Will it be?
If McAfee is right about Bitcoin, what would your investment look like?
John McAfee’s $1 million Bitcoin price prediction gained notoriety back in 2018 for its outrageous price tag, with McAfee putting everything on the line in order to back up his belief. But let’s imagine for a second that McAfee right about BTC… What would your investment look like?
The year is 2020, US president-elect, John McAfee, awaits formal inauguration; and Bitcoin has hit an all-time high of $1,000,000 per coin, as per McAfee’s infamous prediction. Best of all, the masses are saved the ordeal of watching their new president eat his appendage on national television…
If the Many-World’s interpretation of quantum mechanics holds true, this is very much a reality that will be happening at some point, in some reality, could it be ours? Who knows.
But if McAfee’s prediction did actually come true, how much better off would you be if you invested today?
First things first, let’s take a look at the prediction itself…
The predicktion
On the 17th of July 2017, McAfee replied to a Tweet asking if Bitcoin (BTC) would reach $500K within 3 years; with an equal measure of bravado and kind of Dutch courage only years of hard drugs and alcohol can give you, McAfee made the fateful prediction, along with a peculiar proviso:
The eccentric security magnate, later revised this prediction, because 500k was far too conservative…
Although, not to be pedantic, but McAfee actually stated that he would eat his appendage if, “Bircoin” reached 1 million by 2020. Bircoin…
What’s Bircoin? Well, according to Etherscan, Bircoin an ERC-20 token with a total supply of 87 million and pretty short transaction history…
… but with a market cap of $0 Bircoin probably won’t hit the 2020 dickline deadline.
Return on investment?
Typos and bad jokes aside let’s look at the real reason your reading this right now: what your investment be worth if McAfee was right.
Let’s assume that we do in fact inhabit the reality in which BTC reaches $1 million by 2020, How much better off would you be? Enough to live comfortably? Lambo? Total financial security?
Coinmarketcap currently puts the price of BTC at $3,910 at these level BTC would need to increase by approximately 25000% within the next 661 days. That’s a year and 9 months.
Stranger things have happened…
Initial investment:
$100
A conservative $100 would net you a cool return on investment (ROI) of $25000, not bad for a short term investment, especially with such good low-risk high reward ratio. A return like this isn’t quite enough to buy a Lambo… but you could rent one! Or pay off your mortgage, you know, whichever you see as a priority…
$1000
We’re getting slightly more into the territory of substantial wagers now, a grand would return a significant $250,000. And suddenly like that we’re in Lambo town, with this kind of dollar you could blow (nearly) all of it on the cheapest model, the Lamborghini Huracan.
“Cheap” is pretty relative when it comes to luxury Italian sports cars, this model would set you back $199,800, leaving you just enough to pay off a chunk of that mortgage, or student debt…
$10000
This would net you an ROI of $2.5 million, you’re officially a millionaire. Well done. What did it take? A fairly risky punt based dogged determination. Not bad.
With $2.5 million you could buy a few Lambos, a fairly nice apartment in New York City, or, if you’re feeling particularly frivolous you could be a $1 million, diamond-encrusted iPhone…
Although it’s worth noting, that is the iPhone 5… probably get a little discount as its an older model.
$100,000
Its probably safe to say, for the average person, at an ROI of $25 million you’re financially secure for a lifetime, possibly even your kid’s lifetime.
$1,000,000
An investment of $1 million would bag you a sweet $250 million. This kind of return opens up a whole new world, literally, you could buy part of the world, a small private island in the Bahamas or something…
$1,000,000,000
An investment of $1 billion would equal an ROI of $250 billion. You’re officially the richest person in the world, congrats.
Is $1 million really possible?
McAfee, being, the kind of stubborn bull he is, never truly stood down from his 2020 prediction no matter how unlikely it seems. In fact, in an interview with the Cointelegraph McAfee was quoted as saying:
“It’s very simple, I’m a mathematician. As you run the numbers, the number of people using Bitcoin and the number of transactions, it’s escalating tremendously. That’s the true value… The true value is going to eventually be based upon usage and if you track the usage curve, a million dollars by the end of 2020 is conservative.”
That’s McAfee’s rationale, and, it appears he’s not alone…
Interestingly, many others share McAfee’s vision for BTC, albeit not all of them bet their genitals on it.
One of these people is Lou Kerner, a notable crypto influencer and partner at Crypto Oracle, a cryptocurrency investment and advisory firm.
Back at the start of 2019, Kerner stated that BTC could overtake gold’s $8 trillion dollar market cap, on the proviso that it becomes a respected store of value”.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Kerner stated that BTC is “a better store of value [over gold]” adding that as soon as the world comes around to that view BTC could see a price tag of $100k in no time – a price that would put us nicely on track towards McAfee’s prediction.
Thankfully, due to the ingenuity of one diehard bitcoin fanatic we see just how on track we are to track the 2020 deadline.
Using the Bitcoin Price Prediction Tracker tool located via the aptly named domain Bircoin.top, we can see just how far behind or, indeed ahead, McAfee’s prediction is on its journey to completion.
As of right now, the tracker is citing that BTC is 90% below the price it should be in order to achieve a price point of 1 million by 2020.
The current price should be around $41K if the prediction curve is anything to go by:
However, there is still hope, as anyone who’s been in crypto long enough will tell you, volatility can change circumstances in a heartbeat.
Interestingly, according to the tracker, in order to get back on track BTC must hit the 100k mark by September 2019, and this doesn’t seem like as much of a stretch, especially if the narratives of BTC becoming a safe haven asset similar to gold are to be believed …
In fact, if BTC reaches even close to the near $8 trillion market cap of gold, 1 BTC would be worth approximately $400k, which is pretty much half way there…
So, there you have it. Will the prediction ring true? Probably not in the time frame. But beyond? Who knows.
