Bitcoin was already performing pretty well without too many new wild price predictions. But the wildest one yet from someone of prominent industry standing dropped over the weekend.

If you’re right across Crypto Twitter you’ll have heard this by now. But if not, get a load of it…

 

Two bonkers $1 million Bitcoin bets

Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan has made the outlandish prediction that Bitcoin (BTC) will hit US$1 million per coin within just 90 days, based on US banking concerns and hyperinflation taking hold of America.

And he’s put his magic internet money where his mouth is, accepting a seemingly insane bet with two people that BTC will reach his target by June 17.

The crazy wager began with this March 17 tweet from the pseudonymous Twitter account “James Medlock”:

The former Coinbase exec swiftly accepted the deal, which will see Medlock winning US$1 million of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC if BTC fails to reach US$1 million by June 17.

And in the extremely unlikely event that Srinivasan wins the bet then he’ll keep the 1 BTC he’s asked Medlock to stump up.

In fact, it turns out Srinivasan is so convinced he’s going to win, he’s made the same bet with “one other person, sufficient to prove the point”. So that’s $2 million the obviously loaded Srinivasan stands to lose in a few months, then.

Why is he so convinced, though? And if hyperinflation takes hold, isn’t that pretty much the end of days and time to load up again on toilet paper, rifles, crossbows, baked beans and more toilet paper?

Srinivasan’s idea of “hyperbitcoinization” (see his tweets above) isn’t a new thought, but he’s certainly pushing the concept hard and fast based on fears in the US banking system post Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature woes and more – with more than 180 American banks said to potentially be staring down the bank-run barrel.

Not to mention global-banking contagion risk. News just in on that, actually – multinational investment bank UBS is reportedly acquiring Credit Suisse for $3 billion Swiss francs (US$3.24 billion) in a bid to rescue the ailing financial institution. And it’s a move backed by the Swiss government.

Meanwhile, Srinivasan predicts that the global economy is about to undergo a massive shift, with the global reserve currency – the US dollar – entering hyperinflation. He believes that the global economy will “redenominate on Bitcoin as digital gold”.

Is this bonkers? There’s no doubt in our mind that Bitcoin could benefit from fresh Fed money pumped into the system to save ailing banks.

JPMorgan has, for instance, predicted that the Federal Reserve’s new “Bank Term Funding Program” (which crypto heads have dubbed “Buy The F**king Pivot”) could see up to US$2 TRILLION of newly printed money injection.

Several crypto-market commentators have been quick to critique and largely dismiss Srinivasan’s thesis, though. Venture capitalist Adam Cochran, for instance, certainly seems to think it’s highly unrealistic to expect a 3,600% BTC gain over the next few months, considering the token’s previous two monster rallies topped out with around 547% and 1,105% gains.

Right then, time to come back down to earth with a look at the current crypto price action…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.23 trillion, up about 2.5% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

The market has managed to find another US$70 billion since late Friday afternoon AEDT, with leading cryptos Bitcoin and Ethereum both posting impressive gains.

Even XRP, which is under the ongoing SEC lawsuit cloud regarding its original status as a sold security or otherwise, has had a reasonably strong weekend. The XRP “what if” moonboys are hitting Twitter hard right now.

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.5 billion to about US$447 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS

• Conflux (CFX), (market cap: US$982 million) +22%

• NEO (NEO), (mc: US$938 million) +12%

• 1inch (1INCH), (mc: US$465 million) +7%

• Filecoin (FIL), (mc: US$2.6 billion) +7%

• VeChain (VET), (mc: US$1.78 billion) +6%

 

Fear and Greed

The crypto market’s leading sentiment tracker, the Fear & Greed Index has gone up a gear moving into Greedy territory again after slipping into Neutral from an off-road wobble last week.

Where will it sit leading into and post the US Fed’s next FOMC meeting (Mar 22)? That’s one question.

Source: alternative.me

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Reflecting some of that market sentiment greed then, we’re seeing statements like this: “the bear market is officially over”…

And these ones, from “PlanB”…

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