Several High Profile Predictions of the Future Price of Bitcoin

Several High Profile Predictions of the Future Price of Bitcoin

By Benson Toti - 4 min read

In the last week or so, we have seen numerous high profile investors and technologists come out to make massive predictions regarding the future price of Bitcoin.

There are two aspects to these predictions that draw a lot of interest. First, because of the notable expertise each of these individuals have. Blockchain experts and billionaire CEO’s have opinions that are far more respected than your average investor who might not be making decisions with the same level of rationality and experience. Additionally, Bitcoin is currently in a massive bear market, and it is not necessarily “popular” for people to come out in support of the coin. For those reasons, these opinions can be seen to have a little bit more merit.

The Big Predictions

IBM’s Vice President of blockchain and digital technologies, Jesse Lund, has said he would not be surprised if Bitcoin hit a million dollars. This isn’t a near-term prediction, but it does say a lot about the upper end of the goals that people in the industry have.

One justification of this pricing is that it would give the whole network an overall market capitalization of $20 trillion, which is on a similar scale to that of the US dollar. Additionally, it would put the price of a satoshi on par with a cent.

This prediction comes from an interview with news platform Finder.com. In the shorter-term, Mr. Lund sees the end of 2019 bringing a price of around $5k.

Billionaire investor Tim Draper has also recently stated that he sees Bitcoin hitting a high of $250,000 by 2022. That is farther off, but still indicates a high trajectory for the biggest coin on the market.

Around the same time, Elon Musk, explained how he believed Bitcoin’s design to be “a far better way to transfer value than pieces of paper.” The billionaire founder of Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla may have a bias towards believing in far-fetched technologies, but this still can’t be ignored.

None of this is to say that Musk is going to be getting into Bitcoin. In fact, he only owns 0.25 BTC that a friend gifted to him a while back. But he does see the value in getting past currency controls and evolving away from paper money.

Bitcoin Maximalists

As we discussed a few weeks ago, Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter) also has a very bullish view of crypto. Although part of this may originate from self-interest, since he owns a notable amount of Bitcoin.

If you talk to the layman or the Bitcoin critic, they believe that $20k Bitcoin was a fluke and it will never recover to that level again. In terms of the ways that bubbles tend to boom and bust, these types of doom-and-gloom predictions ignore the continuing increases Bitcoin has shown year over year.

Bitcoin maximalists are a funny type of cult, because they have an almost evangelical belief in the future of their cryptocurrency. They also tend to believe most altcoins have no merit whatsoever. However, it has also been found that most other cryptocurrencies trade on par with each other. Even in the recent deterioration in Ethereum’s fundamentals, ETH has still been trading relatively in line with BTC.  

Tech Business Leaders Name IoT Processes As Blockchain’s Greatest Disruptor: KPMG Study

By Diana Ngo - min read
Updated 19 June 2020

Technology executives expect the Internet-of-Things (IoT)
processes (27%) to be one of the greatest blockchain disruptors over the next
three years, followed by trading (22%), reduced cyber risk (20%) and contracts
(18%), found a new study by KPMG.

“The technology executives we work with are also exploring
the convergence of IoT, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain to optimize
the potential benefits these technologies provide,” said Tegan Keele, US
blockchain program lead at KPMG.

“For example, blockchain can provide a reliable way to trace
and verify how IoT-enabled routers, chips, and other technologies communicate
internally and externally – blockchain can also offer a secure mechanism to
protect the data exchanged, which will be increasingly important as 5G networks
emerge.”

Two industrial giants, Bosch and Volkswagen, are among
companies that are taking seriously the idea of merging blockchain with the
IoT. Both German firms teamed up with fellow-country, decentralized transactional platform IOTA on various development projects.

Last year, Bosch integrated
its new data collection IoT device with the decentralized IOTA Data Marketplace.
Volkswagen plans
to launch
Digital CarPass, a product that will see the IOTA network track
data such as mileage for the evaluation of car performance in the firm’s cars, in
early 2019.

A study conducted by major Dutch cybersecurity firm Gemalto,
released
in January 2019, found that blockchain adoption in the IoT industry more than
doubled over the last year. Surveying 950 information technology (IT) and
business decision makers globally, Gemalto found that a quarter (23%) of respondents
believe that blockchain technology would be an ideal solution to use for
securing IoT devices, with 91% of organizations that don’t currently use the
technology are likely to consider it in the future.

According to the 2019 KPMG Technology Industry Innovation
Survey, a study that includes responses from more than 740 global leaders in
the tech industry, C-level executives believe that blockchain can improve
business efficiencies (23%). Respondents also cited product differentiation (12%),
cost reductions (9%) and new business insights from incremental data (9%) as top
benefits with adopting blockchain technology.

“In my recent conversations with technology leaders, they’ve
indicated that they want to continue doing what they’re doing – but better.
They’re examining ways to achieve core operational efficiency by improving
current processes, while also saving on costs,” Keele said.

“Blockchain is increasingly being recognized as a way to
drive those operational efficiencies, especially with broad, distributed
processes that require exchanging data with multiple internal and external
parties which have traditionally been some of the most challenging to optimize.”

48% of respondents said they believe blockchain will change
the way their company does business, and 41% indicated that their company will
likely implement blockchain in the next three years.

Respondents cited unproved business case (24%), technology
complexity (14%), and lack of capital to fund new investment (12%) as the three
biggest challenges to adopting blockchain.

2019 KPMG Technology Industry Innovation Survey, KPMG
2019 KPMG Technology Industry Innovation Survey, KPMG