5000% is a staggering growth figure in anyone’s lexicon, but when a leading CEO in the financial services world speaks, people tend to listen. Nigel Green, the CEO and founder of The deVere Group, recently made such a prediction about not only Bitcoin, but the entire cryptocurrency market, which includes products, exchanges, and miners. The latest estimate of this entire market cap has been put at $400 billion. If it does expand 50 times over in the next ten years, then this figure could easily morph into $20 trillion.
Nigel Green’s enterprise, The deVere Group, is one of the largest, if not the largest, independent and international financial consultancy service provider in the world, with over 60 global offices supporting over 60,000 clients across the globe. Reporters have labelled his prediction as “bold”, but Green’s forecast actually coincides with the 10-year anniversary of Bitcoin’s inaugural move, the release of Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous whitepaper on how Bitcoin and Blockchain technology could revolutionize payments.
Bitcoin’s in circulation today are valued at roughly $110 billion, a far cry from the value of Nakamoto’s treatise at the time it was published. Governments, regulators, and bankers have tried their level best to stem the tide of this distributed value-exchange system, but to no avail. Although Bitcoin still commands a 52% share of all system coin valuations, there are now well over 1,100 competing systems in the marketplace, while major worldwide consulting firms and banks tout Blockchain technology as a key enabler of future financial service innovations.
Per Nigel: “Bitcoin is what kick-started the crypto revolution and it has changed the way the world makes transactions, does business, and manages assets, among other things, forever. It all began with Bitcoin. However, while I don’t wish to rain on anyone’s parade, I believe that Bitcoin’s influence and dominance of the cryptocurrency sector will drastically reduce in its second decade.”
He then added that “This is because, as mass adoption of cryptocurrency grows, more and more, digital assets will be launched – by organisations in both the private and the public sectors. This will increase competition for Bitcoin and dent its market share. In addition, it is likely that Bitcoin will be hit by the superior technology, features, and problem-solutions, offered by existing and yet-to-be-released cryptocurrencies.”
Why does Mr. Green see such growth potential in cryptocurrencies? Futurists tend to follow trends that they detect in surveys and interviews of countless industry insiders across multiple disciplines. The correlated undercurrents then become apparent and allow for such educated guesses about the future. In the case of cryptocurrencies, Green has observed a trend away from domestic fiat currencies that have continued to devalue with time. He sees the momentum building behind this wave, momentum that could accelerate over the next ten years.
Per Nigel, again: “The pace of mass adoption will speed up and the cryptocurrency market cap can reasonably be assumed to reach at least 5000% above its current valuation over the next decade.” $20 trillion may be ten years out, but compared to today’s total of securities traded across the planet of $300 trillion, cryptocurrencies could become a mainstay in our daily life in only its second decade. Time will tell us all.