A decade from now, will one Bitcoin be worth $100 or $100,000? According to Harvard professor and economist Kenneth Rogoff, the former is way more likely.
Rogoff, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) former chief economist, told CNBC that Bitcoin’s “actual uses as a transaction vehicle are very small”—certainly when compared with its utility for money-laundering and tax evasion, which regulators around the world are trying to suppress.
“I think Bitcoin will be worth a tiny fraction of what it is now if we’re headed out 10 years from now,” he said. “I would see $100 as being a lot more likely than $100,000.”
It’s fair to say that Rogoff does not share the sentiment of some in the cryptocurrency community, who think Bitcoin will head “to the moon.”
While Rogoff is bullish on a shift away from cash, he doesn’t seem too keen on the world’s leading cryptocurrency. Back in October last year—as Bitcoin was in the middle of a momentous rise that came to an end months later—he wrote that regulation would pop the growing bubble.
“It is one thing for governments to allow small anonymous transactions with virtual currencies; indeed, this would be desirable,” Rogoff wrote at the time. “But it is an entirely different matter for governments to allow large-scale anonymous payments, which would make it extremely difficult to collect taxes or counter criminal activity.”
Following successive crashes at the end of last year and start of 2018—which were largely precipitated by regulatory crackdowns in Asia and elsewhere—Bitcoin has slowly recovered some of its losses. Before the crashes, it almost reached $20,000 in value; at its low point, it neared $6,000. Currently, one Bitcoin is worth around $11,300.
