The founder DataDash, and the man with the biggest digital currency YouTube channel with over 315,000 subscribers, Nicholas Merten, recently mentioned that cryptocurrency will have four massive cycles which include the Silk Road phase which occurred from 2011-2013, the retail speculation phase which happened from 2016-2017, the institutional speculation phase which will happen from 2019-2020 and then the last phase which is when crypto replaces fiat phase from 2020-2030.

Merten revealed his phase prediction on Twitter:

From what I can analyze, crypto will have four major super cycles:



Silk Road (2011-2013) ☑️

Retail Speculation (2016-2017) ☑️

Institutional Speculation (2019-2020)

Crypto Replaces Fiat (2020-2030) — Nicholas Merten (@Nicholas_Merten) November 9, 2018

According to the founder, blockchain technology and digital currencies will change the way we think about trust and finance.

As most crypto enthusiasts will be aware of, the now-defunct Silk Road was a massive online black market where people had been buying and selling things like drugs and other types of illicit goods through the use of the biggest digital currency Bitcoin. Several IT analysts argue that if criminals are using your technology, then it must be useful and it might have other legitimate use cases.

Digital currencies were able to serve as an effective use of exchange on the Silk Road market. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, managed to get their hands on over 140,000 Bitcoins, which was worth $28.5 million at the time after busting the illegal network.

Most of the digital currency was owned the owner of the Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht who is now serving two life sentences with no possibility of parole at a high-security prison in Colorado.

As said by CryptoGlobe:

“Currently, the market capitalization of the crypto market is of about $200 billion - which is considerably lower than its all-time of high of over $800 billion. However, to put things into perspective, the digital asset market was only valued at around $20 billion in January of 2017 - which means that cryptos have (overall) appreciated in value by 10x in (almost) the past two years.”

In other Bitcoin-related news, one of the early developers of the leading crypto, Jeff Garzik claims that he knows the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. Back then, Garzik wanted to urge people to write code to make Bitcoin better and so to do so, Garzik set up bounties or rewards to those who did and so by the end of the year he’d given away over 15 Bitcoin (worth $300 million at its peak).

He has a theory that Nakamoto is an early developer called Dave Kleiman. He thinks this because:

"It matches his coding style, this gentleman was self-taught. And the Bitcoin coder was someone who was very, very smart, but not a classically trained software engineer.”

Not that any of this really matters now that Bitcoin is over ten years old!

So with this, could crypto replace fiat in ten years time? Let us know what you think down below in the comments!