USV’s Albert Wenger: Cryptocurrency as a Whole Will Be Worth Trillions of Dollars
Following bitcoin’s historic march to $10,000 and subsequent volatility, covered by CCN.com, various prominent Wall Street executives have been weighing in on bitcoin and the cryptocurrency ecosystem in general, showing they aren’t too fond of it. Nobel Prize-Winning economist Joseph Stiglitz recently stated that bitcoin should be “outlawed,” while Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein apparently soured on bitcoin as he stated that it’s a “vehicle to perpetrate fraud.”
However, Union Square Ventures (USV) partner Albert Wenger recently shared his views on the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and made it clear that he feels its current $300 billion market cap is just the beginning of the journey.
While speaking to CNBC , Wenger stated that “a bubble is only something you can ever figure out in hindsight,” and added that he finds it instructive to look at Amazon’s stock chart. The e-commerce giant’s chart, Wenger continued, looks like a “massive upward-sloping curve,” but when we zoom in on it, we can see that in the beginning there was a run-up and big drop-off. To him, the cryptocurrency’s chart will, in the future, be a “very massive run-up.”
As such, it’s possible that the current run-up turns out to be “a blip on that chart.” To him, since the cryptocurrency ecosystem has grown to where it is today, there’s definitely a way for it to do down as well, but there’s also a path for it to reach trillions of dollars. He notably stated:
“And there’s definitely also a path to the future where cryptocurrency as a whole will be worth trillions of dollars. So I believe that there’s a good change cryptocurrencies taken together as a bucket will be worth trillions of dollars.”
Wenger added that he believes we’re still far from that, and that there will be set backs along the way. When asked if he believed cryptocurrencies were going through an “Amazon moment,” he clarified that they’re going through an “exuberant moment.”
Regarding whether or not there’s a bubble, he stated that “at some point there’s a reset,” adding that using the word bubble implies it’s about to pop, something Wenger believes may or may not happen.
To Wenger, all this irrational exuberance is a good thing for cryptocurrencies in the long run, as it brings investors and entrepreneurs to the space. Since cryptocurrencies are still a novelty, he added, we still need to try new things to see what works.
Earlier this year, USV’s co-founder Fred Wilson dismissed potential bitcoin crash predictions, and explained the optimal cryptocurrency holdings for investors, according to their comfort levels.
