Kraken CEO Jesse Powell says the value of Bitcoin is rising so quickly that it might be easier to measure its price against supercars rather than the dollar.
Powell, head of one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, suggested Bitcoin (BTC) could be the same price as a Lamborghini before 2021 is over, and worth more than a Bugatti in 2022.
Speaking on Bloomberg TV, the cryptocurrency veteran also tipped Polkadot (DOT) to be the next Ethereum.
“It might be easier to understand if we measure it in terms of Teslas,” he said on the price of Bitcoin.
“Probably by the end of the year it will be one Bitcoin per Lambo, and probably by the end of next year it will be one Bitcoin per Bugatti.
“To me and to the crypto community those kinds of assets it make it easier to measure that way because you never know where the dollar’s going to be – there could be ten times as many dollars out a year from now, so it’s really hard to measure Bitcoin against the dollar.”
Turning his attention to Ethereum, he suggested the price would exceed $2,000, but highlighted that Vitalik Buterin’s brainchild was under an enormous amount of stress.
Ethereum locked up
“What I can say about Ethereum is there’s a process now to move your coins onto the new Ethereum blockchain – the proof of stake chain – which is Ethereum 2.0, and in the process of that you actually burn your Ethereum 1.0 and that is basically locked up for an indefinite amount of time – it could be years,” he explained.
“That’s constraining the supply of Ethereum, and I think we’re seeing more and more projects on Ethereum – all of the NFT activity is really driving up the use of Ethereum.
“Hard to predict but I think we’ll see north of $2,000 a coin for Ethereum by the end of this year.”
Asked what coins he would single out as potential big performers, Mr Powell took no hesitation in turning the spotlight on Polkadot.
“The other hot coin really is Polkadot which is sort of the next Ethereum, many people think,” he enthused.
“There are a lot of other coins being launched on top of this network and I think you’ll see a lot of things that were on Ethereum be ported on to Polkadot for lower transaction fees.”
One of the original cryptocurrency exchanges, Kraken recently passed the half million mark for the amount of Ether within its platform.
The decade-old exchange saw its 500,000th ETH placed with validators earlier this month as a combined worth of $890 million of Ethereum’s native coin was notched.
Kraken was one of the first cryptocurrency exchanges to offer secure on-chain ETH2 staking services back in early December.