Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has admitted that his infamous 2018 prediction, that Bitcoin (BTC) was more likely to be worth $100 than $100,000 in ten years, was spectacularly wrong.<\/p>\n
Writing on X, Rogoff acknowledged<\/a> that he underestimated the OG cryptocurrency\u2019s resilience, citing \u201csensible regulation never arriving,\u201d its role in the global underground economy, and people in authority themselves holding crypto despite conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n The admission comes just days after Bitcoin set<\/a> a new all-time high price above $124,000 on August 14, flipping Google\u2019s market capitalization in the process. Rogoff\u2019s climbdown has rekindled debate between critics and supporters alike over the gulf between academia and the real-world trajectory of digital assets.<\/p>\n Back in January 2018, the former IMF chief economist told<\/a> CNBC\u2019s Squawk Box:<\/p>\n \u201cI think Bitcoin will be worth a tiny fraction of what it is now if we\u2019re headed out 10 years from now,\u201d the Harvard professor said. \u201cI would see $100 as being a lot more likely than $100,000 ten years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n He claimed that the asset\u2019s \u201cactual uses as a transaction vehicle\u201d were negligible outside of money laundering and tax evasion. He also insisted that regulation would eventually crush the cryptocurrency\u2019s value. At the time, BTC was trading around $11,200 and was still reeling after dumping from its December 2017 peak near $19,000.<\/p>\n Now, in 2025, with Bitcoin well above the $100,000 mark Rogoff had insisted the asset would never reach, his prediction is being ridiculed across social media.<\/p>\n Analyst Bit Paine compared his mistake to a marine biologist mistaking a blue whale for weighing 200 pounds. Bitcoin proponent Robert Breedlove also came in hot, dismissing<\/a> the professor outright, saying he never cared for his opinion then and still doesn\u2019t now.<\/p>\n However, others, like Columbia lecturer Omid Malekan, argued<\/a> Rogoff\u2019s misstep was a reflection of the wider \u201cinnovator\u2019s dilemma\u201d in academia, where reputational risk, institutional bias, and the lack of technical background may leave many economists unsuited to understand the importance of Bitcoin.<\/p>\n Austin Campbell, a former JPMorgan executive, went further in a thread the same day, calling<\/a> Rogoff \u201cthe single worst situated person in the entire world to understand the value of Bitcoin,\u201d citing his privileged access to stable institutions and the dollar-based system.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, economist Jan W\u00fcstenfeld highlighted<\/a> that Bitcoin\u2019s appeal stems not from tax evasion as Rogoff had insinuated, but from systemic inflation, monetary expansion, and rising global debt loads.<\/p>\n Bitcoin\u2019s price has retreated<\/a> since last week\u2019s all-time high, slipping 7.3% over the past seven days to trade at $112,639 as of August 20.<\/p>\n The decline follows profit-taking after its record run, though the asset remains up 86% year-on-year. In the last 24 hours, BTC dipped 2.1% within a range of $112,500 to $115,000, with short-term weakness contrasting its broader bullish trajectory.<\/p>\n The post Harvard Economist Admits $100 BTC Prediction Fail, Blames Regulation and Underground Economy<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has admitted that his infamous 2018 prediction, that Bitcoin (BTC) was more likely to be worth $100 than $100,000 in ten years, was spectacularly wrong. Writing on X, Rogoff acknowledged that he underestimated the OG cryptocurrency\u2019s resilience, citing \u201csensible regulation never arriving,\u201d its role in the global underground economy, and people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":90756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/90756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From $100 Call to $124K Reality<\/h2>\n
Market Outlook<\/h2>\n