1 Top Cryptocurrency to Buy. Michael Saylor Predicts It Will Soar 17,696%.

Key Points

There haven't been many investment success stories throughout history that can hold a candle to Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) .

The world's original cryptocurrency , still the largest today, was launched in 2009 and has appreciated by over 20,000% since 2014. One of Bitcoin's most prominent backers and holders believes that its story still has plenty of chapters ahead.

Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Bitcoin treasury company Strategy , recently predicted that Bitcoin's price will reach approximately $21 million over the next 21 years. That would indicate an upside of 17,696% from the price as I write this of $118,000.

Strategy holds Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset. As of July 31, it said it owned 628,791 Bitcoins, 3% of the Bitcoins ever to be in existence.

Saylor is obviously a Bitcoin fan and will benefit if it surges. While such large numbers can seem irrational at first glance, Saylor's prediction deserves a look. How likely is a more than 17,000% jump, and should investors buy Bitcoin right now?

1 Top Cryptocurrency to Buy. Michael Saylor Predicts It Will Soar 17,696%.

Michael Saylor's price target could be a little on the ambitious side

Nobody knows what the world will look like in 21 years, much less what Bitcoin's price will be. The world has entered an age of unprecedented technological innovation, with artificial intelligence hitting its stride.

But if you use some rough numbers to do some math, it looks like Saylor's prediction is too bold. For starters, Bitcoin's fully diluted value (Bitcoins in existence multiplied by value per coin) is currently $2.44 trillion. Increasing Bitcoin's market price by 10,000%, a 100-fold increase, would mean that its fully diluted value would soar to somewhere around $250 trillion. Some of that would come from more Bitcoins being mined and some from a price increase.

The global money supply among the world's major central banks is about $95 trillion. It was approximately $23 trillion two decades ago. If it increased roughly the same amount over the next 20 years (quadruple) to about $380 trillion, you would be looking at a scenario where Bitcoin would be worth 65% of all the fiat money of the world's leading economies in my math from above.

That just doesn't seem realistic, especially considering the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency, which carries massive implications throughout the global financial system. Plus, gold is worth a fraction of the money supply at an estimated $22.68 trillion today, and there's no apparent reason why that ratio would change for another alternative asset like Bitcoin. I find such a huge jump in Bitcoin's value impossible, but improbable.

OK