Kraken’s Dan Held Exclusive Interview

Dan Held is among the most popular and influential people within the cryptocurrency industry. Apart from being a vocal bitcoin supporter, he’s also the current Head of Growth of the veteran US exchange Kraken. A position that he described as: “leading our initiatives around efficiently acquiring users and getting them activated.”

CryptoPotato had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Held recently. He explained how and when he entered the industry, offered his views on BTC, and provided a rather optimistic bitcoin price prediction north of $300,000.

Early Days And BTC’s Development

Held asserted that he first heard about the primary cryptocurrency back in 2011 – just two years after the official launch in early 2009. However, he “only started playing around” with BTC in 2021.

“Bitcoin is solving the biggest problem in the economy: storing value. It’s gold 2.0. It’s a better hedge against inflation, supply is known and capped, and it’s easily stored and transferred.”

Kraken’s executive doubled-down on his involvement once he moved to San Francisco, which was the most active cryptocurrency city in the US at the time.

However, it wasn’t until the March 2013 BTC rally that drove the cryptocurrency from about $30 to breaking into triple-digit price territory for the first time that convinced Held to create his first product – ZeroBlock. It quickly became one of the most popular bitcoin applications at the time and was soon acquired by blockchain.info.

Institutional Involvement and $300K Price Prediction

Whether it’s the economic hurdles prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic or there’s a different reason, 2020 has turned out to be the year with the most bitcoin purchases and endorsements from institutions and prominent investors.

The leading cryptocurrency asset manager, Grayscale, marks consecutive record-breaking quarters. Companies like MicroStrategy and Square allocated millions of dollars in BTC. The Wall Street giant Guggenheim Partners plans to purchase up to $500 million worth of bitcoin, according to an SEC filing.

Additionally, celebrated investors such as Paul Tudor Jones III, Stan Druckenmiller, and Bill Miller have openly praised the asset. Held classified these developments as “insanely bullish.”

“The endorsement by these executives and legendary macro traders of bitcoin will make it an accepted asset by institutions. They’ve reduced the career risk of investing in bitcoin.”

When it comes down to price predictions, Held touched upon the popular stock-to-flow model that envisions BTC exploding to $288,000 per coin by the end of 2021. Although the model has doubters and this price tag seems quite optimistic at the moment, Held actually believes that bitcoin could go even further:

“Gold has a total market value of around $10 trillion, and bitcoin’s market cap is about $350 billion. Bitcoin at $288,000 will only be around 50% of gold’s value, so it’s not only just a possible scenario, but it may have even more room to grow.”