During an interview on Monday (November 30), Tyler Winklevoss, Co-Founder and CEO of crypto exchange Gemini, and his twin brother Cameron Winklevoss explained why they expect the price of Bitcoin to reach $500,000 or more within the next decade.
Their comments about Bitcoin came during an interview earlier today with Seema Mody and Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”.
Mody started by asking Tyler what the twins have been doing during the past eight months while Bitcoin has been experiencing a “meteoric” price increase.
Tyler replied:
“So we’ve just been HODLing. Our thesis is that Bitcoin is gold 2.0 and it will disrupt gold. If it does that, it has to have a market cap of $9 trillion. So we think Bitcoin could price one day at $500,000 a bitcoin. So at $18,000 Bitcoin, it’s a HOLD or at least if you don’t have any, it’s a BUY opportunity because we think there’s a 25x from here.”
Mody then told Cameron for Bitcoin to have a $9 trillion market cap would mean that its market cap would have to equal 40% of the market cap of the S&P 500, and asked him what would take us there.
Cameron answered:
“I think a lot of it is just investors coming in and realizing that there’s a spectre of inflation out there and how do you protect against that. I think there’s not much of a debate about all the debt that’s increased in the U.S., the money printing, and so how do you defend against that…
“I think a lot of people are starting to realize that Bitcoin is really the best defense, and offers the opportunity for an asymmetric return of something like 25 to 40x from here. I don’t think there’s an asset in the universe that can credibly offer that kind of potential and protect against inflation.
“Gold is the classic hedge. If this was the 1970s, we would probably be buying and holding gold, but today we have Bitcoin.”
Mody then asked Tyler about Coinbase CEO’s concerns about rumored upcoming regulations around non-custodial wallets, and asked him what kind of impact that could have on Bitcoin.
Tyler said:
“Bitcoin is still the best performing asset of the year even compared to equities. Back in 2013, there was a question if Bitcoin was going to be outlawed. We’re way passed that. We believe in healthy, thoughtful regulation and that’s been the case in the US and many other jurisdictions for the last decade.
“We don’t see that not continuing. We think Bitcoin’s here to stay. We think thoughtful regulation around it in the U.S. and other sophisticated jurisdictions is also here to stay.”
Sorkin then asked how essential was it for Bitcoin to achieve mainstream adoption as a medium of exchange for the Bitcoin price to reach $500,000.
Cameron replied:
“So we think that Bitcoin’s really an emergent store of value, and so it doesn’t really need to be a great medium of exchange; it just needs to be better than gold and it’s better across the board…
Tyler then interrupted to say:
“No-one uses uses gold to buy coffee… Bitcoin just is a better store of value. That gets us to $500,000 Bitcoin conservatively. If it also can be used as a currency — which isn’t off the table — then it’s even higher.”
Next, Mody asked Tyler how could Bitcoin go mainstream when we know that the next U.S. Treasury Secretary, Dr. Janet Yellen is not a fan of Bitcoin.
Tyler said:
“We’re happy to educate and have a conversation. Maybe we should reach out to Janet Yellen and talk to her, but look when you see the likes of Paul Tudor Jones [and] Stanley Druckenmiller find Bitcoin and extolling its virtues, when you see companies like Square [and] MicroStrategy that are publicly traded putting their treasury into Bitcoin to protect their valuation because cash is trash and they’ve realized it, you know, that stuff does a lot to mainstream and at some point it’s just hard to look at tthose data points and deny that Bitcoin is an incredible tech, but it’s also an incredible store of value.”
