Bitcoin's 200-day moving average with halving events. Source: PlanB / Twitter

All serve to differentiate the Bitcoin of 2020 from that of three years ago, when fervent weeks at the end of the fourth quarter produced fleeting historical peaks near $ 20,000.

As Cointelegraph reported , the last few days have produced a new round of bullish price predictions from well-known sources, claiming that $ 20,000 will not act as a ceiling this time around, and that breaking it will allow the uptrend to continue.

By 2021, entities from crypto investors to traditional banks have set sky-high price targets, including Citibank's $ 318,000 bet by the end of the year.

"The fascination has disappeared", according to an analyst

However, not everyone is so optimistic. Even as $ 18,000 came true this week, one strategist told mainstream media that the lack of publicity Bitcoin receives is proof that interest has died.

"The fascination with it has worn off," Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at the Schwab Center for Financial Research , told Bloomberg .

“You have the hardcore bunch of 'I'm a cryptocurrency investor,' but it hasn't really expanded because it's been very volatile, there have been a lot of questions about security and what the regulations could do. The number of questions I get now is a fraction of what I got a couple of years ago when there was a lot of ignorance. "

The outlook underscores the divide between those within the crypto sphere and those outside it, the latter still convinced that 2017 marked the peak of Bitcoin's "craze."

“The $ 20,000 level is clearly the next target for bitcoin. If we get past that this year, which I think is possible, then we are in uncharted territory as sentiment remains positive, ” Simon Peters, crypto asset analyst at multi-asset investment platform eToro, told Cointelegraph.

"Bitcoin's maturity, evidenced by the diversity of its investors and extensive, powerful data sets, means that we can say with some trepidation, 'This time it's different.

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