The CEO of blockchain investment fund Pantera Capital Management has made the bullish claim that the cryptocurrency market could one day balloon to $40 trillion.
Speaking during a panel interview on Bloomberg Television yesterday, Dan Morehead, the chief executive and founder of Pantera Capital, said that bitcoin ‘is a screaming buy right now.’
Last December, the number one digital currency saw its price surge to within touching distance of $20,000 for the first time. Since then, however, bitcoin – and other cryptocurrencies – have experienced a turbulent start to 2018, which has seen prices retreat. Despite this, though, Morehead remains optimistic in the direction of bitcoin’s price and believes that it will reach new highs in the next 12 months.
At the time of publishing, bitcoin is trading at $9,350, according to CoinMarketCap, as it once again inches it way to the $10,000 mark. According to Saxo Bank, Q2 could see cryptocurrencies entering a bull market.
Morehead is also confident on the combined cryptocurrency market value, which is currently worth $420 billion.
“Obviously, we’re very bullish on the space,” he said. “We think we’re way below, maybe an order of magnitude – or two – below the real fundamental fair value of blockchain.”
He went on to say that the $400 billion market cap of the digital currency industry could grow to $4 trillion, with $40 trillion being ‘definitely possible.’ Notably, though, he said to reach this milestone it was ‘not going to happen overnight,’ but that it was a ‘10-year forecast.’
Even though Pantera Capital has around 10 percent of its investments in bitcoin, the investment fund is betting largely on Icon, which enables different blockchains to talk to each other without intermediaries. Morehead stated that with the cryptocurrency industry seeing more interest from Wall Street, ‘anything that’s a $400 billion asset will not be ignored for long.’
While remarks such as those from Morehead will raise a few eyebrows, such outlandish predictions aren’t anything new. Yesterday, it was reported that John Pfeffer, a partner at U.K.-based Pfeffer Capital, projected that bitcoin could replace gold and may eventually be worth $700,000. He also said that most of the other digital currencies on the market are just ‘bad bets.’
Even though these price predictions are a positive indicator of where investors think the market is heading, they should also be taken with a grain of salt. Unless someone has a crystal ball, no one has any idea of where the market could end up in five or 10 years from now. And for that they shouldn’t be taken as something set in stone.