Hal Finney’s $10 million price point for bitcoin isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, Adam Back says. | Image: shutterstock.com
- Bitcoin’s $10 million dollar price prediction hits Twitter.
- Is bitcoin a reserve currency?
- Some analysts believe U.S. dollar inflation will push bitcoin higher.
According to Blockstream founder and cypherpunk, Adam Back, Hal Finney’s $10 million price point for bitcoin isn’t so far fetched, though, the reasons behind these levels may not be as apparent as you may think.
When it comes to price predictions, crypto analysts often tout the most hyperbolic and over-inflated projections imaginable. From the more modest end of the spectrum at around $10,000, toward the virtually inconceivable heights of $10 million, valuations within this space can vary wildly.
Regardless, some augers of these seemingly aggrandized price points do sometimes offer a reasonable explanation to support them.
Currently circulating its way around the ecosystem are some of the earliest price predictions ever made, and per Back, they may well come to fruition.
The First Bitcoin Price Prediction Ever Made
Hal Finney is frequently praised as one of the most respected cypherpunks of all time. The late programmer is also among the list of presumed identities for Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney was involved in BTC from the get-go. He was the first known recipient of bitcoin and a fervent contributor to its algorithmic foundations.
Moreover, Finney was also responsible for the first-ever price predictions.
Merely a week after the mining of bitcoin’s genesis block, Finney opined that BTC could grasp a value of $10 million per coin. This hypothesis was based—as many BTC predictions are these days—on bitcoin becoming a de facto global payments system.
Finney wrote:
As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the total value of all the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world.
Finney went on to suggest that throwing a “few cents of compute time” was actually “quite a good bet.” As we all know, he wasn’t wrong. In 2010, mining one BTC block would have netted a cool 50 BTC for virtual pennies. Today, 50 BTC fetches a princely sum of around $400,000.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
But as for bitcoin becoming a quasi global standard of exchange, the jury is still very much out.
In defense of his fellow cypherpunk, Adam Beck vindicated Finney’s prediction. Rather than place too much emphasis on a monetary revolution, the Blockstream CEO instead focused on inflation of the dollar. According to Back, as the greenback steadily depreciates due to inflation, bitcoin will—by contrast—continue to grow, thus increasing its price point against USD.
Adam Back suggests that USD inflation will bring about $10 per million BTC.| Source: Twitter
Back continued to rationalize the prediction by remarking how a few years ago $10k looked insurmountable:
$100k Bitcoin doesn’t seem so far given we already crossed $10k threshold a few times when few expected even $1k some years back and $10k seemed crazy.
So, while bitcoin’s climb atop the financial system may take a few years to materialize, in the meantime, we can look forward to steady fiat devaluation providing a better ROI.
This article was edited by Sam Bourgi.
Last modified: January 13, 2020 2:09 PM UTC
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