Crypto execs says the bull run is underway and could lead to $100,000 bitcoin in 2024
Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images
Executives in the cryptocurrency industry called the start of a new bull run with a growing number of voices calling for fresh all-time highs for bitcoin in 2024 above $100,000.
Bitcoin has rallied more than 120% this year, with many optimistic about the surge continuing into 2024.
“It feels that [2023]was a year to get ready for the bull run that is yet to come. But the sentiment is very hopeful for [2024] and 25,” Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger, told CNBC last week in an interview.
The digital currency’s last record high of nearly $69,00 was hit in November 2021.
Since then, the crypto industry has been hit with a litany of issues from the collapse of coins and projects to bankruptcies and criminal trials. FTX, once one of the world’s biggest exchanges, collapsed with its founder Sam Bankman-Fried facing over 100 years in prison after he was found guilty on seven counts of criminal fraud.
Meanwhile, Binance chief Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges and stepped down as the company’s CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Many in the industry see the two cases concluding as a line being drawn under issues that have plagued the crypto market.
“I think that once you get the speculative phase out of the way, which I think we’re almost done with, probably not yet completely done, then you can get real builders focusing on the technology and the problems that can solve in the world, rather than just having a giant digital casino for people to trade,” David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark, told CNBC last week in an interview.
Marcus, the former leader of Facebook’s failed Diem stablecoin project, is now working on technology to improve bitcoin as a payments network.
Now that those issues are out the way, investors are focused on what the industry sees as positive developments. The first is the growing excitement that a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, or ETF, might be approved soon. This could bring in larger traditional investors who previously did not want to touch crypto.
“I think what the ETF means really is that bitcoin is going mainstream, and that’s what people were waiting for,” Gauthier said.
The second development is the bitcoin halving, which takes place every four years and is scheduled for May 2024. Halving is when miners, which are entities who uphold the bitcoin network, see the rewards for their work cut in half. This keeps a cap on the supply of bitcoin — of which there will ever only be 21 million coins — and often is a factor behind a new rally.
“A number of market participants are expecting a bull run some time after the halving, but given the ETF news, we could very well have a run before that leaving most investors on the sidelines. That could cause a massive upward run in the price,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of international markets at cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX, told CNBC.
Bitcoin at $100,000?
There have already been some bold calls for bitcoin in 2024.
It began with Standard Chartered last week which reiterated an April price call that bitcoin would hit $100,000 by end of 2024. The bank said this will be driven by the approvals of numerous ETFs.
That would mean a roughly 160% rally from Friday’s price of around $38,413, according to CoinDesk data.
Matrixport, which bills itself as a crypto financial services firm, released a note last week projecting bitcoin would reach $63,140 by April 2024 and $125,000 by the end of next year.
“Based on our inflation model, the macro environment is expected to remain a robust tailwind for crypto. Another decline in inflation is anticipated, prompting the Federal Reserve to likely initiate interest rate cuts,” Matrixport said in its report.
“Combined with geopolitical crosscurrents, this healthy dose of monetary support should push Bitcoin to new highs in 2024.”
Many commentators see easing monetary policy as supportive for bitcoin which is viewed as a risky asset. Meanwhile, some see bitcoin as a sort of “safe haven” asset to pour money into in times of geopolitical strife.
When asked if bitcoin would hit $100,000 in 2024, Gauthier said “maybe,” but declined to give a price prediction.
“What we see is strong fundamentals,” he said.
Ayyar said that the price of bitcoin is “consolidating” below a “key level” of $38,000, which is bullish for bitcoin. Once this level is broke, bitcoin could rally to between $45,000 and $48,000 next, he said.
However, he warned the rally, which is in large part built on expectations of an ETF approval, could fail if the product is rejected by regulators again.
“An all out ETF rejection could play havoc to this run as well, hence definitely something to be mindful of,” he said.
Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.
The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.
“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”
The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.
“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.
Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.
In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.
Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”
But no announcement has come yet.
In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”
OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.
On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.
“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”
OpenAI declined to comment.
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