Bitcoin falls 5% but manages to hold $30,000-level

Bitcoin prices are down 5 percent on January 5, but are still holding on to $30,000 levels. Bitcoin slid as much as 17 percent on January 4, the biggest drop since March, after breaching $34,000 for the first time over the weekend.

At the time of writing this copy, bitcoin was trading down 4.94 percent at $31,332.53. It touched a 24-hour high of $33,104.46 and a 24-hour low of $28,154.11. The premier cryptocurrency has surged 8.09 percent in the new year, which is in its fifth day.

The stellar start is on the back of a landmark year in which bitcoin rose more than 300 percent, gaining almost 50 percent in December alone.

According to JPMorgan Chase & Co, the rally may have only just begun as investment bank expects the crypto major to scale $146,000.

"Bitcoin’s market capitalization of around $575 billion would have to rise by 4.6 times -- for a theoretical Bitcoin price of $146,000 -- to match the total private sector investment in gold via exchange-traded funds or bars and coins," strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote in a note.

However, the investment bank's assumption is based on its correlation with gold, which may still take some to play out, it said.

"A crowding out of gold as an ‘alternative’ currency implies big upside for Bitcoin over the long term. However, convergence in volatilities between Bitcoin and gold is unlikely to happen quickly and is in our mind a multiyear process. This implies that the above-$146,000 theoretical Bitcoin price target should be considered as a long-term target, and thus an unsustainable price target for this year," Panigirtzoglou wrote.

He believes the recent euphoria around bitcoin may push the prices to $50,000-$100,000 in the short-term.

"We believe that such price levels would prove unsustainable."