As the crypto markets enter their second straight day of bullish price movement, with Bitcoin trading above $5000 for the first time since last year, a number of analysts are weighing in with their prediction for the future of crypto asset value.
Ryan Selkis, founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency research firm Messari believes that Bitcoin will continue to climb in the coming years, gaining over 1,000% to reach a valuation of $50,000. Specifically, Selkis cites the mass “wealth transfer” that is going to occur in the coming years, as the baby boomer generation gives way to millenials, both in terms of capital and wealth inheritance.
Selkis referred to this mass movement of wealth in a tweet published on Mar. 28, just days before Bitcoin took off in price. According to Selkis, millenials stand to inherit $30 trillion in wealth from their baby boomer generation parents, which presents a vast amount of capital that could influence cryptocurrency,
“There’s a $30 trillion “great wealth transfer” expected in the next 20+ years (millennials inheriting money from their parents).
If 1% of that goes into cryptocurrencies, crypto will be a multi-trillion dollar asset class.
That’s the conservative case for $50k+ bitcoin.”
Messari’s CEO refers to the $50,000 prediction for BTC as “conservative,” explaining that his numbers only assume a 1 percent investment by millennials in the money they will be inheriting from their parents. Selkis also assumes that millennial generations will have far greater interest for investing in digital assets and cryptocurrency, a stat-line that has been largely confirmed over the last year through various polling organizations.
Millennials, on average, are both more interested in cryptocurrency and invested in the industry of digital assets. While cryptocurrency has its appeal to a younger generation–more upside in terms of reward, despite the increased investment risk of highly volatile assets–education and lack of understanding tends to be a sticking point for the industry as a whole. The majority of polled investors, moreso in older generations, report lacking a basic understanding of Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and digital assets–a feature that could be hampering the investment potential more-so than just age differences.
Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst for cryptocurrency trading and social platform eToro, agreed with Selkis’s prediction that wealth transfer would benefit the market for Bitcoin,
“The current market cap of bitcoin is around $73 billion. If an additional $300 billion were to flow into bitcoin than it could easily increase the total market cap by 10 to 20 times the incoming capital.”
However, some analysts continue to remain skeptical on the state of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, despite the growing adoption and valuation throughout 2019. While the entry of Facebook and J.P. Morgan Chase into cryptocurrency, via stablecoins, has been hailed as a positive movement for the industry, others see it as a way of circumventing established currencies. Bitcoin and other top cryptos may continue to see their market share decline if Facebook and mainstream companies develop their own coin projects, thereby giving their massive user bases little reason to invest in or use BTC.
