Bitcoin was created at the beginning of 2009. Since then, we’ve seen its price rise from Bitcoins to Cent (approximately March 2010), all the way up to $19,000+ per Bitcoin. One of the stories that best illustrate this growth is that of two pizzas purchased for 10,000 Bitcoins on May 22, 2010, by a Florida developer named Laszlo Hanyecz. Those 10,000 bitcoins ($4,000 per bitcoin) would be worth more than $40 million today, pitted against the $40 or so they were worth it then.
Is there a limit to this growth, and if so, where is it? While no one knows for sure, there are a lot of anti-Bitcoiners who see the market as a bubble, ready to pop and have Bitcoin’s price fizzle back to just a few cents, and a lot of pro-Bitcoiners, or Bitcoin evangelists, who see little hindrance in Bitcoin growing up to 200 times its current price. Here’s what the evangelists think Bitcoin’s going to be worth.
There are a handful of Bitcoin price predictions made in the medium to long term, or with no time scale at all, that is still standing today. Here are some of Bitcoin’s most legendary evangelists’ most exciting predictions.
Chamath Palihapitiya – $1,000,000 (by 2037)
Chamath Palihapitiya is the founder of Social Capital and co-owner of the Golden Warriors. His journey to Bitcoin started with an investment back in 2012, and by 2013 he had included Bitcoin in his hedge fund, general fund, private account. At one point, he owned 5 percent of the total bitcoin in circulation.
Palihapitiya has predicted that the price of Bitcoin will reach $100,000 over the next 3-4 years, adding that it will reach a price of $1 million by 2037. He said, “This thing has the potential to be comparable to the value of gold … this 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 function properly”
Wences Casares – $1,000,000 (by 2027)
Wences Casares is the founder and CEO of Xapo, the start-up of the Bitcoin wallet, and a member of the PayPal Board, among other roles. Casares first found interest in Bitcoin due to high financial volatility in the native currency of his home country, Argentina, the Peso. The tech giant bought its first bitcoins in 2011.
Casares believes that Bitcoin will hit $1 million sometime before 2027, he said at the 2017 New York Consensus Conference. Even better, he believes that Bitcoin could hit one million dollars in as few as five years, saying on May 23, 2017, that the “5-10 years” milestone will be reached.
John Pfeffer – $700,000 (no date)
John Pfeffer is a partner at the Pfeffer Capital family office in London. He’s set a bold Bitcoin price target of $700,000—about 175 times the current Bitcoin price of nearly $4,000. Pfeffer said that Bitcoin was the world’s first viable gold replacement.
The math for his target works like this: first, he assumes that Bitcoin can replace all the gold currently held by private investors — in other words, the gold bars that people keep in safe-deposit boxes or bury in their backyard (just as a way to park their money in something more reliable than paper). He says, “Bitcoin is much easier to store and secure.”
Next up, the current value of any privately held gold bullion is about $1.6 trillion. Assuming there will be 18 million bitcoins in circulation by the time the cryptocurrency fully replaces the gold bullion, the implicit value of the bitcoin would be $90,000. This is Pfeffer’s most conservative scenario, which gives 8 percent of the chances of coming to fruition.
Jeremy Liew – $500,000 (by 2030)
Jeremy Liew is a partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, known as the first Snapchat Social Media App investor. Liew’s other investments include the Beme multimedia company, the VarageSale listing service, and the LedgerX hardware wallet. Its net value is estimated at $2 billion in the north.
In an exchange with Business Insider in May 2017, Liew said that the Bitcoin price could “realistically” reach $500,000 by 2030. Liew’s prediction was backed up by Peter Smith, CEO, and co-founder of Blockchain — the most popular Bitcoin wallet in the world.
Mark Yusko – $400,000 (no date)
Mark Yusko is a billionaire investor, the founder of Morgan Creek Capital. His prediction for Bitcoin is that it will be worth more than $400,000 in the long run, a statement that made headlines because of its grandiose scale.
“It’s just about math. It’s gold equivalent … about 20 million bitcoin are available today. Gold is about $8 trillion today. That’s going to give you $400,000. And that doesn’t include the use of currency-related cases, “Yusko said.
He also pointed out that the asset is striking fear in the hearts of bankers, precisely because bitcoin eliminates the need for banks. When transactions are checked on the Blockchain, the banks become obsolete.
Anthony Pompliano – $100,000 (by 2021)
Anthony Pompliano is a well known Bitcoin personality. He is the founder and partner of Morgan Creek Digital, a crypto-friendly asset management firm for institutional investors. Previously, he claimed to hold more than 50 percent of his net worth in Bitcoin, showing his belief in cryptocurrency.
Pompliano predicted that by the end of December 2021, Bitcoin would hit $100,000. At the time of the forecast (February 2020), Bitcoin had just reached the $10,000 mark, meaning that the currency would need a 1,000 percent increase — within just two years — to reach its target. His prediction would put Bitcoin’s market cap at more than $2 trillion.
Tom Lee – $91,000 (by 2020)
Tom Lee is a co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, a market strategy firm, and a well-known bitcoin bull. Lee initially set a Bitcoin price target of $11,500 for mid-2018, and then increased it to $20,000 as the cryptocurrency’s value increased. Instead, these targets were achieved by the end of 2017.
He recently reassessed his prediction, stating that Bitcoin’s price will reach $91,000 by March 2020, based on a chart that shows Bitcoin’s (BTC) performance after past market dips. Lee and Fundstrat used an average percentage of the price they had won after each dip to reach the 2020 figure.
Mike Novogratz – $7.5 trillion market cap (2029)
Mike Novogratz is a former hedge fund manager who has been investing in bitcoin and blockchain technology for a long time. Several price predictions have been made in the past — both correct and incorrect.
In March 2019, Novogratz indirectly made yet another prediction, saying that bitcoin would “easily” surpass the gold market cap of $7.5 trillion in 10 years. This puts his prediction very close to Edstrom’s, both in terms of timing and magnitude.
Are we missing some important bitcoin predictions? Let us know, and we’re going to add them to the page.
