Virgin Galactic Chairman and CEO of Social Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, says bitcoin has already taken the place of gold. Having predicted the price of the cryptocurrency to reach $200,000, the executive said, “Bitcoin’s market cap will increase.”
Palihapitiya: ‘I can confidently say that Bitcoin has effectively replaced gold’
Virgin Galactic President Chamath Palihapitiya spoke about bitcoin in an interview with CNBC at the Deliver Alpha Conference last week. The billionaire executive is also the founder and CEO of Social Capital.
Earlier this year, Palihapitiya predicted that the price of BTC would reach $200,000 in about five years. Commenting on his price forecast, he said Wednesday:
It is very difficult for me to sit here to give you a price prediction, but I can say with confidence that Bitcoin, I believe, has effectively replaced gold. and will continue to do so. So the market value will grow.
Bitcoin price is $48,093 and has a market capitalization of $905.8 billion at the time of writing, based on data from Bitcoin.com Markets.
Palihapitiya has long been a supporter of Bitcoin. He revealed last year: “In 2013 I bought a lot and at one point I thought I had roughly 5% of all bitcoins. My base is about $80 a coin. I’ve never bought more before.”
The billionaire investor was quoted last week as saying: “I obviously haven’t put a lot of money out of bitcoin. You know, tens of millions, hundreds of millions — like a small capital now. It can get pretty big. But no matter what I do, I’ll say we all are. I need to pay attention to it because I think the implications are massive.”
He explained that cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (defi) are part of Web 3.0 while Google and Facebook dominated the first two versions of the Internet. The head of Virgin Galactic said the next stage of the internet’s evolution “is to rebuild all of that stuff without a clear leader”. “He’s totally decapitated. He’s totally peer-to-peer. And I think that’s both scary and exhilarating at the same time.”
Palihapitiya has also reportedly commented on whether regulators can kill bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Some people, like Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, have warned that governments may kill cryptocurrencies if they become truly successful. However, many others have said that it is not possible to kill cryptocurrency, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently suggested that governments should “do nothing” to regulate or control crypto.
Palihapitiya saw:
I think it’s very difficult to kill [bitcoin]. Technically, it is very difficult. Just the way it’s engineered, it’s the deepest iteration of the internet we’ve seen.
Do you agree with Chamath Palihapitiya that Bitcoin has replaced gold? Let us know in the comments section below.
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