IBM Blockchain VP Justifies $1mln. For Bitcoin

Jesse Lund, who is the vice president of IBM’s Blockchain and crypto currencies division, has forecast a price of $1 million for Bitcoin in the future. Lund shared his forecast in a YouTube interview that was released to the public a few days ago.

In the final minutes of the interview, the IBM VP was questioned about the likely price of Bitcoin by the end of 2019. Without giving any specific price, Lund said that it will certainly be above the current price. He further stated the price of Bitcoin to be more than $5,000. Finally, Lund said “I see Bitcoin at a million dollars someday.”

Lund also justified why Bitcoin could hit a million dollar. According to him “If Bitcoin is at a million dollars then satoshi is on value parity with the US penny.” This implies that the overall value of Bitcoin network, based on liquidity, will be over $20 trillion.

With such liquidity, Lund believes that huge payments from corporates could undergo a radical change. Lund said “I see maybe $5,000 at the end of the year, but I see a way higher upward trajectory.”

While discussing about Bitcoin, Lund spoke about IBM’s association with Stellar network and how the latter will be utilized with IBM’s global payment network named Blockchain World Wire or BWW. IBM utilizes stellar not only in its BWW venture but also an intermediate currency to pay transaction fees.

According to the Lund, IBM is also looking for right opportunities to work with other crypto currencies. Lund believes that there “should be an ecosystem of, a variety of digital assets that provide settlement instrumetns that enable these cross-border payments, and the participants in the network should be able to choose and negotiate their choises in real-time.”

He further said, “It could be Ripple, it could be XRP even, it could be Bitcoin, but it would also probably include other instruments, like stablecoins, and even eventually soon – hopefully – central bank-issued digital currencies.”

Lund also explained the difference between Ripple’s payment network, RippleNet, and IBM’s payment network. He highlighted the fact that IBM’s payment network is not dependent on a native cryptocurrency.

It can be remembered that BankDhofar, Oman’s second largest bank on the basis of market capitalization, recently joined as a member of RippleNet. The Oman bank primarily signed up as a member with RippleNet to facilitate instantaneous payments to India.

IBM targeted launching BWW in September 2018, after completing its joint work with Stellar more than a year earlier. Furthermore, a week before, Coinsquare, one of the popular cryptocurrency exchanges in Canada, took over StellarX, a Stellar blockchain based decentralized exchange.