IBM Crypto Chief shares his views on Bitcoin and Stellar

IBM VP of Blockchain and Digital Currencies Jesse Lund shared his views on Bitcoin and Stellar. Lund said that people should focus less on the moving prices of crypto assets and more on their utility. He said:

“If the price of Bitcoin were higher, there would be more liquidity on the network, we could be having a really different discussion with banks right now.” 
 

Lund, however, revealed that he believes Bitcoin will be $5,000 by New Year’s Eve and has the potential to be worth a one million dollars:

“I have a long-term outlook. […] It goes back to that discussion about the utility of the network with a higher price. I see Bitcoin at a million dollars someday. I like that number because if Bitcoin’s at a million dollars, then the satoshi is on value parity with the US penny. And that means there’s over $20 trillion of liquidity in this network. Think about $20 trillion in liquidity and how that changes things like corporate payments."

Stellar recently made headlines because of their partnership with IBM. Lund explained that despite its smaller market cap, Stellar is very useful for cross-border payments:

“There’s no technical reason or technical barriers that should prevent money from flowing the same way [as information]. […] The architecture of World Wire is really a cross-border payment network, the magic of which, if you will, the novelty of it, is the ability to send payment instructions saying, ‘Hey, I’m sending you something, get ready.’ And on the other end, the receiver is making sure that who you’re sending it to is not some nefarious actor or bad actor.

Once that happens, and that happens really fast, then we send the value along with it. That transfer of value is made possible by digital instruments, settlement instruments, of which Lumens is one. So we see Lumens as a viable settlement instrument in this ecosystem of cross-border payments.”