On Sunday (February 16), Charles Edwards, Co-Founder of digital asset management firm Capriole Investments said that, based on Bitcoin’s Energy Value, it is likely that the BTC price will reach $100K within the next five years.
As Edwards explained in a blog post published on 13 December 2019, he believes that “Bitcoin’s fair value is a function of energy input, supply growth rate and a constant representing the fiat dollar value of energy,” which led him to come up with the following equation that shows how we can determine Bitcoin’s Energy Value (V):
V = (Energy Input / Supply Growth Rate) * f
where
- “Energy Input (unit: Watts) = Hash Rate (GH/s) * Mining Energy Efficiency (J/GH)”
- “Supply Growth Rate (unit: s-1) = Annual increase in circulating Bitcoins, equivalent to the inverse of Stock-to-Flow. Calculated as the annual rate (unit: year-1) of change in circulating Bitcoins and then converted to seconds”
- “Fiat Factor ($USD/Joule) = A constant conversion factor to allow for the fiat USD value of energy”
Edwards then simplied this equation further (since “all units of hash rate and supply rate cancel out”), which meant that he was able to conclude that “he fair value of Bitcoin (V) can be represented as a function of the Joules of energy spent to produce it.”
Then, yesterday (February 16), Edwards explained via a tweetstorm that since Bitcoin’s Energy Value depends on Hash Rate (HR) and Mining Hardware Efficiency, by predicting what the values of these two variables will be in 2025, we can predict what the Energy Value will be at that time:
𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵
Bitcoin’s Energy Value has tracked Bitcoin’s price for the last 10 years.
Let’s use it to forecast price.
There are only two varying inputs in Energy Value:
⚡️Hash Rate
⚙️Mining Hardware efficiencyWe can forecast each of these to predict BTC's Price.
2/n
— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) February 16, 2020
Edwards expects the annual hash rate growth rate to drop to around 20% by 2025:
⚡️Hash Rate
Over the last 5yrs, Bitcoin’s HR has grown exponentially (linear on a log scale).
Assuming this relationship holds, but allowing for some market saturation, we can estimate that the HR growth rate drops from ~135% p.a. today to ~20% p.a. in 2025.
3/n pic.twitter.com/5U4d1AX0bL
— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) February 16, 2020
He expects the annual rate of improvement in mining hardware efficiency to drop to around 16% by 2025:
⚙️Mining Hardware efficiency
Energy efficiency has also improved exponentially.
But the annual rate of improvement has fallen from over 400% in 2015 to 50% last year.
I expect this trend of declining improvement will continue.
4/n pic.twitter.com/E9eSDZ3lX5
— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) February 16, 2020
He then says that this means a fair value of $100K for Bitcoin by 2025:
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁
Combining these estimates for HR and Efficiency, Bitcoin’s Energy Value should reach $𝟭𝟬𝟬𝗞 by 2025.
🧠 Sanity check: $100K Bitcoin = 1.8T market cap.
✅That's just 20% Gold’s market cap5/n
— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) February 16, 2020
Interestingly, he also points out that this $100K forecast is a conservative estimate:
𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝟭
Because the HR forecast is below the historic trendline, and the efficiency forecast is above the trendline, both forecasts can be considered historically conservative.
–> $100K Energy Value is conservative.
11/n
— Charles Edwards (@caprioleio) February 16, 2020
Featured Image by “pattymalajak” via Pixabay.com