Bitcoin and Crypto 10 Years Into The Future
For many of us in the cryptocurrency market, our largest weakness is that often our timeframe is too short. This is what makes the current market situation for many so stressful. Just a handful of months ago Bitcoin was worth $69k, Ethereum was nearly $5k, Solana was approaching $300 and the list goes on. But today, prices of those coins are much lower. For those who have the shorter timeframe, this price action could have caused them to either panic and sell, or become depressed with the loss of value in their portfolios. For those of us who have been in the Bitcoin and crypto market for quite awhile, we know to always keep a much longer timeframe. We have lived through these cycles of incredible highs, and depressing lows. The cycle repeats time after time. But the important thing is that, over a long enough timeframe, prices continue to go up. That is why you will often hear Bitcoin supporters say "when in doubt, zoom out," during times that Bitcoin is dipping. And it is true, when zooming out it is easy to see that Bitcoin continues to be moving on an upwards trajectory.
We have all heard the advice given to people just entering the Bitcoin market. "Just buy some Bitcoin, don't touch it, and forget about it for 5 to 10 years." Usually the people giving this advice will say something to the fact that this will grow into life-changing wealth for you. When thinking about this deeper, what would Bitcoin and the crypto market in general look like after coming back from a 5 or 10 year hiatus. It is an interesting idea, and would definitely be drastically different than it is today. All you need to do is to look at the crypto news and developments that come out each day. A day in the crypto world equals a month in other markets. The industry moves fast, and incredible things are ahead of us.
Looking ahead 5 to 10 years, the world will be much different. The Covid pandemic two years ago jumpstarted a rapid change in the world, that cannot be stopped. The toothpaste is out of its tube, and cannot be put back in. I have said this many times before, that Covid sped up Bitcoin's adoption by at least 10 years in my opinion. We saw large companies like Microstrategy, Tesla, and Square putting Bitcoin onto their balance sheets. We saw two countries adopt Bitcoin as their legal tender. We saw a country accepting Bitcoin and crypto donations in order to help their war. And the list goes on and on.
Ten years from now, Ethereum's full 2.0 upgrade will have finally launched and while that will be hyped up, there will already be people complaining about how long it is taking the team to begin delivering on what was originally promised in ETH 3.0. As always, Ethereum will be competing against other blockchains that are claiming to be the next ETH killer. But as time goes on, most users will finally admit that there won't be an ETH killer, as it has become entrenched in its spot. There will always be room for competitors, but ETH will remain dominant. Akin to how Windows has a larger marketshare compared to Mac OS or Linux. But there is room for more than one.
Moving onwards to a topic that involves both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Transacting on these blockchain's Layer 1, will have become a thing of the past. Instead, people will be living, transacting and thriving on Layer 2's and beyond. This means that upon entering the Bitcoin ecosystem, most people will start with Lightning and never even touch the base layer. This will make using the Bitcoin network for everyday purchases such as coffee, a real likelihood. The same will happen with Ethereum. Only the largest organizations or trades will be happening on the base layer. By using Layer 2's on Ethereum that will continue to scale, this will allow incredibly cheap transactions with ETH. Which will give a whole new life to DeFi.
During the last two bull cycles, some of the most hyped new developments were ICOs, DeFi, and also NFTs. While I am confident that both DeFi and NFTs will continue to be popular in the future, I do think that there will be something that eclipses both of those in popularity. Gaming. Yes, we have had glimpses of gaming being popular in the crypto market with games like Axie Infinity. But to call that a game would be generous in my opinion. We will finally begin to see games built on crypto blockchains that are high quality and people are genuinely excited to play, even if there was no opportunity to make money with them. But then you add the fact that the game is incredibly fun to play, and you will also be able to earn quite a bit of money playing it, potentially even enough to make a living. And those are the only factors that you need for a crypto gaming mania to take off. And it will be bigger than you can imagine. While a lot of people liked NFTs, there were always naysayers who just couldn't get behind the value proposition of it. After all, you could just rick click-save those jpeg's. I think crypto gaming will be much more digestible for most people.
And here comes my controversial prediction. While Bitcoin and Ethereum have always been rivals, they have always been attempting to do two completely different things. They were rivals in name only, but not really. Ten years from now that will change. With the news of the potential Taro Lightning upgrade on Bitcoin, this opens the doors for what Bitcoin's future may be. This allows stable coins and tokens to be created on the Bitcoin network. It will continue veering closer to what Ethereum does. Be it on layer 2 or layer 3, eventually smart contracts will come to Bitcoin and that is when the rivalry between Bitcoin and Ethereum will really take off. Consequently, if you thought Bitcoin maxi's were difficult now, they will be even more opinionated in the future if this happens.
Metaverses
Many experts are predicting that Metaverses will be the next big thing in crypto. The hype intensified even further when Facebook announced that they were changing their name to Meta, and would be focusing on becoming a metaverse company. With the likes of The Sandbox, Decentraland, Bloktopia, and more. It is safe to say that this will become a highly contested area. With that said, in 5 to 10 years time, I don't see this sector taking off like many others do. It will have its fans, but it will not become mainstream in my opinion yet.
Decentralized DEXs
Today the most popular places to get your crypto is on centralized exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, FTX and the list goes on. Just over two years ago, that was when decentralized exchanges like Uniswap first began coming into popularity. Now there are decentralized exchanges for nearly every significant blockchain. While Bitcoin doesn't have its own native DEX, it is able to be swapped on DEX's thanks to THORSWAP and others. This is a trend that will continue to become even more popular and will soon overtake centralized exchanges. The only reason you would use CEX's would be as a fiat on/off ramp.
Legal Tender
During the last year, two countries have made Bitcoin legal tender in their nation. This is a domino effect that will continue to happen. Especially as crypto prices begin to recover. For the time being, the countries who have made bitcoin legal tender have been either small countries, or nations with a lower GDP. Once a country with a larger GDP makes bitcoin legal tender such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, or somewhere else of a similar size. That will be the shot hurt around the world, and there will be no denying the direction that the world is heading towards. While two countries have made bitcoin legal tender up until now. Ten years later, I wouldn't be surprised if more than 20 countries have made BTC their legal tender.
Future Prices
And finally we arrived at the future prices part of the article. Please remember that these are my opinions only, and you should do your own research. As I said at the beginning of the article. Bitcoin and crypto adoption has jumped forward faster and further than we could have ever imagined in a two year period. In the paragraph before, I was just mentioning that two countries have made Bitcoin legal tender in their country. Before the pandemic started, that was a development that I thought was at the very least ten years away, and probably longer than that to be honest. There are two directions that bitcoin can go towards. It will either go to zero, or it will go over $1 million on a long enough timeframe. Within ten years, I see bitcoin reaching one million and probably going even further than that. Likely several million per bitcoin. Those who are acquiring now will be very happy they did. But how about Ethereum? This largely depends on two factors. If it is able to deliver on all of its protocol updates, and if Bitcoin continues to go up. If both of those happen, Ethereum has plenty of room to go up. Within ten years, a price of $40,000-70,000 per Ethereum is not out of the question. I do realize that these numbers are incredibly high, but due to inflation, those numbers value in 2020 dollar value will be less. If the crypto market continues to deliver and grow in popularity, that would mean that we are still incredibly early today.
Those are just a few of my predictions and thoughts about some of the things I see happening within ten years. The crypto market is incredibly exciting, because it is one of the few industries where so much happens, that if you are gone for just a week. That would result in you being completely out of date, and potentially missing out on vital information. It makes each day new, exciting and that is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.
How about you? What are your predictions for what the Bitcoin and crypto market will look like in 10 years?
As always, thank you for reading!
I've been relying to BCH. I just relate to this so much that I think this article was meant for me to express my thoughts that I somehow could not easily express. Being in this cryptoverse for 7 months, I still find myself sometimes getting panic and shocked whenever BCH hits lower than before. The 21k exchange rate I was used to became 5k. And as a student, I rely to this source of income most of my time for now. My struggle is when I overthink that what if it comes to the point that the exchange rate would be down to zero hhahahha, so would I continue saving my BCH in my wallet until exchange rates goes up again or would I convert now to peso before it gets to late?