Editor's Note: Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news stories and expert opinions that moved the precious metals and financial markets. Sign up here!

(Kitco News) - Any way you look at it, bitcoin is more valuable than precious metals as a form of money and is expected to one day become the dominant global currency, this according to best-selling author James Altucher, managing director of Formula Capital.

Long-term, Altucher said bitcoin can climb to $1 million a coin or more, with its intrinsic value based on its potential to replace fiat currencies.

“Cryptocurrencies, solve in general, many of the problems of paper currencies and fiat money; the fact that there are so many banks and fees and there’s so much potential for human error, when the Federal Reserve prints more money, there’s potential for forgery, there’s privacy issues, cryptocurrencies solve a lot of the problems of fiat money and that long term story is still intact,” Altucher told Kitco News.

He noted that most digital coins, however, are nothing more than “scams,” as evidenced by their rapid depreciation to zero in recent years.

“In a prior interview I mentioned that 95% of cryptocurrencies are scams, that was in August 2017, about 80% of cryptocurrencies have since gone to zero,” he said.

Shorter-term, geopolitical instability around the world is likely to drive investors into bitcoin, said Altucher, who sees cryptocurrencies as a safe haven asset.

“In terms of the short-term rally, there’s so many problems right now with Iran, with China and these tariff wars that are happening, with the Brexit issues, so people are getting afraid of the currencies that they own so there’s kind of a flight into other types of currencies like bitcoin or like gold,” he said. “[Bitcoin] is a flight to safety, and also there are a lot of companies now that are announcing that they are accepting it.”

Importantly, precious metals’ value was historically derived from their rarity, but that quality is no longer relevant today, Altucher added.

Two years ago, Altucher made a call that bitcoin would reach $1 million, and he is still sticking to it.

“How much paper currency is out there…it’s about $200 hundred trillion dollars out in the world, and there is only about $200 billion dollars of crypto currency, so that is 100,000 percent from here. So that could give bitcoin a price of $8 million dollars, so $1 million dollars is even a discount to where bitcoin could eventually go. When it gets there, who knows,” he said.