Cryptocurrencies have the opportunity to be used like any other currency or any other medium over time, according to Steve Papermaster, CEO of the real-time molecular data company Nano.
Talking to RT on the sidelines of the Davos Economic Forum, he said bitcoin is “no more a passing fad than the Internet was a passing fad.”
Over time cryptocurrencies will be “used like credit and debit cards, like payments from PayNow or Alipay. It is very different from what people used to imagine, things always keep changing,” Papermaster said.
Bitcoin certainly has the opportunity to be treated like a currency, the entrepreneur said, adding it will “become mainstream in 3-4 years.”
The digital currency will be part of how you do any type of purchasing, an everyday thing for an investment vehicle in the next couple of years.
“I think it will be part of the mix of how you invest, how you buy or pay for things. Just over time it will change,” Papermaster said.
According to him, it will take time for the regulators, different countries and different financial systems to get used to the prospect of a new type of currency but it “happened many times before and it will happen this time as well.”
Talking about bitcoin’s price prospects for 2018, the expert said it will go up and down many times and will be tremendously volatile while it’s still a new form of asset class. “So, it’s only a matter of where it ends up by the end of the year. But I think the overall trend is that there’s a lot of capital moving in this market, and fundamentally it will be up.”
The founder of Nano, which includes artificial intelligence, has advised investors to look at the cryptocurrencies that are backed by very sound real businesses.
“Wherever you have real value, over time it will be reflected in the underlying investment vehicle. In this case a cryptocurrency backed by building real value will go up,” he said.
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