Bitcoin’s market cap could hit $1 trillion in 2021 as its growing reserve currency status drives adoption higher, a cryptocurrency expert says

Bitcoin’s market cap could hit $1 trillion in 2021 as its growing reserve currency status drives adoption higher, a cryptocurrency expert says

A chain of block erupters used for Bitcoin mining.

REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Bitcoin's market cap could hit a trillion dollars as early as 2021, according to Blockchain.com's head of research."My expectation is that bitcoin will become a trillion dollar asset as early as next year," Garrick Hileman, who is also a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, told Business Insider.Although the 2020 bitcoin rally was largely driven by institutional investors, he expects to see continued buy-in more from retail and Wall Street investors going forward.The researcher expects the US to digitize the dollar, but not too soon as he said "the Fed is happy with the way the world is."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Bitcoin's market cap could reach $1 trillion sometime in 2021 as investors take its reserve currency status more seriously, according to Garrick Hileman, head of research at Blockchain.com.

Major institutional players like Stanley Druckenmiller, BlackRock, Bill Miller, and Jack Dorsey have acknowledged that bitcoin is not only going away, but is becoming a reserve asset and validating the digital gold thesis, Hileman said. 

Bitcoin has a current market cap of about $350 billion, while that of gold's stands at roughly $10 trillion. This week the cryptocurrency gained