Circle CEO Says Bitcoin Will Hit $1 Million, Calls Gold ‘a Relic’

Circle founder and chief executive Jeremy Allaire discussed stablecoins, SPACs, and the SEC in a recent interview with Insider. He also made a bullish long-term prediction that bitcoin will eventually surpass gold in market capitalization and hit a price of $1 million.

After founding the software company Allaire Corp. in 1995 and the online video platform Brightcove in 2004, Allaire moved into crypto with the launch of Circle in 2013. The digital payments company offered an early bitcoin wallet and issues the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC.

Here are the 10 best quotes from Allaire’s interview, lightly edited and condensed for clarity:

1. “I can vividly remember when the first graphical web browser came out on the internet in September 1993. That’s when I decided to commit my life to the internet. I had the same sort of feeling when I did my first bitcoin transaction. My reaction was, ‘Holy shit, this could change everything’.”
2. “There are real similarities between right now and where the internet was in 1999… but this is going to make the web look like small potatoes. The web co-ordinates information and data, but crypto revolutionizes the whole economic system.”
3. “I’m not a ‘bitcoin maximalist’, but if you’re looking for a price prediction, I think my own view is that we’ll absolutely see a million-dollar bitcoin over time.”
4. “I don’t actually like the ‘digital gold’ analogy, because gold is such a relic. It has extremely limited value as a form of exchange and it’s never had utility in modern society as a form of money. I think the demand for bitcoin is actually going to be much, much larger.”
5. “There is clearly significant competition between bitcoin and ethereum. Ethereum maximalists say that its monetary policy is superior, it’s got a better deflationary mechanism, and it’s more efficient.”
6. “My view has always been that if you want to make crypto achieve global scale, it’s not about trying to operate completely outside of the existing financial system, and it’s not about operating outside of the law. So I testified before the Senate. I was out there as a public face of crypto, and viewed as a ‘grown-up,’ so to speak.”
7. “I think what Tether has been able to do is really impressive. But I think the problem that we’re trying to solve is different. They’ve developed something that’s been a really strong asset, in particular in Asian markets, but we’ve gone to the heart of regulation from the start and really tried to build something that’s transparent and compliant. I think the success of USD Coin speaks for itself. It’s being used incredibly broadly, and it’s impacting people’s lives.”
8. “I consume a lot of information. I don’t usually read books about crypto because they’re normally out of date by the time they’re published. I rely on social media to find and access information. There’s dramatically more information than I can keep up with. I’m meant to be an expert in this field, but in reality I probably understand about half-a-percent of it – the area is expanding so fast.”
9. “I’ve gone through two IPOs before. Circle’s really different to those. I feel like I’m in a really different place in terms of how I relate to the public market, and I’m definitely wiser and more mature.”
10. “I don’t intend to step away after the SPAC listing, I’m very focussed on Circle in the long-term. This is a 20-year journey, so we’re only just getting started.”