- The crypto influencer David Gokhshtein’s bitcoin and ethereum price targets have missed.
- But the longtime bull is betting on a big-time rebound in 2022 if regulation decisions crystallize.
- Here are Gokhshtein’s eight favorite altcoins and why he thinks they’ll have a strong 2022.
Life as a cryptocurrency evangelist can be exhausting.
The digital-asset advocate David Gokhshtein said he spent as much as 70 hours a week focused on crypto, whether it’s talking about tokens in live audio chat rooms, researching industry trends, or poring over charts in hopes of predicting what’s next for the budding asset class. The latter is a nearly impossible task, though that doesn’t stop the Gokhshtein Media CEO from trying.
In a recent interview with Insider, when he was confronted with the fact that bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) appeared set to fall well short of his lofty price targets — $100,000 and $10,000, respectively, by the end of 2021 — Gokhshtein acknowledged near-term defeat but was still bullish for the long term.
“I missed,” Gokhshtein said. “I’m holding out hope that it still could happen in terms of having, you know, all the green candles go off and at least come close to $70,000.
“That’s wishful thinking at this point, but at least in Q1 of 2022, I’m still super bullish that it will go ahead and end up hitting those price points. I might have delivered late, but I still feel that it goes to $80,000 no matter what and then it goes to $100,000.”
There are several reasons Gokhshtein’s price targets fell short. Risk assets of all types struggled in the past month as the Omicron coronavirus variant emerged and the
Federal Reserve
signaled an end to its supportive monetary policy. That latter change tends to make investors less risk-tolerant, meaning that highly speculative assets like cryptocurrencies may lose their luster.
Noise around bitcoin exchange-traded funds didn’t help the cause, either, Gokhshtein said, as it led to a classic sell-the-news event, while the specter of cryptocurrency regulation in the US continued to hang over the industry. Getting clarity on that front will be key to a bounce back year for bitcoin and ethereum in 2022, Gokhshtein and other crypto experts say.
“If Congress is bullish, these targets don’t miss,” Gokhshtein said. “When you come in, you know, you have the SEC not giving clarity out, not stating whether or not something is a security or not.
“And then you have Congress doing the same thing, questioning stablecoins and classifying or trying to state that stablecoins are somehow a security and causing confusion.”
Another headwind for bitcoin, albeit a less obvious one, is that the token may have run out of new buyers, at least in the near term.
Gokhshtein and other crypto bulls have called for the token to hit $100,000. But the unspoken assumption is that if bitcoin reaches that level, it will subsequently sell off because many traders will assume the coin is at the peak assigned by its biggest fans. If there’s a possibility of a big blow-off top after $100,000, the thinking goes, who will buy at $80,000, $90,000, or $95,000? Gokhshtein said this theory could explain the lack of new bitcoin buyers.
But a slow, steady move higher for bitcoin and ethereum may be best for the two leading cryptos, Gokhshtein said. Such a rally would be “more organic” than past bull markets, the crypto evangelist said — specifically, the bitcoin blow-off top in 2017 that led to a multiyear
Even if another prolonged downturn came, Gokhshtein said it would do little to shake his confidence in cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technology underpinning them. It’s about more than netting a huge financial gain, Gokhshtein said — it’s about freeing oneself from the fiat currencies issued and controlled by governments. To him, crypto is empowering.
“Only years ago did I have a slight thought, ‘Hey, am I crazy?’ It wasn’t for long,” Gokhshtein said. “I don’t lose confidence in crypto because crypto has allowed us to go ahead and understand the value of money and allowed us to go ahead and have the freedom that we’re seeking and to be comfortable. I’ll never lose, especially now, I’ll never lose confidence in crypto.”
Best altcoins to watch in 2022
The following eight altcoins are the ones Gokhshtein said he was most confident in. He told Insider that he owned each of these cryptocurrencies, as well as bitcoin and ethereum.
They’re listed below along with each token’s symbol, market capitalization, use case, and the context behind its journey in 2021.
