Blockstream Co-founder and CEO Adam Back is the latest crypto heavyweight to predict Bitcoin (BTC) is set for a major bull run, but Ethereum’s Buterin says it’s time to move on.

Retail investors alone could trigger Bitcoin bull run

Talking to Bloomberg, Back, one of the world’s foremost crypto pioneers – and a candidate to be the fabled Satoshi Nakamoto in many peoples’ eyes – said the unlimited money printing we are now seeing will push retail investors to BTC. 

Back thinks that, even when you don’t take institutional investors into account, this will be enough to push BTC to USD $300K  within just five years. 

Expanding on his reasoning, which has convinced him to hold the BTC he mines, Back said there are a number of trends emerging that will boost the cryptocurrency. Specifically, he pointed to the COVID-19 induced revolution in working from home, and overvalued bonds and real estate investments.

Many major players still don’t comprehend paradigm shift

As evidence that some large investors are on his wavelength, Back pointed to Grayscale Investments – which as we reported last week, has been buying unprecedented Bitcoin since the halving. 

However, according to Back, the recent Goldman Sachs investors’ call, which was less than enthusiastic about BTC, also illustrated how many of the big players still aren’t comprehending the paradigm shift taking place. 

Regarding the flurry of recent predictions of ultra high BTC prices, he sounded a note of caution – pointing out that high inflation could lead to a situation where even if Bitcoin reaches $10m, it might end up only being worth $1m in terms of today’s spending power. 

Buterin weighs in, taking a swipe at Bitcoin and zhao

Staying with crypto pioneers’ views on the current global crisis, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has taken to Twitter to argue that the current situation is very different to the 2008 Financial Crisis which gave birth to Bitcoin. 

Buterin says the current crisis is a “virus crisis”, and one concerning knowledge and “overbearing policies”, rather than one primarily concerned with monetary inflation – pointing out that many now fear deflation rather than inflation. 

He also cited the fact that, so far, cryptocurrencies have remained relatively correlated to traditional assets, rather than emerging as a separate safe haven. 

Buterin also took a swipe at Binance CEO Chagpeng Zhao, who had tweeted that “Bitcoin is the peaceful protest,” saying that the crypto community needed to move beyond the idea that reforming money was going to be sufficient. 

#Bitcoin is the peaceful protest.

— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) June 1, 2020

Instead, he said people needed to look to Ethereum, and its plethora of uses, such as enabling decetralised censorship-resistant publishing and communication, decentralised communities, governance, DAOs, DAOs for content curation etc, calling 2016-20 a “period of ideological realignment.” 

AYO.NEWS says:

With COVID-19 triggering an unprecedented economic crash (though most people don’t seem to realise it yet), a total upending of the global balance of power, and the United States tearing itself apart, it seems anything can happen.

However, saying that, no matter how much idealists like Buterin like to imagine what is happening as an opportunity to create some kind of digital utopia, we can’t help but think the entrenched forces are still too powerful – socially, economically, and politically. But, with even large investors now embracing Bitcoin and the fundamentals still as solid as ever, it seems more and more likely that the instability of the world could trigger a dramatic bull run for the original cryptocurrency.

Regarding the relationship between BTC and traditional markets, those with Buterin’s views should remember that correlation does not imply causation. Indeed, it could be argued that, given the newness of digital assets, correlations could be easily explained simply by investors needing time to fully understand the nature of the new assets – and because, as clearly demonstrated by the Goldman Sachs call, many still don’t. 

Back’s point about any wild Bitcoin price having to be looked at in comparison to the buying power of a dollar is also extremely important to keep in mind. For example, if the US does disintegrate into a second civil war, we could easily see the US dollar become next to worthless, so even Ross Ulbricht’s $333m BTC prediction could be realistic. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

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