The price of bitcoin is now "strangely low" and could rise to $500,000 or even $1 million per coin in the current four-year cycle, Adam Back said in an interview with Decrypt.
The famous computer scientist and head of Blackstream said that, given the influx of institutional money into this area, the price of the main cryptocurrency should be higher.
(Adam Back)
Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, is a British cryptographer and computer scientist, widely known for inventing Hashcash in 1997, the proof—of-work system underlying bitcoin mining.
He was also involved in the early development of the main cryptocurrency. He was one of the first to be contacted by the anonymous creator of bitcoin, known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, back in 2008.
Many members of the community are convinced that Back is Nakamoto, pointing to his expertise in cryptographic sciences and developments prior to the advent of bitcoin as evidence. However, Beck has repeatedly denied the version that he is Satoshi.
Blockstream is a leading developer of technologies for scaling bitcoin. Their products include fast and confidential transactions, the issuance of digital assets, including stablecoins and tokenized Real world assets (RWA).
The bitcoin (BTC) exchange rate, as of May 16, hovers around $103.8 thousand. Over the past 24 hours, the asset has fallen in price by 1%. Nevertheless, the current price of BTC is only 6.4% lower than the maximum of about $109,000 recorded in January of this year.
"I think this cycle can become quite profitable, but it will take several years, right? That's why I'm counting on between $500,000 and $1 million, because there's a lot going on," Back said.
According to him, there is currently no clear, logical reason why bitcoin is worth only $100,000. That's not a lot, considering all the changes that have taken place over the past two years, says the cryptographer.
"Brokers and individual investors tend to buy things that have already increased in value. Therefore, as bitcoin grows, more money will flow into this area, creating an impetus for price growth," he noted.
"I think if you reach a new all—time high, it can quickly get much higher," Back said.
On May 12, Arthur Hayes, whose forecasts widely differ on cryptocurrencies, urged his subscribers in X to "buy everything."
He recommended entering the market against the background of easing trade tensions between the United States and China. Hayes is known as the former head of the BitMEX exchange, who was later found guilty of violating AML rules in the United States, and now heads the Maelstrom foundation.
At the same time, according to a study by Protos, 16 of Hayes' 20 market forecasts turned out to be incorrect.
Two were accurate, two more relate to future prices and are not yet verifiable, one of them is bitcoin at $1 million by 2028.
