Bitcoin set for ‘huge surprise’ in 2022, El Salvador president predicts

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele speaking at a cryptocurrency conference on 20 November, 2021 (AP)

The president of El Salvador has made several bold predictions for bitcoin in 2022, forecasting a major price rally and a “huge surprise” for the cryptocurrency.

Nayib Bukele said that he believed the price of bitcoin will more than double to reach $100,000 at some point over the next 12 months, while also speculating that two more countries will follow El Salvador’s lead by adopting bitcoin as legal tender.

President Bukele became the first world leader to embrace the cryptocurrency when he ushered in the Bitcoin Law last year, officially making BTC legal tender in the central American country.

He has since made several major crypto investments and announced plans to build a Bitcoin City at the base of a volcano along the Gulf of Fonseca, partially financed by a $1 billion ‘Bitcoin Bond’.

The geothermal energy from the volcano will be used to power both the city and bitcoin mining operations – the energy-intensive process that uses computers to generate new units of the cryptocurrency.

In recent months there have been rumblings from several other central American countries that bitcoin could be introduced as a form of legal tender, though it could depend on the success of El Salvador’s economic experiment.

While no leading world economy is likely to make bitcoin an official currency, President Bukele predicted it will become “a major electoral issue in US elections this year”.

Several US politicians on both sides of the aisle have already expressed support for the cryptocurrency, including former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Republican senators Cynthia Lummis and Warren Davidson.

Bukele’s final prediction was that there will be a “huge surprise” at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami this April, though gave no specific details as to what it would be.

At the same event last year, President Bukele made the announcement that El Salvador would be introducing the Bitcoin Law, helping to contribute to the cryptocurrency’s record-breaking rally that saw it rise above $60,000.

Bitcoin has spent the last month hovering around $50,000 and is currently trading at $47,000 – a long way off Bukele’s six-figure target.