As Bitcoin seems to stabilize in today’s current market, we’re getting some oracular statements from some authorities on this cryptocurrency, folks who have made themselves ultra-rich just by buying Bitcoin in its infancy.
Winklevoss twins Cameron and Tyler are suggesting that Bitcoin will soon be worth half a million dollars.
“Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, noted internet entrepreneurs and crypto billionaires, believe weakness in the U.S. financial system and other factors mean Bitcoin could one day reach $500,000 per coin,” writes Daniel Palmer at Coindesk today.
But in an unusual analysis of future Bitcoin price jumps, the eerie look-alikes are tying that projection less to actual value propositions for Bitcoin as an exchange medium, and more toward the negatives for investment alternatives.
In Palmer’s reporting, the Winklevoss twins analyze three other inflation-beating choices that have been traditional go-tos: the dollar, oil and gold.
Negging the dollar’s long-term viability, Cameron and Tyler suggest that the U.S. government has been spending money “like a drunken sailor” and otherwise tanking the value of the world’s reserve currency, with scrutiny into the Fed’s long-standing practice of slashing interest rates well below what many economists would consider healthy.
Oil, the twins say, is vulnerable to sudden demand shocks like those we’ve seen with the coronavirus. In other words, when people suddenly decide they don’t want to drive their cars, oil values go wild. Plus, supply gluts can drive values way down.
Then there’s gold, the precious metal of antiquity. Gold still holds its own as an alternative hedge against inflation, but the Winklevoss twins argue that gold is difficult to transport, and therefore has its own Achilles’ heel.
The best alternative, implicitly, is Bitcoin.
“The cryptocurrency is not prone to supply shocks that gold or other commodities might face,” Palmer writes, then going on to show Winklevoss propositions around BTC advantages like “ease of portability and strong security.”
Many of the loudest proponents of Bitcoin’s future growth are calling it a “safe haven” for investors fleeing the equity market like so many house fire victims.
Let’s see how it plays out.