Investment legend Michael Novogratz, the $3.2 bln investor and former manager of the multi-billion dollar investment firm Fortress, recently stated that the cryptocurrency market will be worth $5 trillion by 2022.

Preaching crypto optimism

Over the past two years, Novogratz has expressed his optimism towards cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum that have been leading the $100 bln cryptocurrency market. Previously, Novogratz revealed that 10 percent of his net worth, at least hundreds of millions of dollars, are invested in a diverse portfolio of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

Bitcoin has transformed into a global phenomenon within a period of years due to its decentralized and transparent nature that have made Bitcoin an efficient store of value, digital currency and safe haven asset for the vast majority of users, traders and investors.

Other successful cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Litecoin and Ethereum Classic have gained interest from both individual and institutional investors with their distinctive strategies, philosophies, monetary policies and purpose.

Ethereum, for instance, provides an infrastructure for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized applications (DApps), creating an intermediary-free network of applications. Ethereum Classic is more similar to Bitcoin in the sense that it has a fixed and deflationary monetary supply.

“We’re at the takeoff point”

Comparing the cryptocurrency market to the Nasdaq due to the variety of crypto-assets and Blockchain network, Novogratz explained that there exists no reason why the cryptocurrency market can’t be worth $5 trillion within the next five years.

“The Nasdaq got to $5.4 trillion in 1999, why couldn’t it be as big? There’s so much human capital and real money being poured into the space and we’re at the takeoff point,” said Novogratz.

During an interview with Bloomberg, Novogratz further emphasized that a rigid regulatory structure within the global cryptocurrency exchange market is absolutely necessary for the cryptocurrency market to evolve into a major financial market.

Already, overseas markets including Japan, China, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong along with many other countries have regulated the cryptocurrency exchange market and have provided thorough, practical and efficient regulatory frameworks to attract the general public into the cryptocurrency exchange market.

China, in particular, is heavily involved in its local cryptocurrency market and is actually planning to regulate smaller markets such as the initial coin offering (ICO) market that has gained increasing interest from investors since the beginning of 2017.

“Most cryptos will eventually be worth zero”

Evidently, the cryptocurrency market and the majority of cryptocurrencies are still in the early stages of development. As Ari Paul, portfolio manager for the University of Chicago's $7.5 bln endowment, explains, most cryptocurrencies that are in existence are likely to decline in value while several major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Ethereum Classic survive.

“Most cryptos, like most companies, will eventually be worth zero. This is the nature of competition. Buy and hold is a strategy, not safety,” said Paul.

More importantly, as prominent venture capitalist Naval Ravikant famously stated before: