The 32-year-old CEO of a crypto holdings company breaks down why he thinks bitcoin could reach as high as $120,000 in Q1 2022 despite the recent setback — and shares 5 altcoins he's bullish on (2024)

At the time, bitcoin was trading at between $75 to $150, which meant the firm would receive between one and two bitcoin for every annual plan they sold, he recalled in an interview.

"That started my journey down the rabbit hole," he said. "I guess you could say I never left the rabbit hole, I really liked living in the rabbit hole."

As a testament to that, Fried is now the CEO of Immutable Holdings, a blockchain holdings company with the grand ambition of becoming the "Berkshire Hathaway of crypto."

Backed by Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary, the firm debuted on Canada's NEO stock exchange in September. It is comprised of a crypto asset manager with over $150 million in assets under management and five yet-to-be-launched ventures including NFT.com, 1800Bitcoin.com, and CBDC.com, according to Fried.

With plans to build several crypto ventures, the 32-year-old entrepreneur has a lot to prove, especially at a time when crypto prices continue to whipsaw and regulators call for more industry oversight.

Bitcoin and ethereum could reach $120k and $10k in Q1

After touching an all-time high of nearly $69,000, bitcoin had fallen more than 15% to trade at around $57,300 as of Wednesday afternoon in New York.

With just one month left in the year, the largest cryptocurrency looks unlikely to reach the $100,000 price target set by many crypto analysts and investors earlier in the year.

But Fried said he tends to zoom out when the market is laser-focused on day-to-day price actions. He recalls selling some of his bitcoin holdings at around $8,000 in order to purchase a house. While the value of his house has increased, as is often the case with real estate, it has not appreciated seven times as bitcoin has, according to Fried.

"I've always regretted selling the bitcoin or exchanging the bitcoin for real-world assets," he said. "What I found to be the better alternative is actually borrowing against my position."

Although that's hard to do with an asset that could experience some volatility, he would still rather be long bitcoin and have some exposure to it than have no exposure at all and sell it for cash.

"Of course, printing money was going to have long-term effects on the economy," he said. "You don't have to take my word for it, even Ray Dalio said that cash is trash."

He viewed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's Tuesday remark about no longer using the word "transitory" to describe inflation as an indication that even the central bank acknowledges that surging prices might not recede anytime soon.

Despite the recent setback in the market, institutional and retail investors continue to buy the dip. In the past two months, Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy added 7,002 bitcoins worth $414.1 million to its treasury. More recently, El Salvador said it would issue a $1 billion "bitcoin bond" next year and build the world's first "bitcoin city."

Given all the catalysts, Fried has not fully ruled out that bitcoin could notch all-time highs in the next few months.

In his view, bitcoin, which has been pitched as an inflationary hedge because of its limited supply, could land between $100,000 and $120,000 in the first quarter of next year. Ethereum, which tends to follow bitcoin, could rise to anywhere between $6,000 and $10,000.

"We still believe that the next few weeks are going to be very exciting," he said. "I continue to put my money where my mouth is and I continue to hold those assets."

To be sure, the new Omicron variant, rising inflation risks, and the Fed's potentially faster-than-expected tapering could also weigh on risk assets such as bitcoin. These new variables make it hard to pin down a timeline for the price targets, Fried said.

5 altcoins he's bullish on

Fried subscribes to the age-old investing advice about diversification, which means his portfolio does not just hold the two largest cryptocurrencies.

As part of the founding team for decentralized network hedera (HBAR), he is a large holder of the HBAR tokens.

The layer-one protocol has recently partnered with software company ServiceNow and South Korea-based Shinhan Bank. The HBAR token, which has a $6.4 billion market cap, returned 926% in the past year but fell over the past few weeks, according to CoinGecko pricing.

"I think the reason that it doesn't get a lot of attention is we are intentionally very enterprise-focused with hedera, but I do think it could still be within the top 10 before long," he said. "Of course, I'm biased and I own a lot of it."

While he is not personally invested in terra (LUNA), Fried said he is impressed by the team led by Do Kwon and the projects built by the stablecoin payment provider. The LUNA token, which became a deflationary asset after a recent network upgrade, has gained 15,429% in the past year, CoinGecko data shows.

A big believer in stablecoins, Fried is bullish on USD coin (USDC), the second-largest US dollar-pegged stablecoin with about $39 billion in market cap. It is governed by Centre, a consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase.

"Much like you'd hold the cash balance in a bank account, you can hold a cash balance in the form of USDC, which is not just perfectly collateralized one to one, it's actually over collateralized by US dollars held by Circle in a bank account," he said. "I've seen yields as high as 8% to 10% APY on USDC."

Also on his radar are metaverse-linked tokens axie infinity (AXS) and decentraland (MANA), which have skyrocketed in recent weeks on the back of Facebook's "Meta" rebrand. Grayscale, the world's largest digital asset manager said in a recent research note that the metaverse is a $1 trillion annual revenue opportunity.

The AXS token has shot up 29,640% in the past year while the MANA token has surged 5,198%.