This is a really tricky answer to give for a couple of reasons. I will give you a picture of possible outcomes for bitcoin that will help you conceptualize how big/high in value bitcoin could get.
Scenario 1:
Bitcoin as a Niche Global Money. Right now Bitcoin adoption is at about 1% of the world population. Let’s just say that Bitcoin never accrues a user base that exceeds 5% of the population of the planet. In this case, Bitcoin is likely to stay under the 10 trillion mark. This would put Bitcoin’s maximum price around $500k per Bitcoin.
Scenario 2:
Bitcoin is Digital Gold. In this scenario, Bitcoin outcompetes Gold as the world scarce asset of choice. If Bitcoin does this, then it is also likely to outcompete other scarce precious metals. I think this is highly likely because these metals are only scarce until we figure out how to mine asteroid. I think we’ll be mining asteroids by the end of the century. This is actually the time scale that is useful to conceptualize bitcoin adoption on by the way. In this case, Bitcoin’s total market cap could reach 21 trillion which would put bitcoin at a million dollars per coin.
Scenario 3:
Bitcoin is the World Reserve Asset. If you took all the assets in the world and measured their value in USD, it would be about $210 trillion dollars. This number admittedly is a ballpark, and geared to make the numbers in this example simpler. In this example, Bitcoin is Money. People think of value in terms of Satoshi’s and Bitcoin instead of Dollars. In this scenario the question “How high can bitcoin possibly get” doesn’t makes sense anymore because everyone is thinking of value in terms of bitcoin itself. In this scenario, people will ask, “how much bitcoin is that worth?”.
In terms of USD though, a $210 trillion dollar bitcoin market cap puts each bitcoin at $100 million dollars.
Justification at Each Price Point
I think it is extremely important to contextualize bitcoin on the timescale of several decades, spanning into centuries instead of months or years. What we are experiencing is a complete shift in how the globe thinks about value. From a FIAT, government backed system, to a Hard Money, People backed system. The great thing about this whole thing is that people can opt into bitcoin and buy it at any time without any justification necessary. If you’re buying bitcoin, then you think it is worth it. No justification necessary. The parameters of the free market allow you to purchase bitcoin without any justification at all.
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