On Thursday (January 10th), Ran Neu-Ner, the host of CNBC Africa’s “Crypto Trader” show, released the video of a discussion he had recently with Anthony Pompliano (Founder and Partner at Morgan Creek Digital, as well as the host of the “Off the Chain” podcast) about the future of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2019.
Pompliano, who goes by the nickname “Pomp” (@APompliano) is a highly influential figure in the crypto community on Twitter and his “Off the Chain” podcast, which was only launched a few months, has already become one of the most popular and important podcasts in the crypto space.
So, it was quite fitting that CNBC’s “Crypto Trader” decided to have Pompliano as a guest for the first episode of his show in 2019, and he chosen to make the focus of this episode be predictions for the future of cryptocurrencies, especially, Bitcoin, in 2019. Although this episode also featured two other guests, for the purpose of this article, we focus on Pompliano’s comments about Bitcoin.
Q: Do You Think the Worst is Over?
“I don’t think that we’ve got that much farther to fall, but I also don’t think that it’s over. The likelihood that we have a major recovery in 2019 is probably low in my opinion.”
Q: What Makes You Think That?
“I think it’s likely that we go sideways for a while. If you look at Bitcoin’s price, maybe somewhere between $2,500 and $4,440, for a good portion of the year, is probably likely based on what we are seeing.”
Q: How Do You See Bitcoin Adoption Taking Place and What Do You Think Will Be the Big Story for Bitcoin in 2019?
“Adoption could be broken down in a couple of different ways, but all the underlying fundamentals show that adoption has continued to increase even through the bear market. So, if you look at the hash rate, it 4X-ed in 2018. If you look at the number of transactions from March 2018 through December, it continued to increase. And over $400 billion was settled onchain for Bitcoin last year. So, I think that’s only going to continue in 2019 and beyond.”
Q: Is the Lightning Network Going to Be the Big Story of 2019?
“Yeah, I mean, Lightning, the growth there is incredible.. In less than 10 months, they went from zero payment channels to over 18,000. They literally added a thousand payment channels last week in about three days. So, I think that’s just going to continue to grow as more people understand what it is, they join the network… And I think, when we think of adoption around Bitcoin, this isn’t just a one year exercize. We’re talking about a five to ten year exercize, but every single day counts, and Lightning is obviously one of the fastest growing things around scalability and usability.”
Q: So, Is Lightning the Biggest Bitcoin Story of 2019?
“I think it’s probably one of the stories. The other two stories are if a retail product gets approved, I think, will be big, and the third is, actually, who is buying. I think previously to 2018, we saw a lot of retail investors, almost the majority [were] retail, but institutions are starting to come in, slowly but surely. And so, it would be a huge deal if sovereign wealths or pensions or anybody like that started to buy Bitcoin, and I think we’ll see that in 2019.”
Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pexels.com
