Pakinomist – 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. 16 years ago, Hal Finney had 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, one day after Satoshi Nakamoto released version 0.1 of the Bitcoin software and seven days after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creation of the watered-down genesis block known as block 0.
Hal Finney, a computer scientist, is known for receiving the first Bitcoin transaction and tweeting about Bitcoin on January 11, 2009.
Finney is considered to be the leading Satoshi challenger, although he denied it until his passing in 2014. Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity is still unknown.
Finney’s $10 Million Bitcoin Prediction
Rizzo posted a screenshot of one of Finney’s emails dated January 10, 2009, discussing how to value Bitcoin: “An immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even ignoring the practical problem that practical spoken no one will accept it at first.”
Finney predicted that if Bitcoin became the world’s dominant payment system, its value “would have to equal the combined value of all the wealth in the world.” Extending this logic, he arrived at $10 million per Bitcoin.
Finney stated: “As a fun thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin succeeds and becomes the dominant payment system in use worldwide. Then the total value of the currency would equal the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of the total worldwide household wealth that I have found ranges from $100 trillion to $300 trillion With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.”
At a current price of $93,726, Bitcoin is far from Finney’s $10 million goal, but the prediction continues to inspire long-term faith in the cryptocurrency.
