Bitcoin Will Hit $1 Million, Says IBM’s VP of Blockchain Jesse Lund

The vice president of blockchain and digital currencies for IBM, Jesse Lund, said that he expects Bitcoin’s (BTC) price to eventually hit $1 million. Lund made his prediction during an interview with comparison and news platform Finder.com, published on YouTube on Feb. 20.

Towards the end of the interview, Lund was asked what he expects the price of Bitcoin to be on this new year’s eve. He answered that he thinks it is going to be higher than the current price, clarifying, “I’ll go with $5,000.” He then continued his prediction, adding:

“I see Bitcoin at a million dollars someday.”

Lund explained that he “likes that number,” given that “if Bitcoin is at a million dollars, then satoshi is on value parity with the U.S. penny.” He noted that at such a value, the whole network would have over $20 trillion of liquidity. He then suggested that such liquidity could change corporate payments and high value payments in general, concluding:

“I see maybe $5,000 at the end of the year, but I see a way higher upward trajectory.”

During the interview, Lund also talked about IBM’s collaboration with Stellar (XLM) and the use of the network’s native asset in IBM’s cross-border payment network, Blockchain World Wire (BWW). As previously reported, IBM uses XLM in BWW both as an intermediate currency and to pay transaction fees.

Lund also revealed that the firm is considering working with various other digital assets, explaining that they believe “there should be an ecosystem of, a variety of digital assets that provide settlement instruments that enable these cross-border payments, and the participants in the network should be able to choose and negotiate their choices in real-time.” Lund went on to state:

“it could be Ripple, it could be XRP even, it could be Bitcoin, but it would also probably include other instruments, like stablecoins, and even eventually soon — hopefully — central bank-issued digital currencies.”

Lund made a point of differentiating IBM’s payment network from Ripple’s RippleNet, noting that the tech giant does not rely on their own bespoke token.

Oman’s second largest bank by market value, BankDhofar, became RippleNet’s most recent member, joining to enable cross-border payments to India, as Cointelegraph recently reported.

IBM brought its BWW payment network out of beta back in September 2018, after closing a partnership with Stellar in October 2017.

About a week ago, major Canadian crypto exchange Coinsquare showed interest in the blockchain by acquiring StellarX, a Stellar-based decentralized exchange.