Bitcoin insiders begin making public 2014 price projections

For those that view bitcoin as a purely speculative phenomenon, price is everything. Sure, a groundbreaking technology that allows value to be exchanged instantly, anywhere in the world, very nearly for free and without the need for any middlemen or gate keepers is fine, but you generally can’t pay rent with good ideas. Speculators simply want good information about how much their investment is likely to grow, so they can make a reasonably good bet about the best time to cash out. Infuriatingly for them, most bitcoin industry insiders have taken the long view on value, and few will give hard predictions about how much bitcoin’s value will rise on any timeline.

At the CoinSummit today in London, a few brave bitcoin-business leaders decided it was high time to place some hard numbers behind the “major growth” platitude. According to CoinDesk, three major players in the field were willing to give the audience their personal price projections.

BitPay-backing venture capitalist Geoff Lewis of Founders Fund claims that bitcoin will reach $2,000 by the end of 2014. Newly installed CEO of itBit, Chad Cascarillo, is a bit more conservative, guessing bitcoin will only reach about $1,850 by the end of 2014, although he expects it will hi $18,500 by 2017. An even more conservative guess came from Bay Hill Capital trader Alec Petro, who suspects that BTC will climb back to its former all-time-high of $1,200 by the end of the year, and will be trading for a mere $3,000 by the end of 2017.

Speaking with the Telegraph, bitcoin investor and advocate Roger Ver was a bit more bold.

I actually think $2000 is a pretty conservative estimate. We don’t know for sure if it’s going to happen in this year, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Bitcoin’s price is going to be thousands of dollars and, almost for sure, tens of thousands of dollars for one.”

Ver also noted that bitcoin is a global phenomenon with a relatively limited supply. There are not enough bitcoin in circulation to give a whole BTC to every person in England, he told the Telegraph. With that kind of demand, he said, the price is likely to rise “a heck of a lot more than it is today.”