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The coronavirus pandemic crisis shows no signs of abating, even with a vaccine coming on to the markets. Were still facing severe social lockdown policies, with a number of states (such as California, Minnesota, and Michigan) forcing even harsher restrictions on this round than previously.Its a heavy blow for the leisure industry that is still reeling from one of the most difficult years in memory. The difficulties faced by restaurants are getting more press, but for the cruise industry, corona has been a perfect storm.Prior to the pandemic, the cruise industry which had been doing $150 billion worth of business annually was expected to carry 32 million passengers in 2020. Thats all gone now. During the summer, the industry reeled when over 3,000 COVID cases were linked to 123 separate cruise ships, and resulted in 34 deaths. After such a difficult year, its useful to step back and take a snapshot of the industrys condition. JPMorgan analyst Brandt Montour has done just that, in a comprehensive review of the cruise industry generally and three cruise line giants in particular."We believe cruise shares can continue to grind higher in the near term, driven overwhelmingly by the broader vaccine backdrop/progress. Looking out further, operators will face plenty of headwinds when restarting/ramping operations in 2Q3Q21, but significant sequential improvement of revenues/cash flows over that period will likely dominate the narrative, and we believe investors will continue to look through short-term setbacks to a 2022 characterized by fully ramped capacity, near-full occupancies, and so far manageable pricing pressure," Montour opined.Against this backdrop, Montour has picked out two stocks that are worth the risk, and one that investors should avoid for now. Using TipRanks Stock Comparison tool, we lined up the three alongside each other to get the lowdown on what the near-term holds for these cruise line players.Royal Caribbean (RCL)The second-largest cruise line, Royal Caribbean, remains a top pick for Montour and his firm. The company has put its resources into facing and meeting the pandemics challenges, shoring up liquidity and both streamlining and modernizing the fleet.Maintaining liquidity has been the most pressing issue. While the company has resumed some cruising, and has even taken delivery of a new ship, the Silver Moon, most operations remain suspended. For Q3, the company reported adjusted earnings of -$5.62, below consensus of -$5.17. Management estimates the cash burn to be between $250 million and $290 million monthly. To combat that, RCL reported having $3.7 billion in liquidity at the end of September. That included $3 billion in cash on hand along with $700 million available through a credit facility. Total liquidity at the end of Q3 was down more than 9% from the end of Q2. Since the third quarter ended, RCL has added over $1 billion to its cash position, through an issue of $500 million senior notes and a sale of stock, putting an additional 8.33 million shares on the market at $60 each.In his note on Royal Caribbean, Montour writes, [We] are most constructive on OW-rated RCL, which we believe has the most compelling set of demand drivers... its extensive investments in premium priced new hardware, as well as consumer data, all set RCL up well to outgrow the industry in revenue metrics, margins, and ROIC over the longer term.Montour backs his Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating with a $91 price target. This figure represents a 30% upside potential for 2021. (To watch Montours track record, click here)Is the rest of the Street in agreement? As it turns out, the analyst consensus is more of a mixed bag. 4 Buy ratings and 6 Holds give RCL a Moderate Buy status. Meanwhile, the stock is selling for $69.58 per share, slightly above the $68.22 average price target. (See RCL stock analysis on TipRanks)Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH)With a market cap of $7.45 billion and a fleet of 28 ships, Norwegian Cruise Line found its relatively smaller size as an advantage in this pandemic time. With a smaller and newer fleet, overhead costs, especially ship maintenance, were lower. These advantages dont mean that the company has avoided the storm. Earlier this month, Norwegian announced a prolongation of its suspension of voyages policy, covering all scheduled voyages from January 1, 2021 through February 28, 2021, plus selected voyages in March 2021. These cancellations come as Norwegians revenues are down in the third quarter, the top line was just $6.5 million, compared to $1.9 billion in the year-ago quarter. The company also reported a cash burn of $150 million per month.To combat the cash burn and minimal revenues, Norwegian, in November and December, took steps to improve liquidity. The company closed on $850 million in senior notes, at 5.875% and due in 2026, during November, and earlier this month closed an offering of common stock. The stock offering totaled 40 million shares at $20.80 per share. Together, the two offerings raised over $1.6 billion in new capital.On a more positive note, Norwegian is preparing for an eventual resumption of full services. The company announced, on Dec 7, a partnership with AtmosAir Solutions for the installation of air purification systems on all 28 vessels of its current fleet, using filtration technology known to defeat the coronavirus.JPMs Montour points out these advantages in his review of Norwegian, and sums up the bottom line: This coupled with a relatively newer, higher-end, brand/ship footprint would generally lead us to believe it was in a good position to outperform on pricing growth, though its demographics skewing to older age customers probably will remain a drag through 2021. Ultimately, NCLH is a high-quality asset within the broader cruise industry, with a higher beta to a cruise recovery, and it should see outperformance as the industry returns and investors look further out the risk spectrum.Montour gives the stock a $30 price target and an Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating. His target implies an upside of 27% on the one-year time frame.Norwegian is another cruise line with a Moderate Buy from the analyst consensus. This rating is based on 4 Buys, 4 Holds, and 1 Sell set in recent months. Like RCL above, the stock price here, $23.55, is currently higher than the average price target, $23.22. (See NCLH stock analysis on TipRanks)Carnival Corporation (CCL)Last up, Carnival, is the worlds largest cruise line, with a market cap of $23.25 billion, more than 100 ships across its brands, and over 700 destination ports. In normal times, this giant footprint gave the company an advantage; now, however, it has become an expensive liability. This is clear from the companys fiscal Q3 cash burn, which approached $770 million.Like the other big cruise companies, Carnival has extended its voyage cancellations, or, in the companys terms, the pause in operations. The Cunard line, one of Carnivals brands, has cancelled voyages on the Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth through early June of next year. Carnival has also cancelled operations in February from the ports of Miami, Galveston, and Port Canaveral, and pushed back the inaugural voyage of the new ship Mardi Gras to the end of April 2021. These measures were taken in compliance with coronavirus restrictions.Carnivals shares and revenues are suffering deep losses this year. The stock is down 60% year-to-date, despite some recent price rallies since the end of October. Revenues fell to just $31 million in the fiscal third quarter, reported in September. Carnival reported a loss of nearly $3 billion in that quarter. The company did end the third quarter with over $8 billion in available cash, an impressive resource to face the difficult situation.This combination of strength and weakness led Montour to put a Neutral (i.e. Hold) rating on CCL shares. However, his $25 price target suggests a possible upside of 23%.In comments on Carnival, Montour wrote, [We] believe that some of the same relative net yield drags it saw in 2018-2019 due to its sheer size will likely become top of mind on the other side of this crisis However, given CCLs relative share discount, less pricing growth ahead of the crisis, and geographical diversification, we see it as the company with the least downside over the next few months and are not surprised by its recent outperformance. We believe this will reverse in the 2H21. Overall, Carnival has a Hold rating from the analyst consensus. This rating is based on 10 reviews, breaking down to 1 Buy, 8 Holds, and 1 Sell. The stock is selling for $20.28 and its $18.86 average price target implies a downside potential of ~7%. (See CCL stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Why bitcoin's blockbuster 2020 is different than the 2017 bubble - Yahoo Finance

Annie Duke

It is critical for anyone who is trading crypto to have the best research and information at their fingertips. However, that is not enough. You also need to be disciplined and thoughtful when it comes to trading, especially when the stakes get raised or the market sees some volatility.

Few in the world are more skilled at this than World Series Of Poker champion Annie Duke. Aside from holding one of the coveted gold bracelets given out to winners each year, she has also won the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the National Heads-Up Poker Championship in 2010.

Duke is also a highly-sought after speaker and consultant in the field of risk management for investors. Over her two decades of experience in this field, she has created a framework that can help everyone from quantitative hedge funds to passive investors understand the risk that comes with investing in volatile industries such as crypto and make tactical decisions without losing their long-term perspective. She also shares some great tips for deciding when you should press a position or strategically close it.

Excerpted from ForbesCryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor. Subscribe now and save $300.

Forbes: Welcome Annie. Most people know you as being one of the most famous poker champions of all time. However, many are unaware of your prestigious academic background or years of experience as an advisor to some of the most successful investors in the world. Could you please share with us how you got into this industry?

Annie Duke: I started off my adult life at the University of Pennsylvania, doing five years of Ph.D. work in cognitive science. The only reason I didn't end up becoming a professor is because I got sick, right at the end of that. I needed to take a year off from school, and it was during that year off that I started playing poker. I fell in love with the game and did that pretty exclusively for about eight years. But then in 2002, I got asked by a hedge fund to speak to their traders about how poker might inform the way that they think about risk. I had been thinking about this connection implicitly, but this was the first time that I thought explicitly about the connection between cognitive science, behavioral psychology, behavioral economics and poker, which is a very real world, fast-paced, high stakes instantiation of the problems that these disciplines are trying to tackle. I ended up getting referred out from that original engagement in 2002 and started to give lots of talks, began consulting, and wrote several books on poker, behavioral economics and decision making. Ultimately in 2012, I rolled out of poker and made the consultant work much more full time and continued writing. Today, Im back at Penn doing research, so Ive kind of come full circle back into academics.

Forbes: How accurately do you think people assess their investing prowess? What are some of the biggest mental traps youve seen in the course of your career and research?

Duke: Many people do not assess themselves accurately, and when you look at most of the main cognitive biases, they mostly fall into the overoptimism category. As soon as you get into something that people feel like they know how to do and obviously, that would be true for investors, most people become overconfident. Theres something called a better than average effect. For example, if you ask people how good of a driver do they think they are in comparison to the population, something like 90% of people put themselves in the top half. It is the same thing with investors, most of whom are going to rate themselves more highly than they should. You also get the illusion where people think they have more control over their outcomes than they do.

The problem in both investing and poker is that there's a lot of uncertainty. The world is stochastic, that's one problemthat there's luck. And the other is that there's hidden information. Information can also reveal itself after the fact, too. Sometimes there's information that never reveals itself. That allows an untethering of the results from the actual skill that went into the decision. The point is that I can win, even though I do everything wrong. And I can lose, even though I do everything right. This creates a really huge problem, at least in the short run. It can become especially dangerous when we ascribe our good fortune entirely to skill, without accounting for luck.

Forbes: What are some of the best practices you recommend so that investors can structure the decision making process in a way that is regimented? Can you share anything that is particularly relevant for investors in crypto, which can be especially volatile?

Duke: That's really such a great question. Essentially, you want to do the advance work. Say I've got someone who is interested in bitcoin. When I'm making that investment, I want to understand why I think the investment is good and actually make that explicit. When it comes to something like investing in something that's highly volatile, such as crypto, this becomes really, really important. You need to be able to separate out what was due to luck and the assumptions that you went in with so you can circle back to them later. You also need to take a second step, which is to determine the conditions under which you would sell. Meaning, what would need to happen to tell you that your assumptions were wrong or this is no longer a good investment.

Forbes: Turning more directly to crypto, regardless of the models we build and metrics we use there will always be a degree of uncertainty. As much as we try, it is impossible to know everything. What is your advice for finding ways to feel comfortable in that position?

Duke: Right now we know less about crypto than something like tech stocks. But just to be clear, we also know less about tech stocks than we think we do. Thats the first thing you need to understand. The second thing you need to realize is that the higher degree of uncertainty, the less likely it is that your model is going to be perfectly accurate.

Under those circumstances you need to think about mitigating downside outcomes. This is critical because when you have less accuracy in your prediction models there is a higher probability of receiving an unpleasant outcome. This first way is to make sure you have a really good quitting strategy. So what do I mean by that? The higher the uncertainty, the more you should value liquidity. Stop-losses are another valuable tool.

On the flip side, you might want to change your mind in both directions, meaning under different circumstances you could want to press your position. Another useful strategy is spreading your bets, so that youre mitigating the chance that you are wrong about any single investment.

Forbes: As a way of grounding this discussion for the readers, can you walk us through the process of setting up and testing an investment assumption regarding crypto?

Duke: Sure. There are things happening at the Fed regarding interest rates that could cause you to change what you want to do. If Im buying bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, what I need to make explicit is that I believe inflation is imminent. What that does is make you look to see if inflation is actually on the near-term horizon or within the time period that I'm saying it would have to occur. Additionally, once I make this assumption explicit, I can also ask, what would have to be occurring in the world in the future that would make me want to change that assumption? Putting it all together, if you believe that inflation is going to rise in the next eight years to a level making it worthwhile to invest in bitcoin as a hedge, then you should also ask yourself what are the signals that could make me change my mind and not think that inflation was imminent or occur at a high enough level to justify investing in bitcoin for that reason alone?

By challenging your assumptions, it makes you look for signs in the future. And if bitcoin goes through the roof and inflation stays low, it stops you from taking credit for it. You should want to do it because it means that bitcoin won for a different reason than you thought it would.

Forbes: Since the pandemic hit there has been an explosion of online trading in the retail sector, which can be very addictive. While it is important to stay aware of what is happening in the market, everyone must find a balance so they do not become overwhelmed and make emotional trading decisions that could prove to be erroneous. Do you have any suggestions for the readers?

Duke: The best investors actually are reducing the attention they're paying in the short run, and the reason is that the way we make decisions is quite past-dependent. So when youre ticker watching, which is what you would call checking the price all the time, youre going to feel those momentary ups and downs. Theyre going to distort decisions you make in quite a bad way. In poker we call this a tilt. Now, obviously, in poker, you cannot not see your chips go down. But in investing, you can because you can just not check it. This is important because we know that there's going to be natural variances, and people tend to make better decisions when they arent checking it every single day. A better plan would be to decide what you will do if certain things happen in the world, such as a development at the Fed or reaching an up or down price barrier. If those things are not happening, do not even look at the price. Because its going to screw your decision making up, theres nothing good that will come from it. I promise you.

Forbes: Any final thoughts for the readers?

Duke: I would say just generally, sort of back to the beginning of the conversation, its really easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we know something more than we do. You should also be actively seeking information that proves you are wrong. It is easy to find people who agree with investing in bitcoin as a hedge against future inflation. What you should be doing is finding the smartest people you can find who say thats not true. That doesnt mean that investing in crypto isnt a good idea, even if an assumption isnt true. But you should want to find that out because thats what's going to help you be a better decision maker. The more that you're approaching your ideas about investment decisions from the standpoint of asking why this is wrong, the better off you're going to be.

Forbes: Thank you.

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Bitcoin And Crypto Trading Tips From Poker World Champion Annie Duke - Forbes

Stanley Druckenmiller (L) and Paul Tudor Jones

CNBC

A herd of new, big investors are scooping up bitcoin this year as the price more than doubles.

Investors who bought at least 1,000 bitcoins worth roughly $23 million at Friday's price and have had an account open for less than a year, drove significant demand since September, according to data firm Chainalysis. The new cohort together bought half a million bitcoins, or $11.5 billion worth, in the past three months.

In the time these new investors accelerated their buying spree, bitcoin's price more than doubled from $10,000 level. The new demand has helped fuel the cryptocurrency's rally to an all-time high, according to Philip Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis.

"The role of institutional investors is becoming ever clearer in the data," Gradwell said in a note to clients Friday. "Demand is being driven by North American investors on fiat exchanges, with greater demand from institutional buyers."

The surge in demand from wealthy Wall Street investors marks a sharp turn-around from bitcoin's first run-up three years ago. The 2017 rally was driven by retail investors, many of whom who bet on bitcoin and other smaller cryptocurrencies out of speculation. Bitcoin became a household name when it first neared $20,000 that year. It crashed soon after, losing 80% of its value in the following months.

Source: Chainalysis

Bitcoin crossed $23,000 for the first time ever this week, bringing its year to date gains to more than 200%. The cryptocurrency has recovered roughly a quarter of its value since Friday, and is on pace for its best week since May 2019.

The price resurgence in 2020 in part has been fueled by well-known Wall Street billionaires publicly backing bitcoin. Analysts say that gave confidence to otherwise skeptical, mainstream investors.

Stanley Druckenmiller and Paul Tudor Jones have both invested in the cryptocurrency and highlighted its potential as a hedge against inflation. Meanwhile,Square, MicroStrategyand Mass Mutual have used their own balance sheets to buy cryptocurrency. PayPal also added the ability for clients to buy bitcoin, which has opened up the market to millions of new buyers.

"We are seeing institutional capital flowing in at the fastest pace in the history of our business, and it is being deployed by some of the world's largest institutions and some of the most famous investors," Michael Sonnenshein, managing director at Grayscale Investments, told CNBC in a phone interview Friday. Flows into Grayscale's publicly traded Bitcoin Trust have increased roughly 6x from a year ago, he said.

Chainalysis also pointed to less liquidity in the market, with fewer sellers than there were there years ago.

Last week, there were 801,000 fewer bitcoin sent compared to 2017. To be sure, not all bitcoin being "sent" is being sold. But Chainalysis' Gradwell said it's a "good proxy" since there are limited use cases otherwise, especially when prices are spiking. Less bitcoin availability "would explain the rapid price increase this week," he said.

As bitcoin neared its high this week, rapper "Megan Thee Stallion" tweeted a bitcoin giveaway with Square Cash App, which was retweeted by Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. The endorsement coincided with the peak of bitcoin's price Thursday.

"Celebrity endorsements have typically been a bellwether for the top of the market, so maybe this omen will overcome the fundamentals I have shown in the data," Gradwell said.

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Big investors new to cryptocurrencies appear to be behind bitcoin's rally to a record - CNBC

What happened

Shares of CleanSpark (NASDAQ:CLSK) shot higher on Tuesday on news that it had acquired more equipment to mine bitcoin. The company is a technology company in the energy sector, but it expanded its business into bitcoin when it acquired a bitcoin mining operation called ATL Data Centers earlier in December. More equipment allows more bitcoin to be mined, which is why CleanSpark stock was up 18% today.

Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain (NASDAQ:RIOT) also announced it's increasing its operations. It was able to buy 15,000 Antminers from Bitmain for $35 million using cash on hand. The move increases the company's capacity by 65%, so the stock's 33% jump today was somewhat understandable.

Finally, fellow bitcoin miner Marathon Patent Group (NASDAQ:MARA) might have moved just based on these two other stocks. It upgraded mining operations earlier in the month, but there was nothing newsworthy to explain its 22% spike today.

Image source: Getty Images.

For those who don't know how bitcoin works, here's a simplistic overview. The network is designed to facilitate the movement of tokens, with a ledger recording who owns which bitcoin at all times. Known as blockchain technology, computers voluntarily join the bitcoin network to process transactions, recording them on the blockchain. This means the bitcoin network is decentralized: Computers can be anywhere, and they aren't all owned by any one individual or company.

Computers race to record transactions first, because the winner is issued a brand-new bitcoin as compensation. Unlocking new bitcoin is known as mining. It's an expensive process. Companies invest in equipment powerful enough to outdo the rest, facilities to house the equipment, and energy to run and cool equipment.

Once it's deployed its new mining equipment, CleanSpark says its mining capacity will be 300 peta-hashes per second (PH/s). For its part, Riot Blockchain will have 3.8 exa-hashes per second (EH/s). Marathon will have 3.56 EH/s. For perspective, 1 exa-hash is 1,000 peta-hashes. Without diving too far in the weeds, suffice it to say that Riot Blockchain and Marathon have more than 10 times the capacity of CleanSpark. But this makes sense because CleanSpark's main business is something else.

Bitcoin believers obviously like to see companies investing in bitcoin mining equipment. After all, many think bitcoin is poised to surge in 2021, which would lead to increased mining revenue for these companies. Just how high could bitcoin go? No one knows for sure. Indeed, it could plummet for all we know. But many excitedly project the future value of bitcoin using something called a stock-to-flow model. Championed by a Twitter user going by PlanB, the model projects bitcoin could be worth more than $200,000 by 2024.

I'm not suggesting the stock-to-flow model for bitcoin is an infallible framework. I'm merely pointing out how bullish some are about the future price of bitcoin. This bullish sentiment raises their outlook for many cryptocurrency stocks, including bitcoin miners. In summary, investors believe bitcoin can keep soaring, and the increased capacity will lead to windfall profits for miners. That's why these three stocks are up today.

Image source: Getty Images.

Yesterday when bitcoin mining stocks soared, I pointed out that all bitcoin miners have unique cost structures and therefore should be considered on a case-by-case basis. This is exemplified by CleanSpark's entry into the bitcoin mining space. The company's business is primarily software for microgrids: small, decentralized, self-sufficient power systems. Basically, CleanSpark is in the energy optimization business, and that could be useful for bitcoin mining.

CleanSpark believes it can reduce its power cost for mining bitcoin below $0.0285 per kilowatt hour (kw/h). That sounds low. But for perspective, that's the cost that Marathon has already achieved at its primary facility. While one would expect CleanSpark to have a competitive advantage, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Reducing energy consumption and cost are among the few things bitcoin miners like CleanSpark, Riot Blockchain, and Marathon can control. But the most important factor is the price of bitcoin, which is entirely outside of their control. For that reason, bitcoin-mining investors will likely keep their eyes fixated on bitcoin and not the fundamentals to these businesses.

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Why Stocks of Bitcoin Miners CleanSpark, Marathon, and Riot Blockchain Were Up Again Today - Motley Fool

JPMorgans analysts have warned about the odds of a bitcoin correction which would increase if the flows into Grayscales bitcoin trust slow significantly. The analysts indicated that bitcoin is overbought.

The analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. gave their bitcoin prediction in a note on Friday. They explained that flows into Grayscales bitcoin trust are key to the outlook of the cryptocurrency, Bloomberg reported Monday. According to the publication, the analysts believe:

The odds of a bitcoin correction would increase if the flows into the worlds largest traded cryptocurrency fund slow significantly.

The JPMorgan analysts further indicated that bitcoin was likely overbought after the recent rally. They clarified that the flows into the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust are too big to allow any position unwinding by momentum traders to create sustained negative price dynamics. They emphasized that a major slowdown in those flows would boost the risk of a bitcoin correction akin to the one in the second half of 2019, the news outlet conveyed.

Grayscale Investments has about 15.7 billion in assets under management as of Dec. 21, with its bitcoin trust leading the pool with more than $13.34 billion. Inflows into the fund are running at about $1 billion per month, the JPMorgan analysts noted.

Institutional investors are increasingly interested in bitcoin. The firm previously stated that investors had been moving their money from gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) into Grayscales bitcoin trust. Following a $100 million investment in BTC from insurance giant Massmutual, JPMorgan said that they anticipated a $600 billion demand for bitcoin.

What do you think about JPMorgans bitcoin prediction? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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JPMorgan Warns of Bitcoin Correction, Describing BTC as Overbought | Markets and Prices - Bitcoin News

Bitcoin's record rally could hit a wall in 2021.

Signs in the cryptocurrency's technical chart point to a 25%-30% sell-off that's likely to hit early in the new year, Miller Tabak chief market strategist Matt Maley told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Thursday.

Bitcoin broke above the $23,000 level for the first time on Thursday, building on a massive, 215% year-to-date rally.

"There's no question it's been a melt-up, and it could last a little bit longer," Maley said. "I think on a short-term basis it could continue a little bit longer, and I'm very bullish on it on a very long-term basis. But intermediate term, I'm a lot more concerned than I think a lot of other people."

Part of the problem is the market's excess liquidity, Maley said. Over the summer, that sideline money fueled the mega-cap tech rally; now that those stocks have stabilized, it's driving bitcoin, he said.

"The problem is it's now taken the weekly [relative strength] chart on bitcoin to a very, very high level," he said.

"It's above 88 [as of Thursday]. That's not quite up to the 90 level that it reached twice in 2017, but those were followed by declines of 36% and 64%," he said. "We're not quite there yet, ... but as the pandemic starts to fade a little bit [and] maybe that liquidity becomes a little less plentiful, this stock could get clobbered like it has many other times in the past."

He noted that just since 2016, bitcoin has seen 10 declines of 20% or more, seven declines of 30% or more and four declines of 48% or more, adding that investors shouldn't underestimate its pattern of volatility.

"People need to be careful as we move into the new year," he said. "I love it long term, but I think it's going to be a much deeper sell-off than the 10%-15% ones we've seen more recently. I think you're going to see 25%-30% easily. Again, I don't think that really starts until early in the new year, but I do think it's coming soon ... based on this overbought condition and the froth that we've seen in this asset class in the last week or two."

Michael Bapis, managing director of Vios Advisors at Rockefeller Capital Management, said he would suggest holding on for the long term, volatility and all.

"It took me a little while to get on this train, but I think it really is the new currency," he said in the same "Trading Nation" interview. "If you have that long-term perspective, three-, five-, seven-year perspective, you just hold onto it."

Bitcoin has become a global currency, a hedge against inflation and something of a "new commodity" in this market environment, Bapis said, comparing its triple-digit rise this year with gold's 24% gain.

"Lastly, it's become a part of a balance sheet reserve for some of these big companies," he said. "PayPal is now accepting bitcoin as a global currency ... starting in 2021. Square has made a massive investment into bitcoin, and it's also using bitcoin for its reserve on the corporate balance sheet. ... Blockchain, we all know that that's the real technology and it's here to stay, and I do believe bitcoin is a leader in the global currency, cryptocurrency side of this for as far as we can see."

"Ijust think you own it and put it away for a long-term investment and watch how it maybe transforms the currency and the world we live in today," Bapis said.

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Bitcoin could see a 25%-30% sell-off in the new year, but it's still a long-term buy, trader says - CNBC