PayPal’s Founder Positive on Bitcoin; Not So Much For Other Cryptos

Published on 27 October 2017 by Cryptovest Staff

While he championed the crypto, he did raise some concerns. His comments came during the same week that a Wall Street analyst speculated that Bitcoin’s market cap could exceed Apple’s within five years.

Bitcoin is indeed having a good run – topping $6,100 recently. The gains are reasons Thiel and the analyst are positive on the digital currency. Let’s go over some of their thoughts.

Quite an endorsement

Thiel’s comments came at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, reported CNBC. It was noted that Thiel believes Bitcoin could become the digital equivalent of gold.

“If bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold it has a great potential left,” he said, “Bitcoin is mineable like gold, it’s hard to mine, it’s actually harder to mine than gold. And so in that sense it’s more constrained,” he added.

Despite Thiel’s enthusiasm about Bitcoin, he did raise some reservations about the myriad cryptocurrencies available now. He doesn’t think that the others have the same potential as Bitcoin. He referred to Bitcoin as serving as a “reserve form of money.”

Bitcoin soaring value

Thiel’s comments come on the heels of some very ambitious predictions about its soaring market cap. We told you this week about how a Wall Street analyst predicted that it could exceed Apple’s in the next five years. As noted above, Bitcoin’s price hit a record $6,100 this weekend. Having correctly predicted that Bitcoin would touch $5,000 this year, Analyst Ronnie Moas, founder and head of Standpoint Research, foresees it going higher, pushing its market cap to $1 trillion. Apple’s market cap is roughly $800 billion. Moas is widely known for being spot on in his prediction that Bitcoin’s price would surge to $5,000 when bitcoin was trading at $2,600.

“People need to start taking this seriously because today bitcoin caught up with Goldman Sachs. Within five years, it's going to catch Apple which has a more than $800 billion market cap,” the analyst said in an interview with CNBC.