Dating back to 2017, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is a hard fork of the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC), which was developed to solve some of BTC’s scalability issues.
With a much larger block size limit of 32MB, compared to Bitcoin’s 2MB limit, BCH can provide both cheaper and faster transactions.
However, the project has run into several difficulties — most notably, an internal disagreement led to another fork which resulted in the creation of Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) in 2018. Despite the obvious advantages that BCH provides in terms of utility, it hasn’t managed to secure a market capitalization comparable to its more established cousin.
At press time, Bitcoin’s market cap was $1.8 trillion — whereas Bitcoin Cash’s market cap was just $9.9 billion.
Still, BSH has performed admirably throughout 2024 — at the time of publication, one BSH was worth $505.69 — with a 43.49% price increase over the last thirty days bringing year-to-date (YTD) returns up to 94.76%.
While this is still significantly less than Bitcoin’s YTD return of 122.30%, BSH remains one of the best-established cryptocurrencies and boasts an impressive performance of its own. With that in mind, Finbold consulted some of the most advanced publicly available AI models for price targets — taking into consideration both bullish and bearish factors.
ChatGPT-4o outlined bullish and bearish factors for BCH
Upon being prompted, the large language model first outlined two sets of factors — one bullish and one bearish, which it outlined as the most significant.
On the bullish side of the aisle, ChatGPT-4o highlighted the increased adoption of BCH, particularly by underbanked populations, as well as several strategic partnerships aimed at improving accessibility.
In addition, it noted the current positive sentiment of the wider cryptocurrency market as a bullish factor, as well as Bitcoin Cash’s continued appeal on account of its fast and affordable transactions.
So, what about the bearish factors? Although GPT-4o did touch on the oft-mentioned volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, as well as potential regulatory issues as two potential hurdles, to be fair, those issues are endemic to cryptocurrencies in general.
However, the AI model’s third point — increased competition from rivals such as Solana (SOL) or Ethereum (ETH)-based layer 2 solutions, has much more weight to it. In particular, Solana supports even faster, more affordable transactions — making it the chief competitor to BCH.
ChatGPT-4o set two very different price targets
Although initially reluctant, after some convincing, ChatGPT-4o did set two concrete price targets — one aligned with a more bullish scenario, and one which is more likely to occur if bearish factors turn out to be more significant.
In the optimistic case, the AI model opined that BCH could reach prices as high as $650 by the end of the year. For this to be achieved, market optimism would have to be sustained — on top of that, the start of the long-awaited alt season would likely go a long way in propelling prices to this level. Readers should note that this is still less than the asset’s yearly high of $695, reached in early April.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bearish scenario, which outlines a drop to $400, would mostly depend on whether or not the wider cryptocurrency market experiences a crash before the end of the year. If met, this mark would represent a 20% drop from the current BCH price. Although many analysts are warning that a flash crash — a sudden plummet followed by a rapid recovery, is possible, only the most bearish researchers see a serious risk of a crash in 2024.
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