Bitcoin to $250K Once Gold's MarketCap Is Overtaken? | Samson Mow, CSO at Blockstream

Bitcoin is the alpha and the omega. It's the beginning and the end. There's nothing bitcoin can't do that other projects can do. I think within the next five years we'll pass 100k. So there's no reason why bitcoin can't surpass gold. And if it does surpass gold, that is about 250k per bitcoin. There's no difference between a private blockchain and a database.

Many people in the industry are saying that bitcoin was a good start for cryptocurrency, but it will eventually be replaced by better cryptocurrencies, which will be faster, more scalable, more efficient. What is your response to these kind of statements?

I think that's ridiculous. Bitcoin is the alpha and the omega. It's the beginning and the end. I think some people have taken an interesting at a virgin birth. Whereas all these other projects, there's somebody behind it, somebody creating it, or there's a company or a foundation somewhere. So they're all able to be controlled in some way if someone wanted to control it. But nobody can control Bitcoin, so it is never going to be replaceable. And the arguments about faster transactions, well, that only matters if it's a payment system. But Bitcoin is not a payment system. The lightning network is a payment system and that's built on top of Bitcoin. And we have systems like liquid networks sitting on top of Bitcoin as well that allow for faster transfers. But in general, sidechains can help to expand Bitcoin too by adding specialized layers for different purposes. So Bitcoin can ultimately do everything. There's nothing Bitcoin can't do that other projects can do.

But for example, Ethereum can be used to build smart contracts on top of it. That's something that Bitcoin cannot do. And I don't think that anybody can control Ethereum because it's also.

Ethereum is controllable by Vitalik and his Coneys. Right? They can roll it back. We saw that with the DAO hack. When the Ethereum was hacked, they just said, okay, we're rolling it back. And that's why we have etc, which is proof Ethereum was changed. I mean, you can do smart contracts in Ethereum, but you can also do smart contracts in Bitcoin. It's just that they've marketed smart contracts more aggressively. So people think, okay, Ethereum is synonymous with smart contracting. But they create a complex system to create this smart contract that really does One thing which is create a token. That's really all Ethereum smart contracts are for, to create a token. And you could do that on the liquid network. And if you really wanted to create a smart contract, you can also do that with Bitcoin. But you wouldn't build the logic of the smart contract into the Bitcoin smart contract. The Bitcoin smart contract would just do the payout of the result of the smart contract, whereas Ethereum wants to incorporate that smart contract in. But what that does is it makes them unscalable because every instance of Ethereum now has to run that smart contract. Everyone has to store that smart contract. So they kind of convert it into a storage mechanism which shows like they are hitting their limits even just processing tether transactions. They're bottlenecked and exp because they can't handle it. So there's no way they can do what they purported to do.

Next year, the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum will try to test transition towards a proof of stake system. And also Cardano, which is also quite a large cryptocurrency, is going to make its own POS system public, upgrading it. Still, you said that proof of stake is a joke. So why do you think these big cryptocurrencies are switching to it if it's so invaluable?

Because I think a lot of people don't understand what proof of stake is. Proof of stake is trying to derive security just by software in and of itself. Whereas proof of. I gave you have a pot of water and in the water you put a chunk of gold and you boil the water. That's proof of work. So the water is boiling so you can't put your hand in to fish out the gold. That is the security. And when these proof of work coins like Ethereum say they're going to transition to proof of stake, it means they want to stop boiling the water and build something to put over the pot to collect the steam and then use that steam to reheat the water to generate security again. But as you know, the law of thermodynamics wouldn't allow that. Right. You'll have. Just very, very complex systems that hide the trade offs under a layer of complexity and it doesn't work ultimately.

What is your bitcoin outlook for 2020 in terms of price?

It's hard to say. I've made some price predictions in the past. I didn't always hit it, but I hit like the 1000 mark, I hit the 3000 mark. I predicted 6000. But next year, it's hard to say. I think within the next 5 years we'll pass $100k. But Bitcoin is very volatile. There is not a lot of market depth to it. Right. It's still very small. It's still billions of dollars. So people can move the market just with a couple hundred million dollars. So people like to analyze it, do technical analysis, but the reality is bitcoin is too small for that. And it's hard to predict accurately what's going to happen. But I think on a longer time frame, 5 years will pass 100k, will pass 250k, and eventually it'll get to millions. Because if you look at it, what bitcoin is going after is gold. We're looking to replace that 7.5 or 8 trillion dollar market cap of gold with a superior asset, which is bitcoin. Right. It's digital gold. You have the same scarcity. Well, even more scarcity than gold. Ease of transfer. Than gold in every dimension. So there's no reason why bitcoin can't surpass gold and cryptocurrency to exist.

Can you imagine a future where there is just blockchain technology as a technology used by companies, by industries like IBM and so on, without cryptocurrency?

Not really. A lot of people conflate blockchain with bitcoin and when they say blockchain, they mean all the elements of bitcoin that make bitcoin bitcoin. The immutability, the decentralization, the censorship, resistance, the security. And they just imbue the word blockchain with all of those characteristics. But I can load up Elements and create my own blockchain. So Elements is Blockstream's blockchain building platform. Right. I can run that in my house. Is it secure? No. Is it immutable? No. So you can, as a company make a blockchain, but it doesn't mean it has those characteristics. It's like blockchain is just the basis. Yeah. I can call a bicycle a tank, but it's not going to repel around from a bazooka. Right. It's going to get blown up, whereas a tank will defend that.

But there are a lot of companies that are using blockchain technology without the need of cryptocurrency on top of it.

Then they could use a database. There's no difference between a private blockchain and a database. If I set up a blockchain.

So you don't believe in private blockchains?

I don't believe in it at all. It doesn't make any sense. Why would you make something like that and spend the effort when you could just use a database? Because if it's not open and you can't access my blockchain, then it might as well be a database. Right?

But as far as I know, blockchain allows easier access to data.

More than a database that's conflating blockchain with a standard. So if everyone was using a blockchain, let's say a fork of Bitcoin, then you would have a certain level of interoperability. Or everyone's data is on a blockchain, like, I don't know, say they're anchoring data onto the bitcoin blockchain, then yes you would. Or their assets are issued on Bitcoin sidechain, then you have that interoperability. But a blockchain in and of itself does not guarantee ease of movement between different asset types.

Recently, China has announced that its intention to embrace blockchain technology. Don't you see China embracing blockchain technology as a threat to this original vision of blockchain being used in a decentralized manner for a democratic system?

Right. So I mean, using blockchain in certain ways, like for democratic systems or whatever, is still not the point. The point was Bitcoin, which is censorship resistant money. So the China use case does not really compete with Bitcoin. It might compete with other centralized chains out there or even altcoins that are centralized under some development team or some foundation. But that's a different ballgame than bitcoin. So it might threaten, I don't know, Ripple or it might threaten Libra, but it doesn't threaten Bitcoin because it is not going to be decentralized. It is not going to be permissionless.

Thank you.

Happy to be here. Thanks.

Thanks so much. Cointelegraph like subscribe and Hodl.