The head of the largest cryptocurrency exchange globally has forecasted a growth of over a thousand times for cryptocurrencies in the near future.
Changpeng Zhao, a Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur and the founder of Binance, predicts an exponential rise in cryptocurrency value. Zhao, who previously developed software for futures trading and worked at the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg, launched Binance last year, raising $15 million through an initial coin offering. By May of this year, his fortune was estimated at $1.39 billion from almost nothing.
Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of Ethereum, recently suggested that expecting such enormous gains in cryptocurrency prices is unrealistic. Buterin stated, ‘The blockchain space is getting to the point where there’s a ceiling in sight. If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore.’
In response, Zhao said, ‘I still disagree with this. I say crypto will absolutely grow 1000x and more. Just reaching the US Dollar market cap will give it close to 1000x – that’s just one currency with severely restricted use case – and the derivatives market is so much bigger.’
Zhao highlighted the erroneous nature of measuring new technologies or industries by traditional market sizes. He remarked, ‘You also can’t use traditional market size to measure the potential for new technologies or industries. If you used – and people have – taxi market size to estimate Uber’s potential, you would be off by quite a bit.’
The ongoing debate between industry giants like Buterin and Zhao underscores the speculative nature of the cryptocurrency market, where expectations of monumental growth continue to spark discussions.