In 2017, I was attending a conference in Prague where I was invited to discuss about bitcoin and blockchain. The price per bitcoin fluctuated in November of that year between $7,600 and $8,100 for a bitcoin. This weekend, bitcoin passed $59,423 with a market value approaching $1 trillion (!).

In one year, the price has soared with an astonishing 323 percent. And the biggest question here is if we have reached the peak, or has the revolution only just begun?

Much of what I have discussed in 2017 during the bitcoin and blockchain conference I still stand by. With bitcoin, blockchain was launched and it is only the beginning of a whole new era, a new form of internet and we are only at the beginning of it. I think that bitcoin and blockchain is one of the greatest technological inventions of our time - the same way that people underestimated the internet at the beginning of the 90's, most people still tend to underestimate blockchain, even though more dragons are waking up from their slumber.

Blockchain is all about a decentralized world where each individual holds the power. It is no longer a king, government, agency or even Wall Street that decides, but rather you and I, to the great horror of the traditional institutions. We as people finally have the power.

There are a total of 21 million bitcoins and of these, just over 18.5 million are already mined. If you truly believe in a digital future, then in my opinion it is completely crazy not to believe in a digital currency. Because how can internet exist without having its own currency?

In that matter, bitcoin is the very foundation because it is both the largest currency but also the basis for blockchain as a phenomenon. However, we should see bitcoin more as an asset, like gold, than an actual currency.

Unlike gold, it does not weigh much and can be bought, shared, sold or even traded and sent in real-time. But you're probably thinking; “there's no value, it's just a bunch of digital numbers!?” That objection is the most common one that we hear all the time, but if you really think about it, all forms of fiat currencies are "made up" without an inherent value. The European euro or an American dollar is based on a network construction of us humans where we together say yes to the market value of the euro or the dollar. The banknotes per se have no value more than what we together agree that they are actually worth.

92 per cent of the world's currency today is in fact already digital. This means that most of the money you earn, transact with, use to buy goods or any sort of services exists only on computers and hard drives. Only an estimated 8 per cent of currency globally is actually physical money.

But let us go back to the original question, why did bitcoin increase as it did since the beginning of the year? First of all, I believe that it is the awakening of people around what currency is - traditional towards the new ones.

The US Federal Reserve squeezed out over $9 trillion in 2020 alone due to the corona crisis. In other words, just over 23 percent of all dollars circulating in the world were created out of nothing during only one year. To give some perspective, more dollars were "created" in one year in the United States than it has been done in two centuries. And still there are people who say that bitcoin is a scam?

The market barely reacted to the message, but in the long run I think it has major consequences for our confidence in the dollar as the world's main currency. It is thus no coincidence that the dollar is losing its attractiveness especially among investors, while bitcoin is increasing its attractiveness.

The second reason is that large companies, funds and institutions have finally woken up from their slumber. In 2020, giants such as Jack Dorsey (Twitter's founder) chose his other company Square to invest in bitcoin. During the fall, the giant PayPal announced that it will invest heavily in bitcoin and as well enable transactions easily via their platforms.

However, the most noticeable is Elon Musk's newly discovered interest in bitcoin, where he decided at the beginning of this year, that $1.5 billion from Tesla's cash will be invested in bitcoin. In just a few weeks, the return on that investment is more than Tesla's entire profit was since they started. At the beginning of March, it was officially announced that Tesla made $1 billion in profits from their initial investment. Following Musk's announcement, other billionaires, as well as companies, have followed suit and the domino effect was underway.

I want to be very clear that this article is not financial advice at all. These are my personal thoughts, reflections and speculations.

With that said, I stick my chin and grin out that bitcoin can pass $100,000 within a year. Others may continue to say that it is rubbish, the new hype or that there is no value, but history teaches us something else and that is that bitcoin is now a phenomenon over 10 years old. Can deflation occur and bitcoin go down to zero? Of course it can and that is the risk with all investments, but the dream of bitcoin is much bigger than that.

Maybe I'm completely wrong - maybe not, but in the long run I'm convinced that bitcoin, crypto and blockchain are the future and that journey has, in my opinion, just begun.

Thank you Satoshi Nakomoto - we tech driven geeks are eternally grateful to you.

Judy Shalom is CEO of Advedro, Author, Entrepreneur and most of all she is a strong business woman of shared learning, transparent communication and visionary leadership. She lectures and attends various types of digital marketing panels where she excels at explaining online marketing concepts.