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- Analyst James Mullarney predicts an H2 2023 bull run for BTC and an ETH bull run likely starting in March.
- His prediction is tied to the anticipated 2024 Bitcoin halving and Ethereum’s upcoming Shanghai upgrade.
James Mullarney, the host of the widely followed investment-focused podcast Invest Answers, has shared his predictions for when the bear market will end for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).
In a YouTube video, the analyst shared that he believes the next BTC bull run could begin around the second half of 2023. His stance is based on a number of well-thought reasons. These include the upcoming Bitcoin halving in 2024 and the duration of the current bear market.
According to Mullarney, BTC had a very bad year in 2022. However, he maintains that BTC does not “stay down forever.” Every technical indicator points to the price having reached a bottom, he adds. Coupled with massive anticipation of the 2024 halving event, Mullarney opined that the price of BTC could surge in the second half of 2023.
Every single technical indicator you could look at says it’s a bottom. And people are educated now. They know what the halving is all about, and they know to front-run it. So I believe in late 2023 there will be a Bitcoin bull run,
Meanwhile, Mullarney’s forecast for ETH is even more optimistic. He asserted that the second-largest crypto by market cap could start to surge as soon as March 2023. The analyst ties his conviction to the upcoming Ethereum blockchain Shanghai upgrade that will enable withdrawals of staked ETH.
He stated that enabling beacon chain withdrawals could give investors more confidence to stake more in the long term. This will probably even attract institutions to stake ETH to earn 5 percent APY for securing the Ethereum blockchain.
Nonetheless, Mullarney concedes that the initial activation of staked ETH withdrawals is likely to put sell-side pressure on the token. This is because many stakers who have been waiting a long time to withdraw their staked ETH and rewards will initially rush to withdraw and sell.
Will ETH flip BTC in 2023?
Despite the cross-crypto market bear trend, BTC and ETH have continued to compete for market dominance. The top two tokens currently account for 39.92 percent and 18.46 percent of the $850.2 billion total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies respectively according to data from BTCTools.
However, the dominance trend shows that the market dominance of ETH has gained on that of BTC over the years. This fuels speculation that ETH could eventually overtake BTC in market cap — a phenomenon that has been dubbed the flippening.
Andrew Keys, venture capitalist and managing partner of DARMA Capital, has predicted that 2023 will be the year ETH flips BTC’s dominance. He wrote that Bitcoin will face headwinds in 2023 due to its lack of daily utility and growing ESG concerns. These will cause the token to slide, while Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade will propel ETH to market supremacy.
