Bobby Lee: China could go as far as banning BTC ownership, Bitcoin price will go over $250,000 later this year

By Selena On Jul 26, 2021

In an interview with Bloomberg, Bobby Lee, the founder of the first Chinese exchange, said that the China campaign on the cryptocurrency industry might not stop banishing crypto miners. However, he still predicted that Bitcoin price will go over $250,000 later this year.

There is a 50% chance that Bitcoin ownership will be banned in China

Bobby Lee sold BTC China, the nation’s first Bitcoin exchange and at one point the second worldwide, in the aftermath of the biggest turmoil in 2017. It seems that Lee knew Beijing would show hostility towards strong crypto as more. Even so, Lee remains a Bitcoin bull, predicting it could end up around $250,000 this year and hit $1 million by 2025. He declined to disclose his Bitcoin holdings.

Bitcoin maximalist Bobby Lee

As AZCoin News reported, China launched a new campaign against cryptocurrencies this year, taking action against miners and imposing restrictions on crypto banking services and trading. These moves catapulted Bitcoin’s drop to about half a record in mid-April, near $65,000.

“The next thing they could do, the final straw, would be something like banning cryptocurrency altogether,” Lee said. “I put it at the odds of 50-50.”

However, Lee argues that the current Chinese on miners does not come because they really care about distinguishing green Bitcoin mining facilities.

“The government realized that to achieve financial stability, they don’t want to see an unregulated, volatile financial product that’s being traded, used, and invested by the Chinese population. China actually didn’t bother to differentiate green, renewable energy-powered Bitcoin mining facilities versus the dirty coal-powered ones. So to me, that’s a sign that it wasn’t about the cleanliness of the mining, but rather is more of a higher-level sort of perspective about financial stability for the country,” Lee stated.

When asked if the government has done with its measures to crack down on Bitcoin, Lee suggested that they could do a few more things:

“China knows that it still has many companies, exchanges operating in China. So the government could kick them out. I heard rumors that they might be doing that soon, if not already. […] When Bitcoin goes to $500,000, $1 million, China might ban Bitcoin altogether when people are no longer allowed to hold it.”

So, Lee believes that China could completely ban Bitcoin when the cryptocurrency’s price hits $500,000.

Lee said that the Chinese market for Bitcoin has always been important, but it will become less and less important in the future. China, just like many of the Asian countries, has always had a population that’s very much into investing in volatile assets. And that’s why Bitcoin has been very popular.

He added:

“I think there will be a few more announcements coming up in the next few months that’ll really stop all the exchanges in their tracks in China. So, unfortunately, trading crypto will be a thing of the past once you get past this year. And in a way, it’s a good thing for crypto because, in my heart, I always knew that Bitcoin’s success never depended on China. Just like it doesn’t depend on any one country, any one group of people.”

Even so, the central bank digital currency version of RMB is not a real competition against Bitcoin or Ethereum.

“The digital yuan is really an evolution of the existing fiat money used in China. For the most part, I don’t think the regulatory agencies’ perspective about Bitcoin is caused by the upcoming digital RMB,” he stated.

Bobby Lee forecast for Bitcoin price in the near future

As with several other BTC bulls, Bobby Lee thinks the second half of this year’s Bitcoin price will go back above $65,000.

“I think it’ll peak out over $250,000 later this year. Next year will be a bear market cycle. So we’ll see Bitcoin fall back down 50%-80% from the all-time high.”

He thinks Bitcoin will have a bull cycle every three or four years in the coming years. “I expect Bitcoin to pass a million, two million dollars easily in the next 10-15 years. In fact the next cycle I predict to be in the year 2024 or 2025, and that’s when Bitcoin will cross half a million dollars and might even touch $1 million,” he added.

And finally, Lee thinks there are two hot topics right now. These are decentralized finance (DeFi) and Non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

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