BitMEX CEO: Bitcoin May Bottom Out at $3k to $5k and Still Reach $50k by 2018

Arthur Hayes, the CEO at BitMEX, a major Bitcoin exchange that gained popularity amongst professional traders with its sophisticated leverage trading engine, said that Bitcoin achieving $50,000 by the end of 2018 is still a possibility.

In May 2018, during his first interview with CNBC on Fast Money, Hayes emphasized that as a bitcoin leverage trading platform, BitMEX records similar level of profits on the downside and upside of the cryptocurrency market.

On June 30, in an interview with CNBC's Seema Mody and Melissa Lee, Hayes reaffirmed his stance on bitcoin achieving a new all-time high by the end of 2018, at around the $50,000 region.

While the bottom of bitcoin in the 2018 correction could be in the range of $3,000 to $5,000, Hayes stated that the market is one regulatory decision away from gaining serious momentum.

As of June 2018, two organizations are actively cooperating with the SEC to launch a bitcoin ETF in the US financial market.

The Winklevoss twins, who operate a major cryptocurrency exchange in the US called Gemini, and SolidX is working to obtain the approval of the SEC to trade bitcoin ETFs in the market.

In early June, SolidX hired Van Eck Associates Corp, an investment management firm headquartered in New York, to streamline the process of getting its bitcoin ETF approved by the US SEC. Given the experience of Van Eck in launching more than 70 exchange-traded products, ETF specialist Eric Balchunas said that the involvement of VanEck is expected to ease the process of introducing the first bitcoin ETF to the market.

"While I'm still skeptical a Bitcoin ETP gets approved in any form this year, you gotta be in it to win it, and this extra hustle from VanEck could pay off down the road.".

Given the conditions of the market and the overly strong downtrend of major digital assets, it is likely that bitcoin continues to drop until it finds a stable bottom in the $4,000 to $5,000 range.

As Hayes emphasized, a regulatory breakthrough such as an approval by the SEC to introduce a bitcoin ETF, could trigger the price of BTC to achieve a new all-time high within the next five months.