- Brad Garlinghouse makes a bold $5 trillion crypto market cap prediction.
- The Ripple CEO cites a confluence of bullish factors.
- Crypto predictions are notoriously inaccurate.
The crypto industry has long been a breeding ground for bold, headline-grabbing predictions with varying degrees of accuracy, but mostly to the wildly wrong side. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has now joined the ranks of the crypto prognosticators, confidently forecasting that the total crypto market cap will double to $5 trillion by the end of 2024.
Ripple CEO Is Confident in Crypto
Garlinghouse recently told CNBC that he expects the total crypto market cap to reach over $5 trillion by the end of 2024. The Ripple CEO’s prediction represents a dramatic doubling of the current $2.7 trillion valuation, which has already climbed 63% since the start of the year.
Fueling Garlinghouse’s optimism are several factors such as the predicted lessening of US regulatory hostilities this year, and the arrival of the first US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs,) which he believes will drive significant institutional inflows into the crypto space.
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Additionally, Garlinghouse points to the upcoming Bitcoin “halving,” which will reduce the supply of new BTC entering circulation. Coupled with growing institutional demand, the Ripple CEO believes the contracting supply and expanding demand will propel the Bitcoin price higher. In turn, this dynamic will lift the broader crypto market capitalization to new highs.
The current market cap already sits close to the previous all-time high of $3 trillion reached in November 2021, suggesting the bull market may have significantly more room to run. Even so, crypto predictions can prove to be woefully innacurate.
Crypto Predictions That Were Way Off
Cryptocurrency forecasts have a long and storied history of being spectacularly off the mark. Time and again, industry insiders, analysts, and prominent figures have ventured bold crypto predictions, only to see those calls collapse under the weight of reality.
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Perhaps the most infamous example is John McAfee’s relentless proclamations about Bitcoin’s price trajectory. In 2017, McAfee confidently predicted that BTC would reach $500,000 by the end of 2020, even going so far as to promise to eat his own genitalia on national television if proven wrong.
McAfee later doubled down on this forecast, raising his prediction to $1 million per BTC by the same deadline. Needless to say, Bitcoin ended 2020 at $33,100, leaving the cybersecurity pioneer scrambling for excuses.
Another wildly wrong forecast came from Bitcoin SV supporter Calvin Ayre. In late 2018, shortly after BSV forked from BCH, Ayre boldly claimed that BTC would “go to zero” in 2019 as it had “no utility” and was “intentionally anti-scaling.” However, BTC went on to peak at over $13,800 that year, further underscoring how crypto predictions can often miss the mark.
On the Flipside
- Several influencers have predicted a $1 million Bitcoin price this cycle, which, if BTC is half the crypto market, would equate to a total market cap of around $39 trillion.
- Unforeseen black swan events would derail the most optimistic crypto market outlooks.
Why This Matters
While crypto predictions tend to be wildly off the mark, Garlinghouse’s $5 trillion market cap claim by 2024 is still a conservative estimate within the realms of possibility. Reaching this level would represent a milestone moment for the industry as it strives to offer a better alternative to TradFi.
Read more about the rising total crypto market cap in 2024 here:
Total Crypto Market Cap Tops $2T to Recapture Milestone
Charles Hoskinson is confident Cardano’s fundamentals will win in the long term. Read more here:
Hoskinson Brushes Off Cardano FUD Attacks with Optimism
