So tell me what you think would be responsible for the mass adoption of bitcoin within the short period of time that you have speculated? The level of adoption is still very low, and government is yet to regulate the cryptocurrency space. ICo that would have encouraged investors are discouraging them and scaring them away from the cryptocurrency space generally, the last ATH that people invested in is still yet to be hit and the moment bitcoin climbs to $20k, the bears will surely come in because some of them had their investment locked up in that figure you see there.
So that 2 years to me is not a reasonable one, I think the 5 years of op is more reasonable because by then, the cryptocurrency space would have grown large and many governments would have probably regulated it.
Exactly. We need more time for regulation, as governments are still trying to figure out how to properly legitimize the crypto industry. Because of crypto's uncertainty, institutional investors have become afraid of joining the space. A proper regulatory framework for crypto and Blockchain technology, would allow these investors to feel confident that their investment is protected by the government (like it's the case with stocks). While regulation is in the works, Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies are already adopting new technologies to scale for the world. It's a matter of time before the Lightning Network, the Plasma Framework, and Casper PoS + Sharding become robust enough to greatly improve decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
But all of this will take some time before it becomes a reality, as things do not come over night. A lot of effort needs to be taken for crypto to reach new heights in mainstream adoption. As such, I believe that 5 years is a reasonable time-frame for Bitcoin to increase towards astronomical levels in price. During this period, developers will be working hard to improve the LN in order to launch a stable version of it for the world. Additionally, privacy features like Confidential Transactions and Dandellion Protocol will be implemented across the Bitcoin Blockchain soon. And last but not least, LN's atomic swaps feature will disrupt the way we trade our crypto, resulting in greater demand for Bitcoin over time.
Nonetheless, as Bitcoin improves over time, it'll become much more attractive for people within the mainstream world. As a result, prices will increase like never before leading us towards the goal of $100k in no time. Until then, the target of $25,000 per coin seems to be much more closer than we've thought. Perhaps, by next year, we'll be able to experience a slight increase in Bitcoin's price across the crypto market. Just my opinion