The beginning of a new year is always the occasion to make a list of New Year's resolutions. It's a classic that few escape.

In the Bitcoin world, the tradition is not to make New Year's resolutions, but rather to make predictions about the price of Bitcoin at the end of the year.

Some people have asked me by email for my opinion on the subject. Before answering, I took the opportunity to review the various predictions that have been made since the beginning of the year on the Internet about the price of Bitcoin in 2023.

If you've done this exercise yourself, you must have realized that the predictions for 2023 put the price of Bitcoin in a very wide range: from $5,000 to $250,000!

That's a phenomenal difference when the price of Bitcoin is currently $18K as I write this.

You have Tim Draper, for example, who is more bullish than ever on Bitcoin, predicting that the price of Bitcoin will reach $250K by mid-2023. You read that correctly. Tim Draper is predicting a +1,300% increase in the price of Bitcoin over the next 6 months.

I've looked closely, no one is doing a better job of predicting the price of Bitcoin in 2023 than he is.

Alistair Milne, the founder of Altana Digital Currency Fund, is much more cautious in predicting a Bitcoin price of around $45K while noting that it will depend on what happens with inflation. Interesting to see an influencer putting forward the reality that the price of Bitcoin will depend heavily on macroeconomic factors.

Inflation, Recession, Stagflation ... The global economic situation will weigh on the markets and thus the price of Bitcoin. This is obvious, and of course, we are never safe from surprising events that change all predictions.

Who could have said this time last year that there would be a war in Ukraine? Similarly, who could have said three years ago at this time that there would be a pandemic that would take over the whole world (and collapse all the certainties that some people thought they had)?

Hardly anyone. And yet, you know the rest.

Carol Alexander, Professor of Finance at Sussex University, predicts a Bitcoin price of $30K in mid-2023 and then $50K in sight by the end of 2023, as the Bitcoin Halving approaches.

Indeed, the fourth Halving in Bitcoin history is fast approaching. It will take place as planned at block 840,000. We are currently at block 771,582 as I write this.

This means that at the current rate, the fourth Bitcoin Halving should take place just before mid-March 2024:

But remember the effects of Halving usually never show up right after the event. It takes several months. What happened in 2020 should serve you well here, although things may be different this time. Nothing is ever written in advance.

While some are more or less Bullish, others are extremely Bearish.

Mark Mobius, the billionaire founder of Mobius Capital Partners, predicts that the price of Bitcoin will bottom out in December 2023 at around $10K. His reasoning is simple: the Fed will continue with its monetary tightening and rate hikes throughout 2023. The price of Bitcoin will suffer as a result.

Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck Investments, predicts much the same thing with a Bitcoin price target of between $10K and $12K by the end of 2023. For him, rising energy prices as well as Ripple's SEC lawsuit will continue to weigh on the price of Bitcoin causing it to fall towards $10K.

To finish with this roundup of the most pessimistic predictions, I saw that consumer bank Standard Chartered predicted Bitcoin prices will fall to as low as $5,000...

Eric Robertsen, the bank's global head of research, justifies this $5K prediction as follows:

“More and more crypto firms and exchanges find themselves with insufficient liquidity, leading to further bankruptcies and a collapse in investor confidence in digital assets.”

No need to panic, however, because Standard Chartered has included this prediction by Eric Robertsen in the category “surprise predictions for markets in 2023.” That means it's not the core view of all the bank's analysts.

Given these predictions, what strategy should we adopt with Bitcoin in 2023?

Now that I've covered these predictions, you might be asking yourself: what should I think? And more importantly, how do I approach Bitcoin for 2023?

After all, it may seem confusing to see such a wide range in Bitcoin price predictions.

If there are such discrepancies between these predictions, it is probably because these influencers or other so-called experts are not using the same crystal ball...

I'm talking about the crystal ball here because as I often tell you, it is impossible to predict the price of Bitcoin in advance. And even more so in the short term. Because the end of the year 2023 is short-term. So don't put any weight on these predictions when deciding whether or not to buy Bitcoin.

Take information as I recommend, but never rely on the prediction of a so-called expert to decide what you will do. These experts are constantly wrong for the simple reason that it is impossible to predict the price of Bitcoin. The funny thing here is that everyone ends up forgetting about their mistakes.

All it takes is for one of these experts to get it right once (by chance) for everyone to cry genius. I urge you to avoid this mistake, because by choosing to buy an asset based on someone else's advice, you will never be responsible for your actions, and therefore never truly free.

If you lose money afterward, you will blame the person who gave the advice or opinion. Yet you will be the one who is truly responsible because you are the one who blindly followed the advice of a so-called expert.

Bitcoin is about giving you back the power over your money. With Bitcoin, you have to take the power and learn to make your own decisions. I recently gave you my vision of the winning plan with Bitcoin for 2023 (and beyond):

Buy Bitcoin, Own Bitcoin, HODL Bitcoin, Repeat.

This is like applying a DCA strategy, similar to what Michael J. Saylor does with MicroStrategy. No one can accurately predict bottoms. In these circumstances, the most effective strategy is to buy Bitcoin regularly and to keep your Bitcoin in a hardware wallet so that you own it.

This is my vision. I could be wrong of course, so you should see this simply as a possibility that may or may not work for you. In the end, it's up to you to decide, because it's your money and the fruits of your labor that are at stake.

The only certainty I have here is that patience always pays off with Bitcoin. It's up to you to see if you'll be able to do that.

More reading

• The Simple Reason Why Bitcoin Will Always Be a More Trusted System Than the Current Monetary and Financial System. Do you know how many times the Fed has been audited in its 109-year history?

• Building A Bitcoin Sentiment Analyzer Based On Twitter. Analyzing recent tweets can give a valuable indication of the general feeling around Bitcoin.

• Ladies, Gentlemen, Welcome to Bitcoin Club - Here Are the Rules. Bitcoin from the Fight Club perspective.

• Tulips and Bitcoin Now Go Hand in Hand in the Netherlands. A Lesson for Bitcoin Opponents. The point with the Bitcoin revolution is to look for solutions to take advantage of it rather than to fight unnecessarily by wasting time.

• The 3 Biggest Reasons Why Bitcoin Will Become the Standard for Generation Z and Generation Alpha. Bitcoin’s success in the future is inevitable.