Demand for Bitcoin could grow by up to 10X within 12 months: Michael Saylor

November 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The MicroStrategy co-founder emphasized that demand for Bitcoin will significantly ramp up following the halving next year.

With the Bitcoin halving just months away, MicroStrategy co-founder and Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor thinks that demand for BTC could grow by as much as 10X by the end of 2024.

During a speech at the 2023 Australia Crypto Convention on Nov. 10, Saylor was asked to give his outlook for Bitcoin and its ecosystem over the next four to five years.

In response, Saylor initially gave a rundown on the period between 2020 and 2024, noting that Bitcoin went from being seen as a “offshore unregulated asset” to an “institutionalized mainstream app.”

Honing in on the near term, Saylor said that BTC will become a “adolescent mainstream asset by the end of 2024,” as he highlighted key dynamics surrounding supply and demand that will soon come into play:

“I think that this next 12 months is going to be a big. Because demand [on a monthly basis] should double or triple or maybe go up by a factor of 10, anywhere from two to 10. [...] and the supply available for sale will be cut in half in April.”

“So instead of a billion dollars of Bitcoin available for miners each month, it will be half a billion. It's pretty unprecedented that you would go from a supply and demand balance of maybe $15 billion of organic demand and $12 billion of organic supply. What happens when one doubles, and the other one cuts in half ? the price is going to adjust up,” he added.

*Speakers at the Melbourne-based event. Source: Australian Crypto Convention*

Saylor went on to describe the next 12 months for Bitcoin as its “coming out party” as the asset graduates from “college” and heads out into the real world.

Looking at 2024 to 2028, Saylor predicted that Bitcoin will continue to be in a high-growth stage as adoption spreads across the big tech industry and mega banks worldwide, with both sectors integrating Bitcoin into their products and services.

Saylor also said he expects to see a lot of competition among companies like Apple and Meta (Facebook) to get their hands on BTC to eventually sell for major profits.

“You're going to have ferocious competition and will among Wall Streeters to get the most asset share and you're going to have crypto exchanges competing and you're going to have other tech companies getting involved. [...] That’ll be one check.”

“The other check will be when the big mega banks or Bitcoin custodians with JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and, you know [...] when they're making loans and giving mortgages and customising it and buying and selling it. I think that'll be the second check,” he added.

Looking even further into the future, at around 25 years, Saylor outlined some lofty predictions for the future of Bitcoin, as he emphasized that BTC will blow any other high-quality asset out of the water.

“When it hits that terminal growth rate, maybe 20 years out, maybe 25 years, or it'll be growing twice as fast or compounding twice as fast as the S&P 500 Index, or any other diversified high quality portfolio of assets you could buy,” he said, adding:

“So if you think about it like that, you just say, well [...] now we're going to double we're going to double again, we're going to double again, and we're going to double again, that coin is going to continue to progress to a million dollars a coin, $2 million a coin, $5 million a coin, $10 million a coin.”

MicroStrategy currently holds around 158,400 BTC, and the firm was up around $900 million on its investment as of Nov. 2.

Magazine: Recursive inscriptions — Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon

‘Fear of the unknown’ holds back tradfi investors from crypto — Bloomberg analyst

September 21, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Australia Crypto Con

Bloomberg crypto analyst Jamie Coutts believes it's a “missed opportunity” that traditional asset managers choose not the educate themselves on crypto.

Jamie Coutts, Crypto Market Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence argues that “falsehoods” and “fear of the unknown” is what has been holding back traditional portfolio managers from investing in cryptocurrency.

Speaking to Cointelegraph during the Australian Crypto Convention over the weekend, Coutts argues there has been an ongoing “falsehood” that “there is no intrinsic value in blockchains.”

“These asset managers own stocks, like Amazon and Facebook [...] which for the first several years these companies had no earnings,” explained Coutts, adding that Facebook in its infant stages “didn’t have profit [...] or seen to have any intrinsic value.”

“Yet they could understand there is a network value here, that the network is growing, that the value of the asset accrues from how many people are using the products.”

Coutts believes that “although not all blockchains are cash generative assets, including Ethereum” there is certainly intrinsic value there.

However, the Bloomberg analyst said he couldn’t quite put his finger on why there was a hesitation to embrace cryptocurrency, ruling out lack of regulation as the reason.

“Regulation can’t be one of them. Let me just restate that. Regulation is always a concern, but BTC is regulated.”

Coutts said “there isn’t really a regulatory risk” as crypto became regulated “the moment” it became a taxable item that you had to “disclose to the tax authorities in whatever jurisdiction you’re in.”

Instead, Coutts said it could be “just the fear of the unknown,” adding that asset managers ignoring or choosing not educate themselves on cryptocurrency is a missed opportunity.

Coutts suggested that those hesitant to invest in cryptocurrency should look beyond the market volatility and focus on what cryptocurrency actually brings to the table.

“The best thing that we can do is understand the global trends that are taking place […] debasement and technological innovation, which crypto is at the intersection of. That provides the wind behind the sails of crypto as an asset class that should be considered for some allocation.”

*Jamie Coutts speaking at the Australian Crypto Convention on Sept. 17*

Last month, Swiss wealth management group Picket group advised against crypto investments “amid the recent industry turmoil.”

Picket Group CEO, Tee Fong, acknowledged that crypto is “an asset class that we cannot ignore” however doesn’t think there is “a place for private bankers and for private bank portfolios.”

Others suggest that institutional investors remain interested in crypto-related investments despite the market conditions.

Chief Investment Officer of Apollo Capital, Henrik Anderson, told Cointelegraph on Sept. 14 that although institutional interest has been slow in gaining momentum, there are many waiting on the sidelines, timing the market.

Anderson is optimistic about the future given that we’ve already “seen several of the major banks here in Australia taking an interest in digital assets,” with “ANZ and NAB” choosing to focus on “stablecoins and traditional asset tokenization rather than crypto investments specifically.”

Sports sponsorship is helping legitimize crypto in Australia — Coinjar exec

September 19, 2022 Coin Telegraph

AFL

Luke Ryan of CoinJar says sporting partnerships “helps shift the image of crypto away from the idea that it’s only there as speculative mania.”

The sponsorship of high-profile sports and teams may be key to legitimizing the crypto industry to the general masses, according to Luke Ryan, Head of Content at Australian crypto exchange CoinJar.

In May 2021, the exchange became the first crypto company in Australia to sponsor an Australian Football League (AFL) club by partnering with the Melbourne Demons.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Australian Crypto Convention on Sept. 18, Ryan remarked the AFL partnership changed the discussion around cryptocurrency in the country and that “it gives cryptocurrency a bigger sense of permanence.”

“Perhaps prior to this real punch into the sporting mainstream it was very easy for a lot of people to think ‘oh, this cryptocurrency thing, it's going to fade away, or it has already faded away,’” he said.

“There's a real declaration of intent by the industry, not necessarily about ‘we sponsor this team, and then we got X number of new users’, it's more about we sponsor this team because we want to show the world we’re companies with consequences, with plans and long term visions, and a way of showing that is to align ourselves with a really established presence.”

Ryan believes sports partnerships also give the opportunity for crypto companies to break new ground in terms of their user base and adoption.

He noted that part of what drew CoinJar to partner with an AFL team was the idea of promoting crypto and the exchange “outside of the established true believers who already have their favored platforms.”

“At a certain point, you're all just hacking into the same market,” he added.

“It's a real ongoing question for cryptocurrency as a whole, how do we move out from this 5 to 10% that we now talk to, to the 20 to 50%, and we've started to think a bit more about what it might look like to start getting more actively involved in sponsorship.”

The partnership between CoinJar and the Melbourne Demons has also meant other teams and the AFL itself have learned more about crypto, which Ryan supposes has made the asset more normalized to the organization.

“It’s meant they’ve had the space to ask questions and look into it a bit more and be like ‘ah, that’s quite interesting, we could really use that to better create a relationship with the fans.’”

“I think it's leading to a much more open attitude towards things like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and how they can be harnessed, it's all still primordial in the AFL sphere, but I certainly know there are very active discussions the AFL has got going.”

Ryan says the speculative nature of crypto is “undeniably what has gotten a lot of people into it” but isn’t what will make for a sustainable future entity. He added that “at some point, there has to be this transition towards actual products that people want to use.”

The AFL first 3,800 strong NFT collection in August sold out in under 12 hours raising an estimated $130,000 or more USD Coin (USDC). The AFL has already stated plans to expand its crypto offering to game day events, tickets and the chance to meet players in the Metaverse.

3 barriers preventing Web3 mass adoption — Trust Wallet CEO

September 19, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Australian Crypto Convention

Trust Wallet CEO says the current bear market could provide an opportunity for the Web3 industry to address consumer concerns before the next bull market.

Widespread adoption of Web3 mayeventually become a reality but Trust Wallet CEO Eowyn Chen foresees three main barriers standing in the way of mass adoption.

During the Australian Crypto Convention on Sept. 18, Chen outlined how security, ease of use, identity, and privacy were all vital aspects to address for growth in the Web3 industry.

Chen is the CEO of Trust Wallet, a major multi-chain, non-custodial crypto wallet acquired by Binance two years ago. She was speaking in a keynote presentation that was attended by Cointelegraph reporters on the ground in Queensland, Australia.

On the security front, Chen says protections should be in place to warn users "if a smart contract has potential issues,” such as a connection to a known scammer.

At the moment she explains “people who truly want to get confidence to navigate this smart contract,” have to read the code and check for any red flags before proceeding.

Eventually, she envisions users won't have to read the code of smart contracts at all, making them more accessible for everyone, stating:

"All the different parts of the industry need to work together so that we create a safer space for the mainstream users to come.”

“I believe there is a lot more that we can do, including all the chain ecosystems to have some sort of civil society self-governance,” she added.

However in her opinion the most "important" point to address "is the identity and privacy aspects," ensuring users are "real" and safe from having their private details exposed and making it easier for regulators to check compliance.

"When the U.S. was working on CBDC, they did research and the number one concern from the public is they're worried about the privacy issue associated with CBDCs.”

“We need to think about the future of the industry when you come on to regulations," she explained.

The current bear market has been the worst on record and has seen many crypto-related exchanges and businesses struggle, but Chen believes this could be an opportunity for the Web3 industry to address these three barriers before the next boom.

Chen says it will leave everyone working in the space in a perfect position for the future and signal that "our industry is extremely ready.”

“So that when the timing is right when the next bull market comes, we're ready and we can truly taking the industry from the early adopters and cross the chasm. To the right level of mass adoption.”

Overall, her vision for the web3 industry involves bringing a "positive change to the world's economic system" and building a sustainable long term relationship with users.

While also fulfilling “the true web three mission that we can empower and protect the users fundamental rights to access blockchain and control their assets and ownership free.”

"We have the mission to kind of build a better products with open access that empowers the users and builders and we must strive to be that open standard and to prevent monopolies."

Australian Crypto Convention

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