The boldest bitcoin calls for 2023 are out — and a 1,400% rally or a 70% plunge may be on the cards
A worsening macroeconomic climate and the collapse of industry giants like FTX and Terra have weighed on bitcoin’s price this year.
STR | Nurphoto via Getty Images
2022 was a rough year for crypto. More than $1.3 trillion was wiped off the value of the market. And bitcoin, the world’s largest digital coin, saw its price slump more than 60%.
Investors were caught off guard by a wave of collapses in the industry from stablecoin project terraUSD to crypto exchange FTX, as well as a worsening macroeconomic climate. Those who made predictions about bitcoin’s price in the past year really missed the mark.
But with 2023 now here, some market players have stuck their neck out with price calls for what could be another volatile year.
Interest rates around the world are on the rise, and that’s weighing on risk assets like stocks and bitcoin. Investors are also watching how the FTX saga, which resulted in the arrest of the company’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas, will develop.
CNBC rounds up some of the boldest price calls for bitcoin in 2023.
Tim Draper: $250,000
Bitcoin bull Tim Draper had one of the most optimistic calls on bitcoin of 2022, predicting the token would be worth $250,000 by the end of the year.
In November, the billionaire venture capitalist said he’s extending the timeline for that prediction until mid-2023. Even after the collapse of FTX, he’s convinced the coin will hit the quarter-of-a-million milestone.
“My assumption is that since women control 80% of retail spending, and only 1 in 7 bitcoin wallets are currently held by women that the dam is about to break,” Draper told CNBC via email.
Bitcoin would need to rally 1,400% in order for it to trade at that level.
Despite the depressed prices and trading volumes drying up, there could be reason to suspect the market has found a bottom, according to Draper.
“I suspect that the halvening in 2024 will have a positive run,” he said.
The halvening, or halving, is an event that happens every four years in which bitcoin rewards to miners are cut in half. This is viewed by some investors as positive for bitcoin’s price, as it squeezes supply. The next halving is slated to happen sometime in 2024.
Bitcoin miners, who use power-intensive machines to verify transactions and mint new tokens, are being squeezed by the slump in prices and rising energy costs.
These actors accumulate massive piles of digital currency, making them some of the biggest sellers in the market. With miners offloading their holdings to pay off debts, that should remove most of the remaining selling pressure on bitcoin.
That’s historically a good sign for bitcoin, said Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development at crypto exchange Luno.
“In prior down markets, miner capitulation has usually indicated major bottoms,” Ayyar told CNBC. “Their cost to produce becomes greater than the value of bitcoin, hence you have a number of miners either switching off their machines … or they need to sell more bitcoin to keep their business afloat.”
“If the market reaches a point where it’s absorbing this miner sell pressure sufficiently, one can assume that we’re seeing a bottoming period.”
Standard Chartered: $5,000
For some market participants, the worst is yet to come.
In a Dec. 5 research note, Standard Chartered said bitcoin may sink as low as $5,000. The prediction, one of the bank’s list of “surprises” that are being “under-priced” by markets, would represent a 70% plunge from current prices.
“Yields plunge along with technology shares” in Standard Chartered’s nightmare 2023 scenario, “and while the Bitcoin sell-off decelerates, the damage has been done,” said Eric Robertsen, the bank’s global head of research.
“More and more crypto firms and exchanges find themselves with insufficient liquidity, leading to further bankruptcies and a collapse in investor confidence in digital assets,” he added.
Robertsen said the scenario has a “non-zero probability of occurring in the year ahead” and falls “materially outside of the market consensus or our own baseline views.”
Mark Mobius: $10,000
Veteran investor Mark Mobius had a relatively successful 2022 in terms of his price call. In May, he forecast bitcoin would drop to $20,000 when it was trading above $28,000.
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He said bitcoin would fall to $10,000 in 2022. That did not happen. However, Mobius told CNBC that he is sticking for his $10,000 price call in 2023.
The investor, who made his name at Franklin Templeton Investments, told CNBC that his bear case for bitcoin stemmed from rising interest rates and general tighter monetary policy from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
“With higher interest rates, the attraction of holding or buying Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies becomes less attractive since just holding the coin does not pay interest,” Mobius said via email.
Carol Alexander: $50,000
Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University, wasn’t far off the mark with her prediction that bitcoin would slip to $10,000 in 2022.
Now, she thinks the cryptocurrency could be set for gains — but not for reasons you might expect.
The catalyst would be more dominos from the FTX fallout tipping over, Alexander said. If this happens, she expects the price of bitcoin will top $30,000 in the first quarter, and then $50,000 by quarters three or four.
“There will be a managed bull market in 2023, not a bubble — so we won’t see the price overshooting as before,” she told CNBC.
“We’ll see a month or two of stable trending prices interspersed with range-bounded periods and probably a couple of short-lived crashes.”
Alexander’s reasoning is that, with trading volumes evaporating with traders on edge, large holders known as “whales” will likely step in to prop up the market. The wealthiest 97 bitcoin wallet addresses account for 14.15% of the total supply, according to fintech firm River Financial.
Some investors have given up trying to predict the price of bitcoin. For Antoni Trenchev, CEO of crypto lending platform Nexo, the recent events are a sobering moment.
Bitcoin was on a “positive path” earlier in 2022, with institutional adoption rising, but “a few major forces interfered,” he said.
Trenchev once predicted bitcoin surging to a peak of $100,000 by early 2023. Now, he’s done trying to predict the price.
Laith Khalaf, financial analyst at AJ Bell, suggested attempts to forecast bitcoin’s price are futile.
“We could be sitting here talking this time next year and it could be at $5,000 or 50,000 it just wouldn’t surprise me because the market is so heavily driven by sentiment,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.“
Technology
Meet the 21-year-old helping coders use AI to cheat in Google and other tech job interviews
A person walks past the entrance to a Google building in Dublin, Feb. 15, 2023.
Artur Widak | Anadolu | Getty Images
After landing internship offers from Amazon, Meta and TikTok, computer science student Chungin “Roy” Lee has decided to move to San Francisco.
But he won’t be joining any of those companies.
Instead, Lee will be building his own startup that offers a peculiar service: helping software engineers use artificial intelligence to cheat in their technical job interviews.
“Everyone programs nowadays with the help of AI,” said Lee, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University, which has opened disciplinary proceedings against him, according to documents viewed by CNBC. A Columbia spokesperson said the university doesn’t comment on individual students.
“It doesn’t make sense to have an interview format that assumes you don’t have the use of AI,” Lee said.
Lee is at the forefront of a movement among professional coders who are exploiting the limitations of remote job interviews, popularized during the Covid pandemic, by using AI tools off camera to ensure they give hiring managers the best possible answers.
The hiring process that took hold in the work-from-home era involved candidates interviewing from behind a Zoom screen rather than traveling, sometimes across the country, for on-location interviews, where they could show their coding skills on dry-erase boards.
In late 2022 came the boom in generative AI, with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Since then, tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of programmers while touting the use of AI to write code. At Google, for example, more than 25% of new code is written by AI, CEO Sundar Pichai told investors in October.
The combination of rapid advancements in AI, mass layoffs of software developers, and a continuing world of remote and hybrid work has created a novel conundrum for recruiters.
The problem has become so prevalent that Pichai suggested during a Google town hall in February that his hiring managers consider returning to in-person job interviews.
Google isn’t the only tech company weighing that idea.
But engineers aren’t slowing down.
Lee has turned his cheating into a business. His company, Interview Coder, markets itself as a service that helps software developers cheat during job interviews. The internship offers that he landed are the proof he uses to show that his technology works.
AI assistants for virtual interviews can provide written code, make code improvements, and generate detailed explanations of results that candidates can read. The AI tools all work quickly, which is helpful for timed interviews.
Hiring managers are venting their frustrations on social media over the rise of AI cheaters, saying that those who get caught are eliminated from contention. Interviewers say they’re exhausted from having to discern whether candidates are using their own skills or relying on AI.
‘Invisible’ help
The cheating tools rely on generative AI models to provide software engineers with real-time answers to coding problems as they’re presented during interviews. The AI analyzes both written and oral questions and instantaneously generates code. The widgets can also provide the cheaters with explanations for the solutions that they can use in the interview.
The tools’ most valuable feature, however, might be their secrecy. Interview Coder is invisible to the interviewer.
While candidates are using technology to cheat, employers are observing their behavior during interviews to try to catch them. Interviewers have learned to look for eyes wandering to the side, the reflection of other apps visible on candidates’ glasses, and answers that sound rehearsed or don’t match questions, among other clues.
Perhaps the biggest tell is a simple “Hmm.”
Hiring managers said they’ve noticed that many candidates use the ubiquitous sound to buy themselves time while waiting for their AI tools to finish their work.
“I’ll hear a pause, then ‘Hmm,’ and all of a sudden, it’s the perfect answer,” said Anna Spearman, founder of Techie Staffing, an agency that helps companies fill technical roles. “There have also been instances where the code looked OK, but they couldn’t describe how they came to the conclusion.”
Henry Kirk, a software developer and co-founder of Studio.init in New York, said this type of cheating used to be easy to catch.
“But now it’s harder to detect,” said Kirk. He said the technology has gotten smart enough to present the answers in a place that doesn’t require users to move their eyes.
“The eye movement used to be the biggest giveaway,” Kirk said.
Interview Coder’s website says its virtual interview tool is immune to screen detection features that are available to companies on services such as Zoom and Google Meet. Lee markets his product as being webcam-proof.
When Kirk hosted a virtual coding challenge for an engineering job he was looking to fill in June, 700 people applied, he said. Kirk recorded the process of the first interview round. He was looking to see if any candidates were cheating in ways that included using results from large language models.
“More than 50% of them cheated,” he said.
AI cheating tools have improved so much over the last year that they’ve become nearly undetectable, experts said. Other than Lee’s Interview Coder, software engineers can also use programs such as Leetcode Wizard or ChatGPT.
Kirk said his startup is considering moving to in-person interviews, though he knows that potentially limits the talent pool.
“The problem is now I don’t trust the results as much,” Kirk said. “I don’t know what else to do other than on-site.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai during an event at the Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw, Poland, Feb. 13, 2025.
Omar Marques | Anadolu | Getty Images
Back to the Googleplex
It’s become a big topic at Google, and one Pichai addressed in February at an internal town hall meeting, where executives read questions and comments that were submitted by employees and summarized by AI, according to an audio recording that was reviewed by CNBC.
One question asked of management was, “Can we get onsite job interviews back?”
“There are many email threads about this topic,” the question said. “If budget is constraint, can we get the candidates to an office or environment we can control?”
Pichai turned to Brian Ong, Google’s vice president of recruiting, who was joining through a virtual livestream.
“Brian, do we do hybrid?” Pichai asked.
Ong said candidates and Google employees have said they prefer virtual job interviews because scheduling a video call is easier than finding a time to meet in available conference rooms. The virtual interview process is about two weeks faster, he added.
He said interviewers are instructed to probe candidates on their answers as a way to decipher whether they actually know what they’re talking about.
“We definitely have more work to do to integrate how AI is now more prevalent in the interview process,” said Ong. He said his recruiting organization is working with Google’s software engineer steering committee to figure out how the company can refine its interviewing process.
“Given we all work hybrid, I think it’s worth thinking about some fraction of the interviews being in person,” Pichai responded. “I think it’ll help both the candidates understand Google’s culture and I think it’s good for both sides.”
Ong said it’s also an issue “all of our other competitor companies are looking at.”
A Google spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was said at the meeting.
Other companies have already shifted their hiring practices to account for AI cheating.
Deloitte reinstated in-person interviews for its U.K. graduate program, according to a September report.
Anthropic, the maker of AI chatbot Claude, issued new guidance in its job applications in February, asking candidates not to use AI assistants during the hiring process.
“While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process,” the new policy says. “We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.”
Amazon is also taking steps to combat AI cheating.
The company asks that candidates acknowledge that they won’t use unauthorized tools during the interview or assessment process, spokesperson Margaret Callahan told CNBC.
Chungin “Roy” Lee, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University, is the founder of Interview Coder, a startup that makes software to help computer programmers cheat in job interviews with the help of AI.
Courtesy of Chungin Lee
‘F*ck Leetcode’
If you visit InterviewCoder.co, the first thing that greets you is large gray type that reads “F*ck Leetcode.”
Leetcode is the program used by many tech companies to evaluate software engineers for technical roles. Tech companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon use it to keep tabs on the thousands of job applicants they evaluate.
“Every time I mention interviews, I get frustrated comments about Leetcode,” wrote Ryan Peterman, a software engineer at Meta, in a newsletter posted on Substack in December. Peterman said Leetcode problems are purposely designed to be much harder than what software engineers would do on the job. Leetcode is the best tool companies have to filter hundreds of applicants, Peterman wrote.
Coders said they hate Leetcode because it emphasizes algorithmic problem-solving and asks applicants to solve riddles and puzzles that seem irrelevant to the job, according to those CNBC spoke with as well as comments CNBC found from engineers across various social media platforms. Another downside is that it sometimes requires hours of work that may not result in a job offer or advancement, they said.
Leetcode served as Lee’s inspiration for building Interview Coder, he said. With the help of AI, he said, he created the service in less than a week.
“I thought I wanted to work at a big tech company and spent 600 hours practicing for Leetcode,” Lee said. “It made me miserable, and I almost stopped programming because of how much I didn’t like it.”
Lee’s social media posts are filled with comments from other programmers expressing similar frustrations.
“Legend,” several comments said in response to some of his X posts. Others said they enjoyed him “f—ing with big tech.”
Rival software Leetcode Wizard was also inspired by distaste for Leetcode.
Isabel De Vries, Leetcode Wizard’s head of marketing, told CNBC in a statement that Leetcode-style interviews fail to accurately measure engineering skills and fail to reflect actual daily engineering work.
“Our product originates from the same frustrations many of our users are having,” De Vries said.
Leetcode did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Henry Kirk, a software developer and co-founder of Studio.init in New York, is considering moving job interviews to be on site in response to software engineers using AI to cheat in virtual interviews.
Photo by Krista Schlueter for Inc. Magazine
When Kirk, of Studio.init, posted on LinkedIn in February to vent about his frustrations with AI cheating, he received nearly 200 comments. But most argued that employers should allow candidates to use AI in the hiring process.
“Even the SAT lets you use a calculator,” said one comment. “I think you just make it harder to succeed on purpose when in the real world Google and gpt will always be at my fingertips.”
Lee promotes Interview Coder as being “invisible to all screen-recording softwares.” To prove its effectiveness, he recorded himself passing an Amazon interview and posted the video on YouTube. Amazon and the other companies that had made offers to Lee then rescinded them.
Lee got hundreds of comments praising the video, which YouTube removed after CNBC reached out to Amazon and Google for this story. YouTube cited a “copyright claim” by Amazon as the reason for removing the video.
“I as an interviewer am so annoyed by him but as a candidate also adore him,” former Meta staff engineer Yangshun Tay, co-founder of startup GreatFrontEnd, wrote in a LinkedIn post about Lee and his video. “Cheating isn’t right, but oh god I am so tired of these stupid algorithm interviews.”
After YouTube removed the video, Lee uploaded it once again.
Cheating as a service
Lee said he never planned to work at Amazon, Meta or TikTok. He said he wanted to show others just how easy it is to game Leetcode and force companies to find a better alternative.
And, he said, he’s making money in the process.
Interview Coder is available as a subscription for $60 a month. Lee said the company is on track to hit $1 million in annual recurring revenue by mid-May.
He recently hired the internet influencers who go by the name “Costco Guys” to make a video marketing his software.
“If you’re struggling to pass your Leetcode interviews and want to get a job at a big tech company, you’ve got to take a look at Interviewcoder.co to pass your interview,” the Costco Guys say in their video. “Because Interview Coder gets five big booms! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boooooom!”
Leetcode Wizard bills itself on its website as “The #1 AI-powered coding interview cheating app” and “The perfect tool for achieving a ‘Strong Hire’ result in any coding interview and landing your dream job at any FAANG company.” Leetcode Wizard charges 49 euros ($53) a month for a “Pro” subscription.
More than 16,000 people have used the app, and “several hundred” people have told Leetcode Wizard that they received offers thanks to the software, the company told CNBC.
“Our product will have succeeded once we can shut it down, when leetcode interviews are a thing of the past,” De Vries said.
Lee said he’s moving from New York to San Francisco in March to continue building Interview Coder and start working on his next company.
Kirk said he understands software engineers’ frustration with Leetcode and the tech industry. He’s had to use Leetcode numerous times throughout his career, and he was laid off by Google in 2023. He now wants to help out-of-work engineers get jobs.
But he remains worried that AI cheating will persist.
“We need to make sure they know their stuff because these tools still make mistakes,” Kirk said.
Half of companies currently use AI in the hiring process, and 68% will by the end of 2025, according to an October survey commissioned by ResumeBuilder.com.
Lee said that if companies want to bill themselves as AI-first, they should encourage its use by candidates.
Asked if he worries about software engineers losing the trust of the tech industry, Lee paused.
“Hmm,” he mumbled.
“My reaction to that is any company that is slow to respond to market changes will get hurt and that’s the fault of the company,” Lee said. “If there are better tools, then it’s their fault for not resorting to the better alternative to exist. I don’t feel guilty at all for not catering to a company’s inability to adapt.”
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