As bitcoin hits its worst price week in a long time, some analysts are backing away from their previous predictions regarding how well bitcoin could do by the end of the year. Tom Lee, for example, has recently commented that it’s a very bad time to be trading bitcoin, but others, like John McAfee, are refusing to get off the high horse.
John McAfee: $1 Million for BTC Is Still Possible
Having recently announced his run for presidential office in 2020, McAfee is no stranger to controversy. His bold prediction regarding bitcoin’s future price of roughly $1 million has made a lot of heads turn this way and that, but as bitcoin has sunk down into the low $8,000 range since last week, McAfee says that $1 million is still a plausible price for everybody’s favorite cryptocurrency.
In a recent interview, he states:
Let’s get real. There are only 21 million bitcoins, seven million of which have been lost forever, and then if Satoshi [bitcoin’s anonymous creator] is dead, add a few more million.
When bitcoin was young and appeared fruitless, many were relatively careless when it came to the storage of their coin stashes. One individual freely admits to throwing out a hardware device that had as many as 7,500 BTC units on it, but that’s beside the point. Bitcoin is becoming extremely rare, and with approximately 17 million of those original 21 million mined, it’s safe to say that BTC is likely to reach a climactic era quite soon in terms of extraction and mining.
This could potentially do wonders for the coin’s status, and McAfee is confident that as soon as bitcoin accounts for roughly five percent or more of daily transactions, the currency will reach his asserted price. He comments:
I’m just a very conservative man. I said one [$1 million] and I’m sticking to one… I think bitcoin represents simply a store of value. It is surpassed in every respect technologically and functionally. Ethereum’s got smart contracts… I mean, bitcoin is just an exchange… A store of value which will increase probably for the next 15 years, so for the next 15 years, don’t worry. I don’t care if it goes down to $3,000 again. It’s gong to go up. We know it is.
Privacy Coins Have Their Advantages
Where he thinks bitcoin is likely to encounter problems is in its lack of privacy. He says that blockchain technology creates irrefutable evidence that transactions have occurred. The problem is that they give parties access to data that’s not necessarily theirs, such as the total balance of the sender or the receiver. They can also potentially see every time the other person makes a transaction or deposit.
For this, he says privacy coins will likely be the “winner” in certain areas down the line.
