“What percentage of your wealth should be tied up in bitcoin? A percentage that is equivalent to your understanding of how the technology works and your ability to absorb the risks it entails, which for most people is a small percentage”
- A. ANTONOPOULOS
Bitcoin is the single grandest financial experiment of the 21st century. A decentralized, global digital currency backed by cryptography; created and owned by the people, for the people, giving access to a global financial market to millions of unbanked people around the globe.
Is Bitcoin’s price a mere speculation?
Bitcoin price prediction
John David McAfee
Chamath Palihapitiya
Wences Casares
David Mondrus
Tai Lopez
The Winklevoss Twins
Ronnie Moas
Roger Ver
Kay Van-Petersen
MasterLuc/PentarhUdi
Michael Novogratz
Spencer Bogart
Trace Mayer
Vinny Lingham
Bitcoin is a product of thousands of years of evolution in the ways we do commerce — Bitcoin is money 2.0!The evolution of money, however, doesn’t stop with Bitcoin; instead, with its introduction, it accelerates with mind-boggling speed. Without further ado, let’s delve into the world’s top bitcoin price predictions.
As cryptocurrencies develop more compelling utilities, creating ever faster and safer payment systems and allowing for ever more complex smart contracts utilizations, they’re slowly shifting the old viewpoint of “what money is supposed to be” to a new, fresh and, for bmany, insane paradigm.
The judgment about whether Bitcoin’s primary use case should be as a means of exchange (a currency) or as a store of value (digital gold), has not yet been disclosed by the community. The beauty of the protocol is in its potential to grow and adapt to the needs of the community.
The code is under constant development, continually being improved and even “forked” into new iterations.
That being said, one of the most eye-catching hallmarks of Bitcoin is the monetary policy engraved in the mathematics of the software’s protocol. Bitcoin has a steady and decreasing rate of issuance that’s transparent and available for everyone to see. One cannot speak of a nominal value of Bitcoin.
Its price is determined solely by the supply and demand on the free market, and therefore, Bitcoin’s real value is subject to speculation, creating massive price volatility. So much so that since it hit the tipping point of mainstream popularity in early 2017, it’s mostly used as a speculative instrument and a get-rich-quick scheme.
Coinbase, for example, as one of the biggest crypto-exchanges registered in the U.S, has signed up more than 12 million customers that are buying, selling, day trading or investing in crypto on a regular basis.
Is Bitcoin’s price a mere speculation? Can anyone predict it with accuracy?
Well, yes and no. On the one side, there’s no central body controlling the price of Bitcoin, so the value of the currency is, in a sense, “what we collectively agree it is.” But on the other hand, there are several key factors affecting whether the price is going up or down.
One of the biggest factors is the rate of adoption. As more and more people enter the market, the value of the network increases exponentially. This is known as Metcalfe’s law and, according to financial analysts, it can be used to explain Bitcoin’s price movement over the past four years with 94% accuracy.
The other massive factor impacting Bitcoin’s price is regulation. If the regulators decide to crack-down on cryptocurrencies, the rate of adoption decreases (at least in the short term) and the barriers to entering the market increase, so the price drops.
There are many other factors that amount for Bitcoin’s price, but we’re not going to get into that right now because there’s essentially only one thing that novice Bitcoin investors care about, and that is the answer to the age-old question: Can Bitcoin’s price movement be predicted with accuracy?
The short answer is, no. It can’t. However, many financial experts, investors, and Bitcoin Gurus have their own versions of the future of Bitcoin, and we took the time to make up a list of one of the most prolific personas in crypto and their Bitcoin price predictions.
Hopefully, reading the opinions of key players in the game will give you a better perspective of where things are going for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Price Predictions
John David McAfee – 1 million by the end of 2020
bitcoin price predictions
John David McAfee, born September 18, 1945, is a British-American computer programmer and a serial entrepreneur. McAfee became famous after founding the widely known McAfee Associates, a software company that created the first antivirus in the world.
In 2011, the company was bought by Intel and rebranded to Intel Security. According to some sources, his wealth nosedived from $100 million in 2007 to just $4 million when the financial crisis struck the USA the same year.
Today, he’s known in the crypto world by his extremely bullish stance on Bitcoin, and as the CEO of MGT Capital, a technology holding company that switched its focus from social gaming to cybersecurity and heavy-duty cryptocurrency mining.
Although he was already several years in the game, McAfee rose to fame in the crypto community when he claimed, back in July 2017, that he will “eat his own dick on national television if Bitcoin doesn’t reach $500.000 by 2020”.
This statement got a lot of attention, and it was initially apprehended as a joke or an overstatement on his part by the media, but he kept reiterating it and pushing it further and further, reassuring the public that he’s serious about it.
Back in 2017, when he predicted that Bitcoin would reach $5.000 by the end of the year, the superstar cryptocurrency ended the year at the $20.000 mark, exceeding everyone’s expectations.
On 29 November 2017 he raised the stakes of his initial bet and tweeted that he now predicts Bitcoin will reach $1 million by the end of 2020, and if it doesn’t, he will proceed to “eat his dick on national television”.
That’s a bold statement. And yes, McAfee has years of experience in the industry and he was right in many of his predictions thus far, but let’s be real, nobody can predict the future of crypto. This guy is playing high-stakes poker with his dick on the table… I guess we’ll have to wait for 3 years and see what happens.
Chamath Palihapitiya – 1 million by 2037
bitcoin price predictions
Born in Sri Lanka and raised in Canada, Chamath Palihapitiya is a former Facebook employee turned venture capitalist. Chamath is a co-owner and board member of the Golden State Warriors and founder of Social Capital, an education and healthcare-focused venture capital firm, managing a fund of more than 1.2 billion dollars.
Chamath started investing in Bitcoin back in 2012 when the dollar cost average of his investments were approximately $100. At one point in time, Chamath claimed that he was an owner of almost 5% of all the Bitcoin in circulation.
In an interview he gave for CNBC, Chamath reaffirmed his bullish stance on Bitcoin, stating that he thinks that an investment in crypto is a “fantastic hedge and store of value against autocratic regimes and banking infrastructure that we know is corrosive to how the world needs to work properly.”
When asked about his Bitcoin price prediction, Chamath confidently asserted that he thinks that “this thing is a $100,000 a coin probably in the next three to four years. And I think it is in the next 20 years a million dollars a coin.”
Chamath has been in the investing game and in the crypto space for a very long time now, and many of his price predictions have already come true. On September 1, 2013, when BTC was trading at $135 he tweeted that he believes that “BTC will trade thru $200 before the end of this year.”
Funny enough, just two months later Bitcoin broke the plateau of $1000 per coin.
Wences Casares – 1 million by 2027
Wences Casares is an Argentinian technology entrepreneur specializing in technology and financial ventures. Back in 1994, Casares launched Internet Argentina S.A., Argentina’s first Internet Service Provider.
He is the founder and CEO of Xapo, a Bitcoin wallet startup that’s said to be “the largest custodian of Bitcoin in the world”, as well as a board member at PayPal.
“I can imagine a world in which Bitcoin becomes a global standard of value”
Casares bought his first Bitcoins in 2011, and he developed the interest in the cryptocurrency because of Argentina’s native currency’s high financial volatility. Needless to say, he is a firm believer in both Bitcoin and the distributed ledger technology, as well as in the inextricable bond between the two.
In a January interview with Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal, Casares called Bitcoin and the blockchain an “interesting experiment” that, if it worked out, could “change the world more than the internet changed it.” He went on to say that much like any other experiment, Bitcoin and the blockchain technology could also fail, but he gave this outcome only 20% chance of happening.
“One bitcoin is going to be worth $1 million. So, most of the world is going to wish they had bought it at $14,000 or $20,000”
Casares believes that if Bitcoin doesn’t fail, it will undoubtedly hit the $1 million mark. This will happen after the experiment’s success solidifies, which according to him can take anywhere from five to ten years to happen — so, in theory, Bitcoin might just reach $1 million around 2027, if not sooner.
David Mondrus – 1 million in “about a decade”
David Mondrus, CEO of Trive, is well-known in the crypto community. He’s a former writer for Bitcoin Magazine, CTO at Bigstar.com and CEO and Employee #5 at Bigfoot.com.
None of this is important, however, because David and his wife Joyce will forever be remembered as the first couple to get married on the blockchain! Embedding your marriage on an immutable ledger is the coolest geeky idea ever!
Trivia aside, David Mondrus, as one of the guys that got into crypto since the early days is very optimistic about Bitcoin. Affirming that the price of Bitcoin is determined by the supply and demand, he expects the value of Bitcoin to reach $1 million in about a decade as fewer coins are electronically issued or “minted.”
“Do you think that the US government will ever stop printing money? There are only 21 million Bitcoins that can possibly be in existence — 16 million of them already exist. […] When that mining stops or when it slows down dramatically, that’s when the value really increases because there is no more supply to be created,” he said in an interview.
Tai Lopez – $60,000 (mid-term) or 1 million by 2024?
Yes, this guy is on the list. He’s everywhere. You open your closet – he’s there, you open a book – a tiny Tai Lopez pops up reading a book about reading books. If you haven’t heard about Tai Lopez, you clearly haven’t read a bo… Haven’t been on Youtube for a while. Long story short, Tai Lopez is a Youtube celebrity and entrepreneur.
With over 1 million subscribers on his channel and over a billion of books read in his lifetime, this guy’s opinion on Bitcoin surely counts.
Tai Lopez got into crypto “three days ago,” and he’s already selling his $500 “all inclusive” course on cryptocurrencies. He recently voiced his opinion, stating that “if the world’s millionaires allocate merely 1 percent of their holdings into Bitcoin, the Bitcoin price could reach $60,000 in the mid-term.”
In one of his many viral videos about cryptocurrencies, he also makes the case for 1 million dollar Bitcoin by 2024.Of course, you should always listen to a guy that reads one book a day.
You ask why? Because knowledge is power.
The Winklevoss Twins – 6.8 trillion dollar market cap in the next 10-20 years
Born on August 21, 1981, twin brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss are former U.S. Olympic rowers, Internet entrepreneurs and venture capitalists heavily invested into Bitcoin. The Winklevoss twins rose to fame when they sued Mark Zuckerberg (and got a $65 million settlement), claiming that Facebook was initially their idea and that Mark stole it.
Today they’re known as the owners of the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange and as the first Bitcoin billionaires. The twins owned more than 1% of all bitcoin in existence in 2013 which amounted to more than $1 billion at the time. However, they still haven’t cashed out all of their money.
The twins are big believers in the long-term value of Bitcoin, stating in a recent CNBC interview that “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 underappreciated asset.”
How long will it take for Bitcoin to reach 40 times the size it is today? Winklevoss twins are thinking 10 to 20 years ahead.
Ronnie Moas – $400,000 (no date)
Ronnie Moas is an independent research analyst specializing in the technology sector and the founder of Standpoint Research, an equity research firm that provides forecasts and analysis on both international and domestic equities.
He’s got an MBA in finance from the City University of New York and has given more than a hundred television, radio, and newspaper interviews in his career as a stock picker since 2014. He’s ranked #8 among more than 4,000 analysts for 2008-2017.
Ronnie’s name has become tantamount to Bitcoin thanks to his bold predictions for the future of the cryptocurrency; back in July 2017, Ronnie predicted a target price of $50,000 for 2027 — and Bitcoin reached over $8,000 by February 2017. The currency was trading at $2,570 at the time of his prediction.
As for 2018, he believes Bitcoin will peak at $28,000, but he leaves some room for adjustment in the following months.
According to Cointelegraph, Ronnie has given “some of the most accurate price predictions on Bitcoin this year [2017]”. You can follow his input on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on his Twitter account.
Roger Ver – $250.000
Roger Ver is one of the most recognized faces in the Bitcoin community. Born on January 27, 1979, in Silicon Valley, Roger Ver is a cryptocurrency investor, serial entrepreneur, and an illegal eBay explosives dealer.
He started investing in Bitcoin in early 2011 when the prices were lower than $10 and when everybody believed that Bitcoin is some sort of a scam. However, Roger was not like “everybody.” He was a visionary.
In fact, he was so confident in this new technology that in 2011 he made a $10.000 bet, claiming that Bitcoin will outperform gold, silver and the US stock market and the US Dollar by a factor of 100, all within the next two years. And was he right?
Well, almost — he was two months off. It took Bitcoin two years and two months to do this. In fact, the crypto market today is outperforming the gold, silver and stock market by more than 1000 times.
In an interview he gave for The Dollar Vigilante blog in October 2015, when Bitcoin was hovering at approximately $250, he speculated that this “could very easily be worth $2,500, or $25,000 per Bitcoin, or even $250,000 per Bitcoin.”
As a former avid advocate of Bitcoin, Roger was so heavily invested in it, he was referred to as “Bitcoin Jesus.” However, many things have changed since then. On August 1, 2017, the Bitcoin Cash hard fork was announced, and Roger Ver switched sides. Bitcoin Cash is now Roger’s new “Bitcoin.” He even claims that BCH is the real Bitcoin and the only authentic descendant of Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision.
“I think a lot of the people that are buying into bitcoin right now have been hearing about it in the news for years, and every time they hear about it, it’s at a higher price than before”
Ver told The Crypto Show. “And they’re buying it because they think, ‘Oh, this is a great investment; it’s going to go up some more.”
Being cocky in his predictions as always, in October 2017 he stated: “It won’t take too many more months until Bitcoin Cash completely surpass Bitcoin Core in price, number of users or market cap. It’s not a question of if, it’s just a question of when. I think it’s going to happen next year.”
Ummm. Not yet Roger, not yet.
Kay Van-Petersen – $100.000 by 2028
Kay Van-Petersen is a crypto strategist at Saxo Bank Group with more than a decade of experience in the financial markets as a trader and an analyst. He holds an MSc. in Applied Economics & Finance from Copenhagen Business School.
Petersen is very confident that the cryptocurrency market will expand immensely in the next decade. He expects the crypto market to account for 10% of the average daily volumes (ADV) of the current fiat currency trade.
Ten percent of $5 trillion is $500 billion, and if Bitcoin continues to dominate over other cryptocurrencies and accounts for a 35% of the market share by 2028, that could amount to $175 billion. If we divide this number by the number of bitcoins issued by 2028, which is ~17 million, we get a price value of $100.000 per coin.
Petersen’s prediction may seem way too optimistic at first, but if we take into account that Saxo’s Bank “Outrageous predictions” the annual report predicted that Bitcoin would hit the $2.000 mark in 2017, and the price skyrocketed to $20.000 per coin in mid-December, suddenly his predictions don’t sound that improbable.
MasterLuc/PentarhUdi – $40,000 to $110,000 (by 2019)
MasterLuc is somewhat of a legend in the Bitcoin community. He’s an anonymous Bitcoin trader renown by his prediction of both the April and November run-ups of Bitcoin in 2013. Back in December, when the price of Bitcoin was just above $1,000, he stated:
“Third day in a row I wake up, see charts and ask myself ‘Is this the end?’ and the third day in a row answer is ‘Yes.’ […] End of first historical bullish trend 2010-2013.”
MasterLuc also predicted the subsequent bear market just two days prior to the above statement, despite the fact that Bitcoin had reached an all-time high of $1,240:
“Ah, of course, thanks, Satoshi and community, but I am still here =) Next entering point for me is in the 2016-2017 year.”
On May 30, 2015, he wrote a post in which he predicted another bubble that was supposed to happen around May 2017.
“Also you may estimate in this model how much time till next bubble (~ 2 years in my estimations)”
Another member of the forum asked: “Where did you get 2 years for the next bubble?”, to which MasterLuc responded:
“I expect silence stage is equivalent to correction stage in time (~1.5 years).
I expect correction stage is in its final phase, the end is not too far ahead.
I expect bounce stage is ahead and may take up to 6 months.
So 0.5 years of bounce stage + 1.5 years of silence stage and there we go.”
He was off by only two months, as another steady increase began in March 2017.
According to his latest prediction shared on the TradingView platform, the target of the current Bitcoin bubble lays between $40,000 and $110,000. The deadline that he gives for this price target is 2019.
Michael Novogratz – $50,000 (by end of 2018)
Michael Novogratz is an ex-partner at Goldman Sax and the ex-hedge fund manager of Fortress Investment Group, an investment management firm based in New York City, and the current CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners, a cryptocurrency investment firm.
His interest in Bitcoin supposedly started back when the cryptocurrency was valued at just $90. Mike was also one of the first whales from Wall Street to recognize the investment potential of cryptocurrencies.
Novogratz called cryptocurrencies “the biggest bubble of our lifetimes” at a Coindesk-sponsored cryptocurrency conference held in New York in November 2017;
“Bubbles start around ideas that are often right,” he said. “I don’t think many of these are currencies, even bitcoin, […] Bitcoin will win the battle for the store of value.”
This viewpoint might have been the reason he started a $500 million hedge fund that was due to start on December 15, 2017, but was canceled two days before.
“We didn’t like market conditions and we wanted to re-evaluate what we’re doing, […] I look pretty smart pressing the pause button right now.”
Earlier that month, at an interview in Toronto, he said that the 50% rise in the digital currency (which showed all the signs of a market peak) “feels like what a speculative top feels like.”
However, according to him, this wasn’t a cause for concern because “bubbles don’t end until the buyers are all in until there’s leverage — and there’s no leverage in this system yet.”
Following December’s euphoria, Novogratz changed his Bitcoin price prediction from $40,000 to $50,000 until the end of 2018.
Spencer Bogart – $50.000 by the end of 2018
Spencer Bogart is a partner at Blockchain Capital, the general partner of Blockchain Capital’s venture funds. As a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), he is widely praised throughout the cryptocurrency industry and is a regular speaker at industry and startup events.
Bogart is a fundamental investment analyst with deep experience in analyzing cryptocurrencies.As a big believer in the power of cryptocurrencies and as one of the most active Bitcoin analyst on Wall Street, Bogart predicts that the price of the Bitcoin will rise to $50.000 until the end of 2018.
Being a prolific writer of detailed reports and research on Bitcoin’s fundamental value, price forecast and technical advancements in the blockchain space, he’s outright about price predictions, stating “I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen with price and neither can anybody.”
However, sharing his two cents on the matter, he states “When I look out over the next 12 months, what I see is a significant supply and demand imbalance at the current price levels.”
Bogart believes that the price of Bitcoin will rise as new institutional investors slowly get in the market. Over the past three years several big banks, wall street whales, and funds got in the market with a relatively small percentage of their investment capital.
However, this is only the beginning, and if the regulators around the world don’t make some grave mistake, more and more “big money guys” will enter the market, spiking the price of Bitcoin to new highs.
In an interview for CNBC, Spenser claims that “Institutional investors that want to play in this market, even if they do, they are going to wait a little bit and either dip their toes in the water or just wait on the sidelines until they see the products themselves function.”
Trace Mayer – $27,395 (by Feb 2018)
Trace Mayer is an entrepreneur, investor, journalist, monetary scientist and ardent defender of the freedom of speech, with degrees in accounting and law. As stated on his website, he is a firm believer in the role of privacy in the process of decentralization of power.
He was also “the first popular blogger to publicly recommend Blockchain technology; at the time of his recommendation Bitcoin was worth $0.25, and Mayer himself has supposedly made over $120 million off of Bitcoin.
Mayer’s predictions are based on a so-called “moving average”, which according to Investopedia is a “simple technical analysis tool that smooths out price data by creating a constantly updated average price.”
In one of his tweets he stated that he believes Bitcoin is currently undervalued, and, based on the steady growth of Bitcoin’s 200-day moving average, the cryptocurrency’s target price is expected to reach $27,395 by the end of February 2018.
Thomas Lee – $25,000 (by the end of 2018)
Thomas J. Lee is a former chief U.S. equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., an American multinational banking and financial services holding company, and the co-founder, managing partner and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, an “independent research boutique” that provides market strategy and sector research.
He has over 25 years of experience in equity research and was one of the first Wall Street strategists to take interest in Bitcoin.In an interview with CNBC on January 18, 2018, Lee stated that he expects Bitcoin to reach $25,000 by the end of the year.
He had previously made a prognosis with the same target price, but the presumed deadline for making the mark was the end of 2022. According to his updated model, the current prediction for Bitcoin’s value for 2022 is at $125,000.
This forecast hardly comes as a surprise, especially when you take into account that Lee also called Bitcoin’s drop to $9,000 “the biggest buying opportunity in 2018”, and said that “we [Fundstrat] would be aggressive buyers around that level.”
The experienced stock strategist stated that the recent value drop is most likely the floor for this year, and should not be a cause for concern.
Vinny Lingham – 2.5% chance of being worth $100,000 or a 0.25% chance of being worth $1 million
Vinny Lingham is a South African Internet entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Civic, and a board member of the Bitcoin Foundation. Contrary to many Bitcoin advocates, Vinny is not so optimistic about the meteoric rise in Bitcoins price in the future.
Vinny is a big believer in the power of crypto but, at the same time, very well aware of the fact that the community is immersed in immense greed. As a response to the introduction of Bitcoin ETFs by the SEC in 2017, he wrote a blog post warning people about the dangers of price bubbles and the role they play in the long-term rate of adoption of crypto.
‘Today, I need to provide a warning about the risks of the price appreciating too quickly. Yes, Bitcoin is both scarce & valuable, which will lead to the price continuing to increase over time, but if that happens too quickly, we will enter another boom/bust cycle — which is really not an ideal situation if we want Bitcoin to move from a commodity to a store of value. This means that Bitcoin does need to become boring again and how it has to move from a digital commodity to becoming a store of value (which by definition means low volatility), and eventually, it could become a digital currency. Every time we hit a boom/bust cycle, we will set ourselves back many years.’
A dominant global reserve currency, or the biggest bubble of the 21st century?
As you can see for yourself, the Bitcoin price predictions made by the most notable faces in the crypto industry range from $1 million in the next 20 years to $25,000 by the end of 2018. Are they any good? The truth is, nobody really knows.
Not even the most competent fundamental analysts of the market can make an informed and precise price prediction in the stochastic field that is the cryptocurrency industry. In the future, we may see Bitcoin surpass gold’s market cap and become the dominant global reserve currency, or, we may be the witnesses of the most brutal crack-down on cryptocurrencies by governments around the world.
Bitcoin has many adversaries and very harsh competition.
Will Bitcoin remain the King of cryptocurrencies, or will it crumble under pressure? If we were about to lay a wager, we’d say that Bitcoin has gotten way too big and robust to fail. The genie is out of the bottle, and the whole world has seen it.
It will probably take Bitcoin about 10-20 years to truly reach global mainstream adoption, but for us, it’s a matter of when not if.
Dapp
What does Dapp mean?
Decentralized Application. This refers to an application that uses an Ethereum smart contract as it’s back-end code.