While Bitcoin price is still struggling to reach $3,500 at the time of this writing, the industry cannot help but speculate on what its future value will be. There is substantial and tangible concern because the crypto markets have been stagnant for a couple of weeks now, and before that, an astonishing collapse took place.

Yes, Bitcoin has extended its dominance in recent hours, even nearing three-month highs when it comes to market dominance. However, that does not necessarily mean that the world’s leading cryptocurrency is out of the woods; at least not yet.

In fact, a few people within the industry are refusing to believe that a surge is in the cards in the short to medium-term. While many experts are predicting that Bitcoin will return to its more accustomed levels sooner rather than later, others are saying that a further fall in price is at least as likely as a recovery.

A Lottery Ticket

For instance, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has stated that Bitcoin (BTC) is “a lottery ticket,” in a recent article for one of the biggest media platforms in the United Kingdom.

Harvard University Professor of Economics and public Policy, Kenneth Rogoff, offered on December 10th a glimpse of what he thought could be the future of Bitcoin’s price. He portrays an outlook full of hope, stating that the “overwhelming sentiment” among crypto people is that the total “market capitalization of cryptocurrencies could explode over the next five years, rising to $5-10 [trillion].”

Rogoff explains that there is no need to panic about the collapse that took Bitcoin’s price from the $20,000 range in January to the $3,400 that it shows today, because of the historic volatility of emerging assets.

However, and according to Rogoff, enthusiasms should have a limit. The expert in economy does not buy the sentiment that Bitcoin may be the “digital gold,” even saying that the crypto asset is more likely to be worth $100 than $100,000.

Not in the Same Category as Gold

Rogoff refuses to compare Bitcoin with gold, because the former is only limited to transactions, unlike the latter, making it more vulnerable to collapses just as the one that took place in January (in reality, it has been going on for most of 2018,) and the one we are currently watching.

The professor of economics also states that there is an energy-intensive element in the verification period of cryptocurrency transactions, which makes it considerably “less efficient” than other systems or methods that depend on a trusted “central authority.”

While he defends Bitcoin and reiterates that the digital coin will not be worth “zero,” Rogoff identifies regulation as another issue, saying that “governments and regulators are gradually waking up to the fact that they cannot countenance large expensive-to-trace transaction technologies that facilitate tax evasion and criminal activity.”

To Rogoff, Bitcoin is a risky proposition because, if one “takes away near-anonymity, no one will want to use it; keep it and advanced-economy governments will not tolerate it.”

By Andres Chavez

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