There are a lot of people who think they know what price Bitcoin is going to get to one day. You have those that are confident it will be worth nothing, while others think a million per BTC is just a start. Perhaps the reality is in between, but it’s certain that nobody knows for sure.
We’re going to break down a recent outlandish bet, before discussing the fundamental reasons that Bitcoin is seen as a long-term winner and discussing a variety of expert’s predictions for Bitcoin’s price.
Million Dollar Bet
In mid-March, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the US, Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase (COIN), bet a million dollars that Bitcoin’s price would reach a million dollars within 90 days. This wasn’t a bet that he expected to win. Rather, it was an attempt to draw attention to the fiat money printing which is occurring in the US, and inform people that the possibility of hyperinflation and devaluation of the USD was possible. Srinivasan closed out the bet, paying out to various Bitcoin development foundations.
While he certainly wasn’t right that Bitcoin would reach $1 million within such a short time frame, the idea that Bitcoin could reach that mark some day isn’t considered to be out of the question. It all comes down to the deflationary fundamentals around Bitcoin which are in such a stark contrast to fiat currencies such as the USD.
Analyzing Fundamentals
Bitcoin’s fundamentals remain one of its greatest selling points. It is still a peer-to-peer payment system that can’t be controlled by any one entity, and it still has the greatest level of decentralization compared to all the other blockchain networks. Transaction speeds and costs are being mitigated by the steady growth of the Lightning Network, which can process 1 million transactions per second, which is certainly a high scale. The only limitation to the Lightning Network being that there needs to be enough people using the network to properly route payments. As adoption occurs, this will disappear.
Bitcoin, importantly, is deflationary, meaning that the amount released through mining rewards will go down over time, and that it has a fixed, unchangeable maximum quantity of 21 million BTC. This is in quite stark contrast to something like the USD, who’s supply has gone from $2 trillion USD over 10 years ago, to over $10 trillion now.
Realistic Possibilities?
The reality with the price of Bitcoin is that just about every price is possible. Though many within the community would highly disagree that Bitcoin could ever go down to zero, it is still a possibility, even if a small one. Likewise, even the really high price predictions could be correct.
A common comparison is to another store-of-value asset: Gold. The precious metal has a market cap of roughly $12.8 trillion. If Bitcoin were to have a similar market cap that would take it to roughly $600,000 per unit. What makes Bitcoin especially hard to value is whether USD becomes considerably inflated. In that case all bets are off.
At the end of the day it all comes down to how Bitcoin is adopted, how regulatory laws take shape around it, and how the overall economics of the world go as we attempt to reel in inflation and other issues currently facing society.
Experts’ Predictions
Bullish Price Predictions for Bitcoin in 2023
Tim Draper predicted Bitcoin would hit $250k by the middle of 2023, which is past at this point. The founder of Draper Associates originally had this prediction for the end of 2022, but revised it in November, perhaps he should have left the prediction alone, as it would still be possible.
Alistair Milne, the founder of Altana Digital Currency Fund, believes that Bitcoin will hit $45k by the end of 2023, with prices rising dramatically in 2024 around Bitcoin’s next halving event.
Antoni Trenchev, the co-founder and managing partner of Nexo, a digital asset platform, believes that Bitcoin could rebound to $30k by mid-2023, which was exactly correct at the time this article was published.
Bearish Price Predictions for Bitcoin in 2023
The European Central Bank believes that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general is going to zero in 2023, something they have very little time to be right about at this point. In a blog post in November 2022, they outlined their reasons Bitcoin and crypto was and is going to fail. Most of their reasoning was outdated, so it’s not surprising to see them being wrong thus far.
Mark Mobius, the founder of Mobius Capital Partners, predicted that Bitcoin would bottom out at $10k in 2023 due to the US further tightening monetary policy and rising interest rates. He correctly predicted the collapse of Bitcoin in May 2022, and Bitcoin did get down to $15k, but would have to drop by over 60% to get down to $10k this year.
Meanwhile, VanEck Investments predicted that Bitcoin would fall down to $10-12k in Q1 of 2023, but will then rise to $30k in the second half of the year. Overall, this prediction was actually fairly accurate, as Bitcoin got down to $15k, and is now at $30k halfway through the year.
Remember that no one knows for sure and this article is not financial advice.
