Bitcoin will eventually be a global currency - and a $1 million price target within the next 10 years is 'very reasonable,' Kraken CEO says

• Bitcoin will eventually be the world's currency, Kraken's CEO, Jesse Powell, told Bloomberg.
• "I think $1 million as a price target within the next 10 years is very reasonable," he said.
• The price of bitcoin is up 70% year-to-date.

Bitcoin will eventually be the world's currency, because "you have to think it's going to infinity," Jesse Powell, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

He said that national currencies were "already showing extreme signs of weakness" and that people would soon start measuring the price of things in bitcoin.

"The true believers will tell you it's going all the way to the moon, to Mars, and eventually it'll be the world's currency," Powell said.

Kraken, based in San Francisco, is in talks to raise new funding that would double its valuation to over $10 billion, Bloomberg reported in late February.

The price of bitcoin fell on Thursday by 0.4%, to $50,175, but is up 70% year-to-date. The price slipped earlier this week after Gary Gensler, the nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, said at his confirmation hearing that making sure crypto markets are free of fraud and manipulation was a challenge. Gensler has been viewed as an advocate for cryptocurrencies, given his previous work and teachings on the subject at MIT.

"In the near term, people see it surpassing gold as a store of value, so I think $1 million as a price target within the next 10 years is very reasonable," Powell said of bitcoin.

Bitcoin believers expect it to replace fiat money, and the market capitalization of all national currencies combined could make up its worth, Powell said.

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