Bitcoin could reach $400,000 by 2030 and be worth a whopping $8 trillion, by some predictions, or this digital glass house could just implode in the ether sphere. Or, maybe it will just hang around in a sort of no man’s land where the masses still don’t get it for ages.
Take your pick because the predictions for cryptocurrency range wildly on any given day, and never has there been a trickier business.
The most recent prediction is one to make the bulls polish their horns in anticipation.
Andy Edstrom of California-based WESCAP Group recently predicted that one bitcoin will be worth $400,000 by 2030. That would render bitcoin an $8 trillion asset--or worth around the same as the entire gold market.
Either way, Edstrom said, bitcoin is working up to the haul of the century, and it’s going to steal market share from something big.
"Whether it’s taking share from gold, or taking share from fiat, or taking share from offshore assets, or slightly demonetizing other stores of value like real estate or new uses that we haven’t thought of, or are still under construction, such as micropayments," Edstrom told Citizen Bitcoin podcast.
He’s not alone in this thought, either.
Germany’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank, suggests that cryptocurrencies could replace cash payments within the next decade, questioning the survival ability of our fiat currency-based monetary system. “The current fiat system looks fragile, particularly because of decades of low labor costs and inflation. Over the next decade, things could change and demand for alternative currencies, from gold to crypto, could take off,” the bank’s “Imagine 2030” report said.
What many agree upon is that the past decade of upside for bitcoin was brought about largely thanks to FOMO, a fear of missing out. And that same FOMO will play a major role in the coming years. In other words, there’s nothing at all fundamental about all of these predictions.
For those predicting a bright future for Bitcoin, the main factors that may boost it include a host of things, but the biggest would come from big bank and government actions that create the backdrop for a “speculative attack” on fiat currency.
If you think it’s far-fetched, think again.
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By global media consensus, bitcoin was the best investment of the decade ending 2019. The past decade has seen it jump from a few cents to $7,100 at year’s end.
After hitting a record high in 2017, bitcoin fell dramatically following year with over $480 billion of value wiped off the entire market.
However, entering 2020, Bitcoin was among the leading gainers besides mounting global geopolitical and economic risks and added some 30% since the beginning of the year. Just for this year’s predictions, geopolitical demand and Bitcoin halving may push Bitcoin to reach as high as $30,000 before the end of this year.
But there are always bears in the woods.
One top investor in the crypto space, Jeff Schumacher of BCG Digital Ventures still sees bitcoin as a speculative asset having no underlying value and that it might even go down to a zero.
“I do believe it will go to zero. I think it’s a great technology, but I don’t believe it’s a currency. It’s not based on anything,” Schumacher recently said during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Existential complications or not, though, FOMO is a powerful thing, and today’s bitcoin price of over $9,600 heralds a great first quarter that will already have plenty of people wishing they hadn’t missed out.
By Michael Kern for Safehaven.com
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