Bitcoin price can ‘easily’ hit $20K in next 4 months — Philip Swift

Bitcoin (BTC) is done with its bear market, but the coming months may see a return to $20,000.

That is the outlook for Philip Swift, a veteran Bitcoin market analyst who co-founded trading suite Decentrader and data resource Look Into Bitcoin.

In his latest interview with Cointelegraph, Swift takes a look at what the near to long-term future holds for BTC price action.

After predicting the end of the bear market at the end of 2022, Swift is sticking by his appraisal of underlying price strength, while staying cautious on the odds of a deeper correction than last week’s 10% dip.

Bulls face many obstacles on the road to new all-time highs, he says, with government policy particularly troubling when it comes to potential price suppression.

Nonetheless, there is every reason to believe that for now, the bottom is in, and a solid period of growth awaits Bitcoin in the latter half of the year.

Cointelegraph (CT): In our last interview in October, you predicted the Bitcoin bear market would be over in 3 months. Do you think it’s gone for good?

Philip Swift (PS): Yes.

It really felt like we were close to max pain back in October, and we got the final capitulation shortly after in November. BTC then started trending up in January, 3 months after our interview.

This chart highlights how the current bear market has been really quite similar to previous cycles in terms of timing showing that human nature never really changes:

That does not mean we cannot have a decent correction in the next few months though. We may experience some volatility and chop after what has been an outstanding Q1 2023 where BTC has rallied 80%. I would not be surprised if we need to cool off for a little while.

CT: Since Bitcoin gained 80% in Q1, has BTC price performance in 2023 surprised you?

PS: It is not unusual for Bitcoin to put in major moves like that after such a long period of depression. As price rallied up from the lows we could see that funding rates were remaining flat/ negative, which indicated that there was major disbelief among derivative traders.

That helped BTC price keep trending up all the way to $30,000 with a succession of short squeezes.

CT: A large number of market participants remain skeptical of this year’s rally and expect a return to $20,000 or worse. To what extent do you agree with them?

PS: It is definitely possible as that would just be a -25% move to the downside from current prices. For a volatile asset like Bitcoin that could quite easily play out at some…