Self-professed cypherpunk Adam Back has made a bet that Bitcoin prices reach six figures by the end of March 2024.

Over the weekend, the privacy expert tweeted:

“The bet is on: I bet Bitcoin reaches or exceeds $100k between now and halving (31st Mar 2024),”

Back agreed to the bet with pseudonymous X (Twitter) user “Vikingo” with the winner netting 1 million satoshis or 0.01 of a Bitcoin.

the bet is on🚀: i bet #bitcoin reaches or exceeds $100k between now and halving (31st Mar 2024) with @vikingobitcoin9 1million sats to the winner. https://t.co/Ij7iPEYjQW pic.twitter.com/PNpAaZvl8F

— Adam Back (@adam3us) August 5, 2023

Miners Will Drive Prices

The prediction (which he first made in June) is for about a month before the next halving, which is due in late March 2024 or early April, depending on which countdown tracker you use.

To reach that lofty price, BTC will need to gain 243% over the next 8 months or so. In the 8 months leading up to the last halving in May 2020, the asset was range bound with no major gains.

The real gains did not really start until six months after the halving – in November of that year when the first parabolic move of the bull market initiated.

When someone mentioned this to Back, he replied:

“I’m thinking we undershot a lot due to Covid, quantitative easing, economic disruption plus in crypto DeFi cascading liquidations and 3AC, Celsius, Blockfi, Genesis bankruptcies.”

He pointed out that peak to peak, the last BTC bull run only say 3.5x gains before proposing a “bulltard” scenario:

“Positive financial industry adoption, holders stacking and miner reflexivity we could get a delayed upwards correction before.”

Fellow Bitcoiner Samson Mow also said that he expects a new all-time high for Bitcoin “pre-halving, not post.”

Back explained that miners could have a lot of influence on prices around the halving. Miners need $98,000 or won’t be break-even after halving next year, he said, citing a report by Seeking Alpha suggesting miners would need BTC prices to triple post-halving.

However, Back made a similar $100K prediction for the end of 2021.

BTC Price Outlook

Bitcoin prices remain unmoved, hovering around $29,100 over the weekend and into Monday morning’s Asian trading session.

The asset has barely moved for the past fortnight, having failed to break above $30K resistance on July 24.

Meanwhile, altcoins continue to slowly bleed, dropping total capitalization marginally to $1.21 trillion at the time of writing.