Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, known as the Winklevoss twins, recently argued that bitcoin could see its value grow 40 times from where it is now, as it will disrupt the $7 trillion gold market.
According to CryptoCompare, bitcoin is currently trading at $8,413 and the cryptocurrency’s market cap is $141 billion, as it recently started recovering from a violent sell-off that saw it dip to little over $6,000. If it were to rise 40-fold, its market cap would surpass $5 trillion giving a single bitcoin a value north of $250,000.
Speaking to CNBC at the Milken Institute’s MENA Summit, Cameron Winklevoss stated that bitcoin has the potential to appreciate “30 to 40 times,” as the twins believe the cryptocurrency disrupts gold thanks to its fixed supply, portability, fungibility, and durability. All of these characteristics, to Cameron, are more present in bitcoin than in gold.
The twin stated:
“So if you look at a $100 billion market cap today, now last week it might have been more like 200, so it's actually a buying opportunity, we think that there's a potential appreciation of 30 to 40 times because you look at the gold market today, it's a $7 trillion market. And so a lot of people are starting to see that, they recognize the store of value properties. So we think regardless of the price moves in the last few weeks, it's still a very underappreciated asset.”
Even if we take Cameron’s $100 billion market cap, a 40 times price appreciation would see bitcoin’s market cap hit $4 trillion. The twin didn’t reveal a specific time period for the cryptocurrency to hit the trillion-dollar value, but according to CNBC his brother Tyler mentioned they were taking a 10-to-20-year approach.
The Winklevoss twins are famously known for settling a dispute with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2008, over a claim that he stole their idea for the social network. They then got involved with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Soon after, the Winklevoss were credited with becoming the first known bitcoin billionaires,however that titled has slipped at the current bitcoin value.
The Winklevoss Twins On Crypto ‘s Critics
The twins were then questioned on their thoughts regarding some of the crypto space’s most fervent critics, including JP Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon who famously called bitcoin a “fraud,” and billionaire investor Warren Buffett who said cryptocurrencies would “come to a bad ending.”
In response, Tyler Winklevoss said their criticisms are just a “failure of the imagination.” He went on to state cryptocurrencies “aren’t really important for human-to-human transactions,” clarifying that when machines trade economic value between themselves they won’t open a bank account at JP Morgan, but will instead use protocols like that of bitcoin or ethereum.
The twin then described a world in which, for example, driverless cars pay other cars, or a large number of devices make micro-transactions on a regular basis.
