Definitely possible. I mean hell, on the exchange I watch (GDAX) it hit like $19.8k or something like that yesterday. So nearly already made it! Anyways, I think after the crazy rise this week, and uncertainty around how Bitcoin futures will affect things, I'm hoping just to stabilize in the mid teens around where it is now before starting to move up again. $20k Jan 1st is very possible though.
I am dam sure that bitcoin will reach 20,000$ at the end of this year itself. Do you have any doubt about it. I was clear. Even it may touch 21k$ with in this year end. As all know the price will reach maximum value near the Christmas and New year, same thing is happening now.In next two days the speculations will move to 25,000$.
Oh its absolutely possible for the price to reach $25k or even higher this month, if the crazy price surge continues.
Though I think most of the buying has been around hype for Wall St "entering" the market through futures, including Wall St itself starting to buy Bitcoin recently leading up to their futures trades. Once the futures hit I expect probably some big price swings as there is confusion as to whether futures will be good or bad for bitcoin (I think short term its just gonna cause a ton of volatility but mid-term and long-term it will boom the price). I'm expecting the so called "buy the hype/rumour, sell the news" type deal where people are buying crazily now on hype of Futures and when they actually hit and Bitcoin doesn't suddenly go to the moon since futures are cash settled then the price increase will slow back down to normal Bitcoin levels. Though we're at $15-16k right now so even if things slow down that doesn't mean we won't see $20k by jan 1.