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Its the season of Bitcoin price predictions.

Only days after Nexo co-founder Antoni Trenchev made the case for a $50,000 Bitcoin price in 2020, Bitpay Chief Commercial Officer Sonny Singh has also shared his belief that the crypto asset will hit new all-time highs this year.

Notably, Singh shared what turned out to be a correct prediction that Bitcoin would get close to $15,000 in 2019 with Bloomberg a little more than a year ago.

This year, Im going to make a prediction, Singh told Bloombergs Taylor Riggs on Wednesday. I think Bitcoin passes the all-time high and goes passed $20,000 this year.

While most other Bitcoin pundits have pointed to the upcoming halving as the main catalyst for a Bitcoin price pump in 2020, Singh offered an alternative theory. The halving event is expected to occur in May, and it will cut the number of new Bitcoin that are created roughly every ten minutes in half.

The technical and high-frequency trading is what drives this market in Bitcoin, said Singh. Any time you have an unforeseen circumstance like the Iran incident that happened a couple of days ago that adds new buyers to the market, they werent expecting that and that bumps it up. And that little bump actually in buying pressure really drives it to be up, next thing you know, 20% in two days.

In Signhs view, the Bitcoin market is largely driven by traders who follow technical indicators, which is why unforeseen events where new buyers enter the market have had such a large impact on the cryptocurrencys past price movements. Singh pointed to last years surprise announcement from Facebook about their Libra project as an example of this phenomenon.

This year, again, things like China, Russia, or India could legalize Bitcoin, added Singh. Some new companies competitive to Facebook could get involved. The American government could do something. Something unforeseen that could happen will really move it faster.

Singh also pointed out that fundamental building blocks for a stronger Bitcoin ecosystem are already here through developments like the launch of Fidelitys crypto services and Squares hiring engineers to focus on Bitcoin. However, he reiterated that it will be the unforeseen events that trigger big Bitcoin price moves in 2020.

In terms of the crypto asset market more generally, its unclear if other coins would rise as quickly as Bitcoin in a bull market, as 2019 was a historically bad year for altcoins. The development of secondary protocol layers, such as sidechains, on top of the base Bitcoin blockchain, could spell doom for many of the alternative assets in the crypto market. Even a member of the United States House of Representatives has singled out Bitcoin as the real innovation in the crypto asset space.

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Bitcoin Price To Rise Above $20,000 In 2020, Says Bitpays Singh - Forbes