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© Getty Images / Busakorn Pongparnit
El Salvador’s head of state predicts Bitcoin will have a blast in 2022, from official adoption to hitting the elusive 6-digit price
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, predicts Bitcoin will double in price this year and reach $100,000 per coin amid official adoption as a sovereign currency.
In a tweet on Sunday, Bukele - whose country last year became the first to embrace Bitcoin as a sovereign currency - pitched a couple of exciting predictions for the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
He tweeted that Bitcoin may finally reach the long-sought $100,000 price tag sometime this year, while also musing that two more countries will adopt it as legal tender (or is it insider information?).
2022 predictions on #Bitcoin:
— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) January 2, 2022
•Will reach $100k
•2 more countries will adopt it as legal tender
•Will become a major electoral issue in US elections this year
•Bitcoin City will commence construction
•Volcano bonds will be oversubscribed
•Huge surprise at @TheBitcoinConf
In addition, Bukele wrote that Bitcoin could become a "major electoral issue" in the US midterm election in November, while also hinting at a "huge surprise" at the upcoming Bitcoin Conference in Miami in April.
El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as its official currency in September 2021, raising eyebrows and enraging the International Monetary Fund. Bukele hasn’t wavered, however, and went on to announce plans to issue a $1 billion ‘Bitcoin Bond’ with a 10-year maturity on the Liquid Network in November. He plans to use half of the proceeds from the bond issue to build the world’s first ‘Bitcoin City’, which, he tweeted, will begin construction this year.
Bitcoin had a rollercoaster year in 2021, plunging in price from nearly $60,000 in April to around $30,000 in July, and then reaching an all-time high at around $69,000 per coin in November. It grew nearly 60% in 2021, far ahead of traditional assets, but still ended the year below the $50,000 benchmark, trading at around $47,000 last Friday. It has started this year down, shedding 1% so far and trading near $46,890 at 10:00 GMT on Monday.