In a recent interview with Bloomberg, the CEO of Blockstream Adam Back said that bitcoin could reach $300,000 in value within five years.
The interview was mainly focused on the hypothesis that Black is actually Satoshi Nakamoto, but the CEO of Blockstream denied this hypothesis again saying that it would actually be better if the identity of the creator of Bitcoin remained a mystery.
Back is a British cryptographer with a PhD in computer science and in the 90s he invented Hashcash, a system later used also for Bitcoin mining. Moreover, he’s also the first person ever contacted online by Satoshi in 2008, precisely to ask about Hashcash.
When denying the hypothesis of being Satoshi, Black commented:
“It’s generally viewed at this point as better that the founder of Bitcoin is not known, because a lot of people have a hierarchical mindset. If you read about a technology, you try to figure out who is the CEO of a company, and people want to ask questions. Because Bitcoin is more like a digital gold, you wouldn’t want gold to have a founder. For Bitcoin to keep a commodity-like perception, I think it’s a very good thing that Satoshi stays out of the public”.
Black has also confirmed that he is mining bitcoin and that he doesn’t sell the extracted BTC.
In fact, he hypothesized that the price of bitcoin could rise to $300,000 within five years and this even without there being a strict need for adoption by institutional investors.
According to Black, adoption by retail investors, who have been responsible for the financial success of bitcoin since its inception and who will continue to show their support while institutions remain cautious, may be enough.
The reason for this success, according to Black, will come from the preservation of the value of this asset in the future, whereas the enormous amount of fiat money that is continually being printed will result in inflation.
“It is causing people to think about the value of money and looking for ways to preserve money. It’s a difficult environment to get any yield”.
According to Black, institutional investors are still widely misunderstanding Bitcoin, citing as an example Goldman Sachs’ recent position calling it an unsuitable investment for their clients.
That report clearly showed the presence of misconceptions about digital scarcity, indicating that it is still too early to imagine its adoption by institutional investors.
This, according to Black, would imply significant potential for price growth and market adoption.
