Just over three years ago, at the start of the last bull cycle, I spoke with experts in the space to write âThe Future of Bitcoin: 12 Scenarios From Bullish to Bearish.â
Much has changed since then. The price of bitcoin was around $25,000 when I began my reporting, which then seemed astronomically high. No one had heard of SBF, Bitcoin Ordinals or ChatGPT. No one owned a Bitcoin ETF.
So as Bitcoin enters its fourth halving this April, itâs time to refresh and revamp these scenarios, once again ranging from bullish to bearish. And once again we vaguely defined the âfutureâ as ten years from now â far enough so thereâs room for play and close enough so thereâs a link to reality.
This feature is part of CoinDeskâs âFuture of Bitcoinâ package published to coincide with the fourth Bitcoin âhalvingâ in April 2024.
Thereâs one thing that hasnât changed in our methodology: A humble acknowledgement that weâre all flying blind, and no one really knows what will happen with bitcoin. Thatâs part of the appeal. âMost of the biggest use cases 10 years from now will be things that would sound insane to us today,â Elizabeth Stark told me in 2021. âKind of like how an encyclopedia that anyone can edit would have sounded crazy to people in the pre-Wikipedia era.â
Welcome to the future(s) of bitcoin, ranging from regulatory hell to telepathic DeFi.
1. Bitcoin to âbuy a cup of coffeeâ
Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan, imagines that in 10 years bitcoin can finally, truly, be used in a mainstream way to pay for things like coffee and beer and donuts. âBy 2035, youâll be able to buy most goods and services around the world in sats,â predicts Klippsten.
This doesnât mean he thinks bitcoin will fully replace the dollar. He envisions that most goods will have âtwo price tagsâ â one in fiat, one in bitcoin. âIt wonât have replaced all fiat currency,â says Klippsten. âWeâre going to live in a multi-currency world, as we always have.â
2. Bitcoin-Powered Games
There are over 3 billion gamers on the planet. Des Dickerson, CEO of THNDR Games, envisions a future where these billions of gamers are getting rewarded in bitcoin, thanks to the speed of the Lightning Network. âBitcoin should be the native currency of the internet,â says Dickerson. âSo it goes without saying that bitcoin should inherently exist in games.â
This is all, of course, still very much just theoretical. THNDR already has 1.5 million users, says Dickerson, but acknowledges that âwe wonât see massive adoption until thereâs a viral game that has bitcoin in it.â
3. TradFi Tames Bitcoin
In the very first line of his white paper, Satoshi Nakamoto describes bitcoin as peer-to-peer electronic cash that would âallow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.â
These words have been discussed and parsed for over 15 years. For many in the space, theyâre more iconic and inspirational than âWe hold these truths to be self-evident.â And the key clause, for many, is âwithout going through a financial institution.â
Which is why bitcoinâs biggest story of 2024 â the emergence of ETFs â is something of an awkward dynamic. Isaiah Jackson, author of âBitcoin and Black America,â sees the ETFs as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, yes, the ETFs have unleashed a pipeline of new capital, which Jackson believes will âpump the price sky high.â (So far the charts agree.) But then again, the ETF-injected capital gives more power to the Blackrocks and Fidelities of the world. âIf you have enough bitcoin you can buy lobbyists,â says Jackson. âAnd you can convince them [politicians] of things like, âHey, we need to control bitcoin mining.ââ
The concern is shared by Wendy O, host of The O Show (and former CoinDesker). She acknowledges the very real benefits of âethically griftingâ on the tailwinds of bitcoinâs ETF-driven price surge, but also envisions a scenario where âTradFi steps in and governs bitcoin for us.â
4. ABI: Artificial Bitcoin Intelligence
As AI continues to advance, weâll soon see the rise of âsmart agentsâ that can do things like book our flights, pay our bills and order us Thai food.
âNo one is giving AIs a bank account, but bitcoin is perfect as a natively-digital means for AI to transact,â says David Johnston, lead contributor to the Morpheus project, which is building a decentralized platform for AI agents to transact and spend crypto. (Morpheus is technically âchain agnostic,â but the potential for bitcoin seems clear.)
The role of bitcoin and AI doesnât stop at spending sats. âIf you have a smart agent that can send transactions or access DeFi, you have a whole new set of tools accessible to you,â says Johnston. Just as ChatGPT made it easier for non-coders to program using plain English, in the future, says Johnston, you can easily use advanced DeFi tools without any technical knowledge, and without using a bank.
Johnston gives a quick example. âLetâs say I wanted to earn native bitcoin yield, with no wrapping, no bridges, and no third parties.â This is tough for a layperson. (Not that a layperson would ever say the words ânative bitcoin yield,â but you get the picture.) With AI-empowered bitcoin, says Johnston, you could just say something like, âI want my bitcoin to earn some yield in a safe and decentralized manner,â and it would do the research to find solid, reputable, non-custodial solutions, and ânot some crap that a YouTube influence is shilling.â
5. Choked by taxation and regulation
Of all the bitcoin crystal balls, this is perhaps the foggiest. âWe have no idea whatâs going to happen with regulation,â says Wendy O. Sheâs encouraged by the pro-bitcoin policies in El Salvador, but worries that in the United States thereâs âso much red tape, so many public servants in so many different sectors, and nobody knows what theyâll classify it as.â She sees an outright ban of bitcoin as unlikely, but fears the government could âmake it hard to participate in the ecosystem.â
Or perhaps, as Jackson suspects, the government creates âsome sort of bottleneckâ for converting bitcoin to fiat, such as forcing you to first convert it into a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). The way Jackson sees it, if the value of 1 bitcoin soars to $1 million in ten years â and if they have to use the governmentâs digital currency as an offramp â- then that will âtrap a lot of people into getting the CBDC, and I think thatâs what they want for surveillance and control.â
Klippsten acknowledges the risk of regulation, but suspects that the politics will eventually play to bitcoinâs favor. âRules change according to the will of the population,â says Klippsten. âAt some point, there will be a lot of people that own mostly bitcoinâŚand theyâll make things extremely difficult for politicians who get in their way.â
6. Shadow Bitcoins
This scenario flows directly from the last. If the government somehow succeeds in choking or over-regulating bitcoin, says Jackson, then there will naturally be a desire for âblack market bitcoinâ â bitcoin thatâs off the governmentâs grid. People who earn bitcoin from home mining, for example, or own bitcoin thatâs tougher (if not impossible) to track with tools like Chainanalysis.
These concerns arenât new. The FBI has been tracking bitcoin for over a decade, which some view as solid law enforcement and others see as a surveillance nightmare. So if the tracking and regulation escalates, we could live in a world of âtwo bitcoins,â or âshadow bitcoins,â where perhaps people pay one price for Tracked Bitcoin and a premium for Shadow Bitcoin.
Then again, while Jackson acknowledges the concern, he also views this as pragmatically difficult for the government to execute. When we reach mainstream adoption, says Jackson, there will literally be billions of bitcoin wallets, so âgood luck trying to stop all of it.â
7. Bitcoin thrives as a store of value
This oneâs dead-simple, but sometimes the simplest scenarios are the most likely. Donât sleep on common sense. âBitcoin's core value proposition is a global, digital store of value,â says Anthony Pompliano, aka âPompâ of Pomp Investments. âThere are other potential use cases which may come to fruition, but the core proposition is the one thatâs most likely to last for decades.â
Pomp even sees a generational shift. He says that bitcoin now serves as âthe benchmark for many young investors,â similar to how the S&P 500 is a benchmark for stock-pickers. âIf they can't beat bitcoin's performance,â says Pomp, âthey simply âbuy the index.ââ
8. Machines Send Bitcoin
Back in early 2021, well before the explosion of AI-hype, Elizabeth Stark told me that she envisions a future where âMachines will pay machines, natively, instantly,â and that âTeslas will pay for charging with Lightningâ over the bitcoin network.
Three years later, her prediction looks even more likely. It seems probable that machines and even robots, at some point, will need to spend money. And ârobotâ doesnât have to mean the Terminator. It could be as simple as The Internet of Things. And what are the odds that these robots or machines will be spending U.S. dollars from their accounts at Wells Fargo?
âBitcoin, stablecoins, and digital currencies are going to be the currency of choice for many automation use cases,â says Pomp, who argues that machines seeking instantaneous settlement âwill be unable to use electronic money because of the multi-day settlement times. This is where bitcoin or stablecoins could really shine.â
9. Bitcoin ordinals blow up
This might seem like a well-trodden or even boring topic for those who follow the crypto space closely, but youâll get a weird look if you ask a random person in the grocery store, âWhat do you think of bitcoin ordinals?â (Also, please donât do this.) Ordinals are not yet anywhere close to mainstream. But in 10 years they could be, and that could transform everything about the world of digital collectibles, making 2021âs NFT Summer look quaint by comparison.
âOnce we start to get closer to mass adoption, I think that people will begin to use ordinals, because they are more secure than NFTs,â says Wendy, who also suspects this is âstill a long ways away.â
10. The status quo continues
âI know this is not super exciting,â says Cas Piancey, cohost of the Crypto Criticsâ Corner podcast, âBut what I suspect is going to happen is that bitcoin will largely be used for the exact same things itâs used for now.â
Piancey is a self-described crypto cynic, but this doesnât mean he loves to dunk on bitcoin. He can see the nuance. âWhen people argue that there isnât a use case for bitcoin, I generally disagree with that,â he says. And he imagines that in 10 years, bitcoin will still be used on the margins for remittances; it will still be used sporadically as a tool for dissidents; and still held by many as a store of value.
Heâs not a doomsdayer. So he imagines that in 10 years bitcoin will still be chugging, but cautions that, âPeople who say itâs going to be the next world currency are out of their minds.â
11. Bitcoinâs Death by Black Swan
Maybe bitcoin is hacked by quantum computing. Maybe thereâs a 51% attack. Maybe bitcoin is gutted by ChatGPT7.
So this is something of a âcatch-all doomsday scenarioâ to acknowledge, with humility, that we donât know what we donât know. (I explored the doomsday risks in more detail in the original piece.) Many in the space say that bitcoinâs dominance is âinevitable,â but very little in life is truly inevitable â just ask Thanos.
Isaiah Jackson is as bullish on bitcoin as youâll find, but even he acknowledges that a hack by quantum computing, for example, is still theoretically possible. He considers the risk to be low â and suspects that evil quantum-hackers would focus first on juicier targets, like sovereign nations â but concedes that itâs âalways a risk.â
12. Telepathic Bitcoin
In the original Future of Bitcoin piece, Jackson provided what was easily the most fun scenario: That at some point bitcoin will be spent on Mars.
Now heâs back to outdo himself.
Jackson has been thinking about Noland Arbaughf, who is paralyzed below the shoulders. Then Arbaughf became the first patient to get a Neuralink chip implanted in his brain, and now he can play chess and even send Tweets just by thinking. âIt was like using the force,â Arbaughf said after he âthoughtâ a tweet into existence.
So Jackson realized something. If we can send Tweets just by thinking in 2024, itâs only a matter of time before we can telepathically send bitcoin. âThe dude just thought a tweet, and it came out,â says Jackson. Someday weâll think, âHereâs the code for a private bitcoin wallet.â
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