Tom Lee Owns his Bad Consensus Bitcoin Prediction

Much has been written about what went wrong at last weeks Consensus 2018. Why despite the massive increase in attendance the energy surrounding the conference felt so muffled and ultimately why it failed to provide the market bump that analysists and pundits predicted.

In hindsight, some of the problems are clear to see; the tickets were expensive and it didn’t support cryptocurrency for any event transactions. Those who attended said the discussions were outdated and even NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me took a dig at the rented Lambos. Uber crypto bull Tom Lee though at least had the decency to own up to his misreading of the events influence on Bitcoin’s price.

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee predicted in a note to clients on May 7 that taking into account the low trading price of Bitcoin going into the conference which began on May 14th coupled with the way the market had reacted to previous years Consensus gatherings Bitcoin could gain anywhere from 10-70%. He wrote to Fundstrat’s clients;

“Already one of the largest crypto conferences in the world, attendance this year is up dramatically and coming at a time when Bitcoin/Crypto is down YTD. Hence, we expect the Consensus rally to be even larger than past years.”

As we know now Consensus did not create a market pump. In fact, Bitcoin slumped through the three day period about 10% taking the rest of the market down with it losing $45 billion since May 10, according to Coinmarketcap.com.

Lee owned up to his bad prediction in a new report to clients in which he exams why the annual gathering failed to push up the price of Bitcoin. Lee wrote his investors that the continued lack of clarity from regulators like the Securities Exchange Commission and the slow pace of adoption by traditional companies were factors. According to Bloomberg, he wrote;

 “Crypto still faces significant internal resistance and hurdles within traditional financial institutions, but it is encouraging, nonetheless, that a large share of incremental attendance are financial institutions.”

Others who attended Consensus 2018 would agree with Lee on some of his points but were less moderate in the way they expressed their disappointment with the conference. Reddit Poster U/korgijoe started a thread entitled “Consensus 2018: It sucked. Here’s why” in which he broke down the reasons he thought the conference was a failure which included clarity, presenters being out of touch with their core audience and the overall failure of presenters to deal with the most pressing issues of scalability and centralization.

The Reddit post which was followed by a stream of comments agreeing with and adding to the analysis ended with this conclusion as to why Bitcoin was falling during the gathering “It was embarrassing for crypto. The market spoke.” Ever bullish Fundstrat reports they still expect to see Bitcoin hit $25,000 by the end of 2018.