On Dec. 17, 2017, bitcoin reached $20,000 USD, sending the crypto space into an ecstatic celebration. The price didn’t last long though, slowly dropping over time to where it is today, currently settled near the $6,500 USD mark. Yet, Bitcoin experts are not deterred. In fact, many believe that the coin will eventually reach the million dollar mark.
Founder and CEO of Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, is one of those believers. According to Palihapitiya, bitcoin will reach $100,000 USD per coin in the next three to four years, and the million dollar mark in the next 20 years.
Palihapitiya encourages people to invest just one dollar, if that’s all they have.
“The reason that one dollar is so valuable is that it is fundamentally not correlated to the other $99,” Palihapitiya told CNBC, “and just on the off-chance that all the people that manage the $99 may not totally know what they’re doing, the one dollar may actually save us.”
The surmounting value of bitcoin is something that Palihapitiya has long prophesied. In June 2018, he tweeted: “Bitcoin was $130 when I wrote this and suggested everyone put 1 percent of their net worth in it. Now, I’m convinced it will exceed value of gold.”
Thomas Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, says that bitcoin is likely to be worth over $20,000 USD by the end of 2018. According to Neu-Ner, this appreciation is due to the security of the blockchain. “In ten years, not a single person has entered a fraudulent entry on the blockchain. That’s trillions of dollars of on-chain transactions,” Neu-Ner told CNBC. “None of them have proven to be fraudulent.”
“The game hasn’t even started yet,” Ran Neu-Ner, founder and CEO of OnChain Capital says. “My view is that bitcoin is a digital gold and that very soon, in a couple of years, there’ll be more demand for bitcoin than there will be for physical gold.”
As the price of bitcoin begins to round out at about $6,500 USD in 2018, the volatility for it is lowering, as well. According to Arthur Hayes, co-founder and CEO of Bitmex, this is a problem for investors since it means it’s less likely for the price of bitcoin to spike into five figures or more. “We’re one positive regulation decision away, maybe an ETF approved by the [securities and exchange commission],” Hayes told CNBC, “to climbing through $20,000 and even to $50,000 by the end of the year.”