The future of bitcoin has been spoken out loud by Brian Armstrong, the founder and CEO of Coinbase. He is reported to have predicted that bitcoin will be the world’s reserve currency, surpassing dollar in the next 10-15 years.
Bitcoin has been gaining a lot of positive press attention lately. Increasing use of bitcoin for fund transfer and remittances combined with its role in providing financial services to the unbanked and underbanked has made it appear as a saviour of the underprivileged in developing nations. Unlike conventional money transfer services which charges a huge percentage as transaction fees, bitcoin based fund transfer services charges negligible amounts.
Also the technology behind bitcoin is now being widely adopted by traditional banking and financial sectors. They are still in the exploratory and testing stages, trying to gain a better understanding of the technology and finding ways to incorporate blockchain based applications into their existing workflow and operations. But, in the coming months, we should be able to see few banks using bitcoin technology in their day to day operations.
The volatility associated with bitcoin is another main concern for many people across the world. If we take a look at the bitcoin price trend for this year, until now bitcoin has been relatively stable as the price variations have been following an upwardly trend than downward. According to Brian Armstrong, Volatility is a self-correcting problem and he refers to the pattern over the past three years to point out the progressive reduction in bitcoin price volatility. He has forecasted the volatility to continue for few more years before attaining stability.
Brian Armstrong also mentions the performance of dollar in the recent years as reserve currency. Dollar has been displaying a downward trend for a while now, thanks to the US federal reserve which is responsible for massive inflation of dollar. Many countries have now started to use their own currencies for international trade.
Taking all these factors into account, we would agree with Brian Armstrong’s speculation that in the coming years, bitcoin might be the only stable currency available which is not associated to any particular nation or economy. Thus, bitcoin has a fair chance to become the world’s reserve currency.