Cole, chief executive of Strive, said the coming bitcoin growth cycle would be the strongest in the cryptocurrency's history, driven by an unprecedented mix of a long-term weakening dollar and the spread of cheaper artificial intelligence.
According to Cole, bitcoin could for the first time rise in value while the dollar weakens over the long term, an economic backdrop he said had never existed before for the cryptocurrency.
He named the growth of artificial intelligence as a further positive factor. As AI becomes cheaper and more widespread, he said, knowledge, software capabilities and other resources that were once scarce become easier to reproduce, pushing investors to look more closely at assets with limited supply, such as bitcoin, gold and silver.
Bitcoin's signal against gold
Cole pointed to bitcoin's performance relative to gold. Over the past two years, he said, the ratio between the two assets had shifted direction before bitcoin's dollar price moved, making it a signal worth watching for the state of the market.
He said he was firmly convinced that bitcoin's bear market was over. Previously, a rising bitcoin-to-gold ratio was itself the signal, he said, but now that both pairs were climbing at the same time, he felt even greater confidence for the next 12 to 18 months, with much bigger opportunities potentially opening in the years after that.
Cole said bitcoin could become the fastest-moving of the assets used to protect capital from currency devaluation. If it kept outperforming other scarce assets, he said, that could draw in additional capital and strengthen liquidity across the crypto market.
Coinbase chief's forecast
Brian Armstrong, chief executive of the US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, said earlier that bitcoin could trade several times above its then price of $75,000 by 2030. He said changes to US legislation would help drive the cryptocurrency's growth.
