Dado Ruvic/Reuters
- The crypto rally is "getting very long in the tooth," Boris Schlossberg told CNBC.
- The BK Asset Management strategist said lots of bitcoin adoption was "gimmicky."
- Bitcoin has traded below $60,000 since hitting an all-time high in mid-March.
- Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.
The bitcoin rally is "very long in the tooth" and could be about to sharply reverse course, according to one currency strategist.
Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management, told CNBC this week CME Group's announcement that it will introduce micro bitcoin futures could be a sign that the market is at the top.
"Last time they announced that there was going to be futures" – which was in 2017 – "bitcoin actually hit [the] top," Schlossberg said.
He said he thought lots of companies' adoption of bitcoin is "very gimmicky." Tesla announced in March that it had started accepting bitcoin as payment, while PayPal said on Tuesday that its US customers can use their cryptocurrency holdings to pay at millions of its online merchants globally.
"I don't think any asset that has a volatility of 20% per week can really act as a currency at this point," Schlossberg said. "And I think whatever transactions you're going to see in bitcoin are going to be infinitesimally small relative to regular currency."
The foreign exchange strategist said he thought "the whole rally in crypto... is getting very long in the tooth."
He said: "I think we're very, very close to perhaps an intermediate-term top here. A little bit of a correction is certainly due at this point."
Schlossberg is far from the only analyst predicting that the remarkable rally in the world's biggest cryptocurrency could be nearing its peak. Bitcoin has risen around 775% over the last year to $58,400 on Thursday, according to Coinbase data.
Crypto analysts at Glassnode said in March a pickup in "wealth transfers" from long-term bitcoin holders to newer speculators could mean bitcoin is entering the second half or later stages of a bull market.
Yet bitcoin tycoon Mike Novogratz predicted on Wednesday that increased institutional interest would drive the asset to be bigger than gold. He told CNBC he is shocked at the pace of crypto adoption by big Wall Street players.