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| By Chris Coney |
If you’re one of my regular readers, you probably already know that I’m not a fan of making predictions.
The principal reason for that is because you can’t predict the future. Although some people may think otherwise, it’s impossible to know what will happen with 100% accuracy.
That’s why today, I want to explore the high probability of Bitcoin (BTC, “A-”) hitting the $140,000 mark.
As a reminder, there’s no guarantee this will happen. But there’s a high likelihood that BTC can achieve this price.
In fact, anyone can arrive at this estimate based on Bitcoin’s unique properties and facts we know about it right now.
Fixed Supply
In the words of internationally renowned economist Dr. Saifedean Ammous, Bitcoin established the world’s first “economic constant.”
You see, until Bitcoin existed, there was no “ground state” in economics. In other words, there was nothing fixed to measure against.
For example, in engineering, you can use meters and kilograms as a ground state. These are objective measurements that allow for precise calculations that you can use to build things like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
That building is a whopping 828 meters tall and still standing.
Indeed, this amazing architectural feat is only possible because of fixed measurements that do not change over time. This is what allows thousands of different part manufacturers, who don’t know each other, to make building parts that fit together and work.
Until Bitcoin came along, economics had nothing like this. In traditional finance, everything is relative.
This is especially true considering the U.S. dollar went off the gold standard — a monetary system where the value of a currency is backed by gold — in 1971. And the British pound did the same in the early 1900s.
After that, these currencies did not have a fixed supply nor a fixed value. They just floated freely in relation to all other goods and services.
So, with its fixed supply, Bitcoin created the world's first economic constant — 21 million BTC.
No More Algebra
If I say, A x C = B, and then ask you what B is, would you be able to solve this equation?
No, because there’s not enough information to work with. In fact, there’s nothing for you to work on, since no numbers were given.
Sure, you could play around by replacing A and C with random numbers. But they would be arbitrary and meaningless since you just picked them out of the air.
That’s what it’s currently like with USD, since it’s not backed by anything.
But with Bitcoin’s economic constant of 21 million, we now have an anchor: 21 million BTC x B = C.
In this case, B is the price of Bitcoin and C is the market cap.
How We Hit $70,000 Bitcoin
In November 2021, Bitcoin hit its all-time high.
At this high, BTC’s market cap was $1.309 trillion. That’s because at the time, there was 18.9 million BTC in circulation at a price of $68,958.
Now, I arrived at this calculation by plugging these three numbers in the formula mentioned above, A x B = C:
18.9 million coins x $68,958 = $1.3 trillion.
But wait. I said the economic constant was Bitcoin’s max supply of 21 million … so why did I just use 18.9 million?
Well, that’s because that’s how many coins were in circulation at the time. Of course, you can run the formula again with our economic constant instead:
21 million x $68,958 = $1.44 trillion.
So, if BTC hit a price of $68,958 with all 21 million coins in circulation, it would achieve a market cap of $1.44 trillion.
This is known as the fully diluted market cap — i.e., the market cap if all the supply of coins had been issued.
Since Bitcoin tops out at a supply of 21 million, you can do all your math with this number and ignore how many coins are actually circulating.
This is better for two reasons:
- You’re using the same economic constant from one experiment to the next.
- Your predictions will be more conservative than reality.
Indeed, using the same economic constant from one experiment to the next means you can make meaningful comparisons between them. This is because they’re all anchored in that 21 million BTC constant.
How We Hit $140,000 Bitcoin
Now we can play around with the math in a meaningful way by inserting our economic constant and our target price, with the last number being Bitcoin’s market cap:
21 million x $140,000 = $2.94 trillion.
So, in the next bull market, if BTC hits a market cap of just 2x the last all-time high, we are looking at a whopping $140,000 Bitcoin price.
And again, that’s conservative because I’m assuming all 21 million coins will be circulating at that time … which they won’t be.
The Probability
The question is: Can Bitcoin double the market cap it achieved in 2021?
Well, let’s put it this way. When BTC hit its all-time high in 2021, its market cap was 4.5x larger than its previous peak in 2017.
Now, the probability of doing 4.5x the 2021 market cap is low because as Bitcoin gets bigger, its volatility will drop.
But if we can achieve half as much growth (2.25x the previous market cap), then we have a good chance of reaching — and perhaps even exceeding — a Bitcoin price of $140,000.
Conclusion
With this framework, you can now run your own hypothetical experiments.
Because we know with 100% certainty that the fixed BTC supply is 21 million, you can use different numbers to that anchor and see where they float relative to each other.
But BTC is the only cryptocurrency you can do this with.
You can’t do this with Ethereum (ETH, “B”) since it has no fixed supply. Additionally, ETH is constantly being created and destroyed in unknown amounts, giving it no consistent anchor.
Indeed, Bitcoin is special because it created the world's first economic constant.
And that is why we, in the Bitcoin community, refer to its value as: “everything divided by 21 million.”
But that’s all I’ve got for you today. Let me know what you think about the probability of Bitcoin’s price hitting $140,000 by tweeting @WeissCrypto.
I’ll catch you here next week with another update.
But until then, it’s me, Chris Coney, saying bye for now.
