The price of bitcoin started to climb slightly Sunday as some analysts predicted that leading cryptocurrencies are primed for a price breakout thanks in part to the pending launch of the Bakkt LLC trading platform.

Bitcoin has traded in and around $10,250 in the last month, and though it has ranged between $9,500 and $10,800, it kept returning to above $10,000 particularly into September. The cryptocurrency hasn’t repeated a yearly high of nearly $14,000 in June, but it also hasn’t seriously plummeted in that time either, still up more than 200% since the beginning of the year.

Decrypt reported that bitcoin may be coming to an end of a five-month trading pattern called a symmetrical triangle. The pattern refers to a chart characterized by two converging trend lines with the theory being that once the lines converge a break out occurs. “While it’s impossible to predict what will happen next, when a break out does occur — i.e. a price drop or rise that falls outside the trend lines — it’s likely to be sizable,” the report claims.

Looking at the broader influences on the market, Billy Bambrough at Forbes thinks that the entry of Bakkt into the market may be a game-changer. Bakkt was founded by Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the owner of the New York Stock Exchange in 2018 and raised $182.5 million in venture capital funding in December.

The company was originally believed to be focusing on bitcoin futures, a product it started testing in July but is also building out a far broader range of services that will pit it directly against existing consumer- and merchant-oriented cryptocurrency businesses. The company launched a bitcoin custody service Sept. 9 with its futures service expected to launch Sept. 23.

“Some analysts and traders are expecting these physical bitcoin futures, which are contracts that payout in the underlying cryptocurrency rather than in cash, to allow for unprecedented bitcoin and cryptocurrency growth,” Bambrough wrote.

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper is also talking the prospects of bitcoin up going forward, saying in an interview Friday that he still believes that bitcoin will hit $250,000 by 2022, a prediction he first made in 2018.

Bitcoin to hit $250,000 by 2022? @TimDraper thinks that is a conservative prediction.

"$250,000 means that bitcoin would then have about a 5% market share of the currency world and I think that may be understating the power of bitcoin."

Full interview: https://t.co/WbSaI04X9Y pic.twitter.com/n8OclGQxQl

— BLOCKTV (@BLOCKTVnews) September 13, 2019

“$250,000 means that bitcoin would then have about a 5% market share of the currency world and I think that may be understating the power of bitcoin,” Draper told Block TV.

Image: Bakkt