Is Blockchain 10 Times More Valuable than the Internet?

According to China Central Television (CCTV) broadcaster, Chen Weihong, blockchain technology is financially 10 times more valuable than the internet. A reason for this belief is that the world as a whole is starting to shift in the direction of peer-to-peer transactions. With blockchain being the foundation of peer-to-peer transactions, the value of blockchain will continue to increase as peer-to-peer transactions grow in number.

Other well known technologists have similar opinions. Steve Wozniak recently equated the value of blockchain to being the same level or greater to that of the internet. Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, believes that Bitcoin will be the largest global currency.

“This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” says Tim Draper, early investor in Skype, Hotmail, and Tesla.

Draper has gone as far as to predict that Bitcoin will hit $250,000 in the next four years. Draper explains his logic:

“Right now there is about $80 trillion worth of fiat currency in the world. I believe that cryptocurrencies will expand that market. I think that cryptocurrencies will eventually grow to maybe $100 trillion and fiat currencies will fall from $80 trillion to $30 trillion.

I predicted that Bitcoin might end up with a 20% to 30% market share. I sketched that out and I think the asymptote is somewhere around $130 trillion, but only maybe $100 trillion would be cryptocurrency and 20% of that would be Bitcoin. However, it would take 10-15 years to reach that asymptote, so I’m thinking that along the way we are going to see Bitcoin at $250,000 by 2022.”

To understand the potential economic value of blockchain, it’s important to understand the technology. The full technological picture of blockchain’s potential isn’t necessarily easy to understand. With that said, this 2016 interview with McKinsey with Don Tapscott explains concisely how blockchain could change the world.