Bitcoin has the potential to grow up to 40 times its current value, according to cryptocurrency billionaire Cameron Winklevoss, who described the leading digital currency as “better than gold”.
"Taking bitcoin in isolation… we believe bitcoin disrupts gold. We think it's a better gold, if you look at the properties of money. And what makes gold gold? Scarcity. Bitcoin is actually fixed in supply so it's better than scarce… it's more portable, its fungible, it's more durable. It sort of equals a better gold across the board," Winklevoss told CNBC.
"So, if you look at a $100 billion market cap today, now last week it might have been more like 200, so it's actually a buying opportunity, we think that there's a potential appreciation of 30 to 40 times, because you look at the gold market today, it's a $7-trillion market. And so a lot of people are starting to see that, they recognize the store of value properties. So, we think regardless of the price moves in the last few weeks, it's still a very under-appreciated asset," he said.
As of Thursday, bitcoin’s market capitalization was almost $150 billion. So, according to Cameron Winklevoss's forecast, bitcoin’s price could someday grow from its current $8,500 to as much as $340,000 with a market cap of $6 trillion.
Cameron Winklevoss is one of the Winkelvoss twins, who are famous for their settlement with Mark Zuckerberg, who they accused of stealing their idea for Facebook. It has been reported that the twins were the world’s first bitcoin billionaires.
"You know the criticisms are just a failure of the imagination," Tyler Winklevoss told the media. "Cryptocurrencies aren't really important for human-to-human transactions... but when machines-to-machines trade economic value, they are going to plug into protocols like bitcoin and ethereum. They are not going to open bank accounts at JPMorgan... those were invented by bankers before the internet existed. Trying to use them as payments or money on the internet is a square peg in a round hole at best."