One of bitcoin’s staunchest bulls says he’s not ready to cut year-end target at $25,000

Tom Lee of Fundstrat Global Advisors is maintaining his year-end outlook for bitcoin to hit $25,000, even as the digital asset has entered a decided downbeat phase that last week took it to its lowest levels since November.

“I would say that you know...we haven’t changed our focus. We might in the future,” Lee told MarketWatch in an interview.

Those comments come after a separate interview that Lee conducted with CNBC earlier Thursday that implied that the prominent strategist had dialed-back a call for the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.

During that interview, Lee said: “Bitcoin has historically traded at 2.5 times its mining costs. It’s not out of the question that it could be over $20,000 by the end of the year at fair value.”

The Fundstrat analyst’s comments come after he reiterated his prediction for bitcoin’s value in 2018 during an interview with Bloomberg days ago, which also suggested that he wasn’t altering his rosy tune for bitcoin.

Bitcoin values have mostly plunged in the first half of 2018 by nearly 60%. By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 1.9% so far in 2018, while the S&P 500 index is set for a gain of 1.8%.

On Thursday, prices were trying to rebound from losses last week a day after the Fourth of July holiday; however, the virtual asset has failed to breach a round number at around $7,000 in about a month. That may reflect concerns about the outlook for bitcoin and its ilk, which have kept more pronounced rallies in check.

A single bitocin most recently, was trading at $6,593, down 1.4% intraday Thursday, but up nearly 13% from a low of about $5,853 touched on Sunday, according to data and news provider CoinDesk.com data.

The downdraft in bitcoin has raised concerns about lofty predictions for bitcoin, including Lee’s.

Lee told MarketWatch that bitcoin that a number of factors have contributed to bitcoin’s retrenchment of late. “It’s just a malaise. It also has to work off its parabolic move from last year,” he said, referring to the period in which the currency surged by more than 240% in a matter of weeks.

Lee also said “a kind of fracturing of views” within the digital-currency universe is a contributing factor, with proponents of assets like so-called stable-coins, pegged to a traditional currency and less volatile than bitcoin, taking some of the shine away from bitcoin and other virtual assets.

Meanwhile, altcoins, or digital coins serving as alternatives to bitcoin, have tracked the No. 1 digital currency lower. Ether was down 1.1% trading at $468, Bitcoin Cash is down 3.2% at $748, Litecoin is down 2.7%, last trading at $84, and Ripple’s XRP coin was trading off 4.5% at 48 cents, according to data from crypto exchange Kraken and CoinDesk.

Meanwhile, futures were trading mixed. The Cboe Global Markets Inc.’s July contract the most active, was up 0.4% at $6,590, while the CME Group Inc.’s comparable contract  was down by less than 0.1% at $6,575.