PK Press Club – A remarkable prediction by Hal Finney, one of the most prominent early pioneers, has resurfaced after 16 years.
Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo reignited interest in the iconic prediction in a recent tweet. Sixteen years ago, Hal Finney predicted a future Bitcoin price of $10 million when the cryptocurrency was still valued at $0.
Finney’s prediction dates back to January 10, 2009, a day after Satoshi Nakamoto released version 0.1 of Bitcoin software and seven days after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator mined the genesis block known as Block 0.
Hal Finney, a computer scientist, is well known for receiving the first Bitcoin transaction and tweeting about Bitcoin on January 11, 2009.
Finney is considered the main suitor for Satoshi, although he denied it until his death in 2014. Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity remains unknown until now.
Finney’s $10 Million Bitcoin Prediction
Rizzo posted a screenshot of one of Finney’s emails dated January 10, 2009, which discussed how to value Bitcoin: “An immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it at that point. First of all.”
Finney predicted that if Bitcoin became the world’s dominant payment system, its value “should be equal to the total value of all the world’s wealth.” Expanding this logic, it arrived at $10 million per Bitcoin.
Finney said: “As a fun thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin succeeds and becomes the dominant payment system used around the world. The total value of money should then be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. The estimates I’ve found of total global household wealth range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that makes each coin worth about $10 million.
At the current price of $93,726, Bitcoin is far from Finney’s $10 million target, but the prediction continues to inspire long-term confidence in the cryptocurrency.
