Kraken CEO on Bitcoin: “It’s Going to Infinity”

In an interview with Bloomberg, Kraken CEO and founder Jesse Powell gave a perplexing prediction of Bitcoin’s future value: “When you measure it in terms of dollars, you have to think it’s going to infinity.”

Powell was quick to justify his comment by painting a future where instead of comparing Bitcoin to fiat currencies in order to determine the value of an item, prices are considered solely in Bitcoin:

I think pretty soon people are gonna start measuring the price of things in term of Bitcoin. I think the true believers will tell you that it’s going all the way to the moon, to Mars, and eventually will be the world’s currency. So we won’t be measuring the price of Bitcoin in terms of dollars, but what else you’re going to be buying with it – probably planets or other solar systems.

Certainly optimistic by most standards, Powell painted a picture of a post-fiat world, where items are valued in Bitcoin rather than government-backed currencies. 

[Bitcoins could be worth] whatever the market cap of the dollar is, the euro, all of that combined.

When pressured to give a numeric answer to Bitcoin’s future price, Powell suggested that a price target of $1 million over the next 10 years would be “reasonable”. Powell suggested that Bitcoin’s increased in price is tied to the inflation of the US dollar, as people see Bitcoin as a “safe haven asset” in the face of unreliable returns on savings accounts. Powell also spoke on Kraken’s upcoming round of investment, touching on Kraken’s valuation of $10 billion dollars, and the potential of Kraken going public in the future:

We’re certainly on track to go public, we’ve had a lot of inbound interest in financing, in people buying shares in the company. Personally, I think $10 billion dollars is a low valuation – I wouldn’t be interested in selling shares at that price.

Ending off the interview, Powell expressed sentiments that seemingly concur with the recent attitude of cryptocurrency enthusiasts: 

I’m a long term holder. There’s no reason to sell Bitcoin, and I think a lot of other people are just waiting to buy the dip, these ‘hodlers of last resort’.

There are a lot of weak hands out there, they come in, they day trade, they don’t really understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin, but I think there are enough people out there see that Bitcoin is the future and are holding long term.