According to the CoinDesk editor, Bitcoin will eventually hit the $ 1 million mark per coin. As investors' interest in cryptocurrency rises, this is expected to happen over the next five years. Ollie Leech said that he is convinced that Bitcoin will become an interesting asset to hold.

However, it is unknown when will Bitcoin reach the level of $ 1 million. The next Bitcoin halving is a key technical event, when the number of Bitcoins provided by miners will be halved. This is due in 2024 and is likely to cause a massive price surge.

The same scenario was currently observed, when there is a sharp growth after the halving of bitcoin in 2020.

Bitcoin's market cap now stands at more than $ 1 trillion, hardly doubling what it was at the start of the year. There were several factors that contributed to the growth, including the fact that more and more institutional investors are accepting cryptocurrency.

Earlier this year, Tesla invested $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin, and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs plan to offer select customers access to cryptocurrency. JPMorgan is also considering its own product in partnership with NYDIG.

Cryptocurrency is also gaining momentum in the payments space: Mastercard, PayPal and Visa supported the cryptocurrencies during the last few months.

In addition, big banks and Wall Street payment companies are getting involved in digital assets as a result of customer demand. A recent Mastercard survey found that 40% of people plan to use cryptocurrency next year.

But despite the growing optimism about cryptocurrency, some well-known investors remain skeptical.

Charlie Munger, a longtime business partner of legendary investor Warren Buffett, criticized Bitcoin at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting. And this isn't the first time Buffett or Munger have criticized cryptocurrency.

However, investors are still buying, although skeptics warn that bitcoin is highly speculative and overvalued.

Bitcoin is a digital gold and a means of protection against inflation, which will grow over time. However, a big problem in the crypto space is related to how and where the coins are mined. Bitcoin mining is extremely energy-intensive. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, a single Bitcoin transaction has the same carbon footprint as 680,000 Visa transactions or 51,210 hours of YouTube viewing.

The Oak Ridge Institute in Ohio found that a dollar-worth bitcoin requires 17 megajoules of energy, more than double the amount of energy needed to mine copper, gold, and platinum.

This raises serious ethical questions for corporations and governments seeking to reduce their own carbon footprints. Currently, 60% of the coins mined in Bitcoin come from China. They don't worry about sustainability, even though it's important. Over time, the actual origin of a coin mined steadily is worth much more than just an ordinary coin that can't prove its own origin.

At the time of publication, Bitcoin was trading just below $ 57,000, which is below its one-year high, but has gone up by 94% since January 1. Accordingly, we can see an increase of more than 1,650% for the next five years.