitcoin ETF is a financial product that investors hope will open the gateway for mainstream capital to flood the crypto market.
Read more: Bitcoin ETF boom won't mimic previous rallies, says VC founder
In the past 24 hours, the digital asset has experienced large price swings that caused almost $23m in liquidations of leveraged bitcoin positions on cryptocurrency exchanges, according to Coinglass data. Of these liquidations, the majority, over $12m, consisted of short positions.
According to CoinGlass data, the overall crypto market witnessed the liquidation of over $80m in leveraged positions in the past 24 hours. Liquidations tend to occur during volatile price swings, when prices rise or fall sharply. During these market conditions, there is either a rush to buy or sell.
Read more: Bitcoin rally stokes $50k speculation over spot ETF anticipation
For most of the past week the price of bitcoin (BTC-USD) has traded below the $41,000 mark. The price of the largest digital asset by market capitalisation, as of the time of writing, is $40,167, according to Coingecko data.
According to data from Coingecko, the global cryptocurrency market cap today is $1.64tn, a slight 0.7% decrease in the past 24 hours.
The market cap of bitcoin is at $787bn, with the world's largest digital asset holding a 48.1% dominance over the rest of the cryptocurrency market.
Watch: Turning real assets into tokens on blockchain has $15 trillion market potential | Future Focus
Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.