Bitcoin price prediction is a game that many in the space like to play every now and again – like lottery players dreaming about that big win. That being said, some in the space just can’t seem to keep their predictions to themselves. This week saw three familiar voices reaffirm or refine their opinions, leading us into another game of Bitcoin price prediction roulette.
John McAfee
John McAfee, former anti-virus king and new owner of a debatable Skycoin tattoo, made headlines in July 2017 when he stated that “…I will eat my dick on national television” if Bitcoin didn’t reach $500,000 within three years. McAfee has clearly seen something since then that has given him even more confidence in Bitcoin’s potential, as he stated in an interview on Friday, “…the number of people using Bitcoin and the number of transactions is escalating tremendously. So the true value is going to eventually be based upon usage. And if you track the usage curve, a million dollars by the end of 2020 is conservative.”
McAfee clearly feels that the next two years are going to see higher adoption of Bitcoin for everyday use, but his prediction relies on the value increasing 153x in two years. This would put Bitcoin’s overall market cap around the $17 trillion level, currently the GDP of the entire European Union.
Tim Draper
Tim Draper was a notable early proponent of cryptocurrency, investing in projects such as VeChain and Nucleus Vision at the ICO stage through his investment fund DFJ Venture Capital. In March 2018 he predicted that within five years the world would be using cryptocurrencies to pay for everyday goods and services, and a month later proclaimed that Bitcoin would hit $250,000 by 2022.
Draper doubled down on this prediction during a panel discussion at the Web Summit conference last week, and like McAfee feels that adoption is key to reaching this figure, stating “…all we need to really do is make it so that Bitcoin can be used to buy Starbucks coffee, and all of a sudden the world just opens up and then they say ‘I’ve got this choice.’” Draper also believes that the cryptocurrency market will be worth $80 trillion in the next fifteen years, a 377x increase from today’s valuation.
Mike Novogratz
Crypto investment manager and Bitcoin enthusiast Mike Novogratz has made something of a name for himself by offering price predictions that seem to change on a monthly basis, with his latest, and perhaps most conservative, coming last week. Novogratz claimed in an interview that the downtrend is coming to an end and that “Bitcoin has to take out $6,800, and after that we could end the year at $8,800-$9,000.” After this, claims Novogratz, Bitcoin could surpass its previous high of $20k by Q2 of 2019. He claims that while the 2017 bull run was funded by retail investors, the next one would be the turn of institutional money, with the launch of BAKKT and the introduction of the likes of Fidelity into the space finally giving them the tools to do so.
Whether any of these predictions come true, or if the claims of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Charlie Munger are to be believed and Bitcoin is heading to zero, the fact that more institutional money is making its way into the market suggests that something big is happening.
