Bitcoin's market value will catch up with Apple in five years, according to a bitcoin proponent
Ronnie Moas from Standpoint Research told CNBC that bitcoin's price could jump to $50,000 in the next decade
He argued that critics of bitcoin are heavily invested in U.S. banks that are being directly threatened by the cryptocurrency
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/10/23/bitcoin-price-could-hit-50000-in-a-few-years-analyst-says.html
Bitcoin price could hit $50,000 in a few years, analyst says
1 Hour Ago | 03:33
Bitcoin has taken flack from financial luminaries in recent weeks, but their skepticism did little to stop the most popular cryptocurrency from setting a new record high over the weekend.
One market observer told CNBC on Tuesday that at the rate the price of bitcoin was moving, its market capitalization could overtake Apple within five years.
"People need to start taking this seriously because today bitcoin caught up with Goldman Sachs," Ronnie Moas, founder and director of Standpoint Research, told CNBC's "Capital Connection." He added, "Within five years, it's going to catch Apple which has (a more than) $800 billion market cap."
Bitcoin's current market value is about $95.9 billion as of Tuesday afternoon Asia time, according to the website Coinmarketcap.com. Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters data showed Goldman Sachs had a value of $93.67 billion, and Apple's market cap was at $806.65 billion.
When bitcoin was trading at $2,600 earlier this year, Moas predicted it would hit $5,000. The digital asset was trading at about $5,700 on Tuesday.
On Monday, Saudi billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said the cryptocurrency with no controlling body was an "Enron in the making."
Previously, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called the cryptocurrency "an index of money laundering," while JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon predicted if "you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day."
Moas said that the three prominent critics of bitcoin were "heavily invested" in publicly-traded U.S. banks that are currently being threatened by the cryptocurrency. "I don't expect those people to come out and recommend ... to buy bitcoin. Because that hurts their business," he said.
He said he expects the price of bitcoin to jump to $50,000, possibly within a decade and the market value could cross a trillion dollars.
"You have a supply-demand equation here that is mindboggling to me," Moas said. Bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million tokens, which is expected to be reached only in the next century.
But Bitcoin's growing popularity and acceptance among users to carry out financial transactions could mean a wider adoption in the future — and greater demand for the cryptocurrency. According to Moas, in a few years, there could be about "200 million people around the world trying to get their hands on a few million bitcoin." That, he said, would drive the price to $50,000 per token.
Other cryptocurrency proponents have also said in the past they expect bitcoin to hit a market value of at least $1 trillion by 2025. Regulation may help lend more credibility to the cryptocurrency among investors.
Moas added that out of the 1,000 or so cryptocurrencies that are currently in existence, he is focusing only on the top 20 names that account for more than 90 percent of the total market value. A majority of the rest are "pump-and-dump scam operations," he said.