Author
Tatsiana Yablonskaya
Taking strong interest in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and IoT, Tatsiana Yablonskaya got deep understanding of the emerging techs believing in their potential to drive the future.
Jeremy Liew and Peter Smith predict a great future for Bitcoin in their latest research.
Bitcoin has been leading the list of cryptocurrencies in six of the past seven years, climbing from zero to a value of about $1,180. However, the potential of Bitcoin is much higher. Jeremy Liew, the first investor in Snapchat, and Blockchain CEO and co-founder Peter Smith, demonstrated in the collaborative presentation that the cryptocurrency has all chances to explode to $500,000 by 2030.
The most significant reasons for the increase of interest in Bitcoin are:
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Bitcoin-based remittances
The World Bank states that remittance transfers, or electronic money transfers to foreign countries, have almost doubled over the past 15 years to 0.76% of GDP.
“Expats sending money home have found in Bitcoin an inexpensive alternative, and we assume that the percentage of Bitcoin-based remittances will sharply increase with greater Bitcoin awareness,” Liew and Smith say.
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Uncertainty
Bitcoin is closely linked to the politics. Thus, as political uncertainty in the UK, US and in developing nations increases, the cryptocurrency price rises.
“We believe Bitcoin awareness, high liquidity, ease of transport and continued market outperformance as geopolitical risks mount, will make Bitcoin a strong contender for investment at a consumer and investor level,” the two said.
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Mobile penetration
As people become more connected through smartphones, the number of non-cash transactions is expected to increase from 15% to 30% in the next 10 years. There’s only a 63% global smartphone penetration while the total number of smartphone users can soar by 1 billion by 2020.
Soon, everyone will have a bank in their pocket, which will provide a boost for Bitcoin as well. Liew and Smith estimate that the cryptocurrency could account for 50% of all of these transactions.
Liew and Smith used the following basic model drivers for their research:
- A bitcoin price of $1,000 in 2017.
- The network users will grow 61x from now until 2030.
- The average value of bitcoin held per user hits $25,000.
- Bitcoin’s 2030 market cap is decided by number of bitcoin holders multiplied by average bitcoin value held.
- Bitcoin’s 2030 supply will be about 20 million.
- Bitcoin’s 2030 price and user count total $500,000 and 400 million, respectively.
Of course, it is necessary to take into account that something can always go wrong – the news about Bitcoin has been rather negative lately. This concerns China having cracked down the Bitcoin trading, the rejection of two bitcoin exchange-traded funds by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the possibility of a “hard fork,” or alternative marketplace for bitcoin.
Anyone interested in bitcoin should also know that the cryptocurrency sees violent price swings that are uncommon among the more traditional currencies. Bitcoin rallied 20% in the first week of 2017 before crashing 35% on word China was cracking down on trading.
However, Bitcoin has recovered after those losses, and trades up about 25% so far this year.