BTC Price Driven by Speculation not Utility
According to the Chief Executive Officer of crypto merchant platform BitPay, Stephen Pair the price of Bitcoin (BTC) was driven more by speculation on its future mass adoption rather than by its actual current utility.
Pair stated that a very large part of Bitcoin’s price is speculation, wherein those investing in the cryptocurrency are gambling on the future usage of the digital asset and the adoption of its related Blockchain technology. He said that only a small component of the crypto’s historic price highs were related to its current utility.
Mass Adoption of Blockchain Based Payments
According to Pair, mass adoption will be the key driver of BTC’s price in the future, and BitPay is focused on creating the supporting infrastructure to make this possibility a reality.
When asked about Bitcoin ETF’s and how they would impact the cryptocurrency’s price, Pair stated that there were many drivers that helped Bitcoin achieve its 2017 highs besides Exchange Traded Funds.
He said that as more and more users look for more cryptocurrency payment support across a wider range of retail and transaction applications, his platform’s current trading volume of about $1 billion per year could go up as high as $10 billion or even $100 billion per year.
He said that once the mass adoption of Blockchain based payments systems took place, the price of Bitcoin would once again shoot up to the highs seen in December 2017.
Blockchain Beyond Cryptos
Pair’s most significant comment was that he expected Blockchain technology to grow far beyond the cryptocurrency space. In fact, he believed that this technology would become accepted as the default database style for most industries.
The CEO of BitPay stated that he believed that in the next 3 to 5 years, Blockchain based payments systems would be an everyday thing. He said that one would be able to walk into a restaurant or any retail establishment and expect to have support for making payments in cryptocurrencies.
Pair also stated that this mass adoption would extend beyond just BTC as more and more Blockchain powered digital assets would become the default means of storing as well as transferring value.
He said that BitPay’s theory was that most cryptos would be issued on a Blockchain, and that most payments would also be issued on a Blockchain. And to that end, he said, BitPay was building a platform that would cater to such a future.
Pair stated in his interview that it wasn’t just about cryptocurrencies that were being trading today. It was also about issuing dollars and other fiat currencies via a Blockchain platform.