Those following the AIM Summit’s conference series have seen that it is a great source of actionable investment ideas from world-leading economists and asset managers. What you may have missed, however, are the bold but accurate predictions that AIM Summit has made over the years and how AIM Summit continued to host digital webinars during the pandemic to help its audience navigate the crisis In May 2020 while the pandemic was raging on and much of the world was on lockdown, Zachary Cefaratti, AIM Summit founder, hosted a webinar series to help global investors navigate the crisis. During these sessions, he accurately anticipated Bitcoin’s 2020 surge, 2021 correction, and 2022 bottom live on stage and in live webinars found on YouTube.
Central to the global webinar 2020 series were several sessions focusing on Bitcoin at a time when Bitcoin was out of favor with many investors. It had been observed by many that Bitcoins price, which many hoped would be a hedge against “Six Sigma” events like pandemics, would serve as a hedge – but in March 2020, when markets were reeling – Bitcoins price had instead co-moved with global risk markets.
In May 2020, Bitcoin was $9,500, and many questioned its role in investor portfolios. Bitcoin mining stocks were unloved, with one of the most well-known and largest miners, Marathon Digital, trading at $0.90 cents.
Zachary Cefaratti identified key drivers that he believed would drive the price of Bitcoin higher, including the May 2020 “halving” event and the massive coordinated global stimulus. He thought these events were significantly positive for Bitcoin and that Miners would be central to an ensuing Bitcoin rally.
To help investors in lockdown identify these opportunities, Zachary Cefaratti gathered some of the world’s leading Bitcoin investors and experts, including Tim Draper, founder of Draper Associates, Mike Novogratz, Founder of Galaxy Digital, and Dan Morehead, founder of Pantera Capital.
In his first webinar on the subject, Zachary asked Tim Draper what was happening and what could be expected to happen in Crypto at this stage in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tim Draper predicts Bitcoin surge on “halvening” + stimulus” with Zachary Cefaratti
Tim Draper explained the impact of the stimulus, “When you have the US printing $2 trillion dollars, you know that the dollar will decrease in value relative to whatever asset.” Tim explained that Bitcoin would “rise against the dollar because there are only 21 million Bitcoin, and that’s all there are”.
When Zachary asked Tim, “What is the role of Bitcoin miners?” and how the 2020 “halving” on May 11, 2020, only a few days after the session, would affect the price of Bitcoin. Tim explained that “they only get half the Bitcoin for all the same effort” and that halving events usually “spike a price increase” in Bitcoin.
The following week, on June 12, 2020, when Bitcoins price was still hovering around $9,500, Zachary arranged another live webinar for the global AIM Summit audience, this time with Mike Novogratz, the founder of Galaxy Digital and former president of Fortress, along with Dan Morehead, the CEO of Pantera.
Mike Novogratz expanded on the impact of the stimulus, saying, ”We’ve got a globe that’s throwing Kerosene on this fire, and assets are gonna go higher. Bitcoin as a hard asset is gonna go higher.”
Mike Novogratz says, “This is the time for Bitcoin.” in May 2020 with Zachary Cefaratti
Dan Morehead further expanded on Zachary’s questions about the role of miners, which Cefaratti had explained were in the process of becoming more ‘institutionalized’ and provided an access point for investors. He further expanded that they benefited from low energy costs in 2020 and anticipated they would be at the center of the rally.
Dan Morehead highlighted that following previous Halvings, Bitcoin’s value “typically rallied thousands of percent.” He explained that while the past does not predict the future, it made sense that Bitcoin as a commodity that appeared to have stable demand and that when “you cut the supply in half, it will go up in price” – referring to the fact that miners would produce less Bitcoin following the halving.
Dan Morehead anticipates Bitcoin surge in May 2020
Zachary Cefaratti’s Predictions in 2020 About Bitcoin Were Correct
In the months following the webinars, the price of Bitcoin surged, and as Zachary had anticipated, Bitcoin miners were central to this price appreciation. Six months after the first webinars in May 2020, the price of Bitcoin had doubled to $19,000, and the price of the leading Bitcoin miner, Marathon Digital, had appreciated to over 400%. Exactly one year after the webinars Zachary organized, predicting an appreciation driven by massive liquidity and stimulus as well as the cut in supply from the Bitcoin halving, Bitcoin’s price had appreciated by 6x to $59,000, and leading Bitcoin miner Marathon was over 34x higher, trading at over $31/share.
The AIM Summit webinars Zachary organized in 2020 proved to be prescient. Zachary would later predict a major correction in Bitcoin in October 2021, following a bearish yield curve flattening, signaling a reversal of the Fed’s massive stimulus as well as a deleveraging of the crypto sector – and again in November 2022 predicted that the bankruptcy of Genesis signaled the beginning of the end of the deleveraging. These predictions were discussed live on stage at his AIM Summit conferences.
The timing of Zachary’s 2021 prediction that Bitcoin would face a major correction was when Bitcoin was trading over $60,000, and his 2022 prediction that it was likely at the bottom corresponded with the price being around $16,000.
