Bitcoin’s price is strangely low right now and could surge to $500,000 or even as high as $1 million per coin this four-year cycle, Adam Back said. 

In an interview with Decrypt, the famed computer scientist and Blocksteam CEO said that given all the institutional money flowing into the space, the price of the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency should be higher. 

Bitcoin was recently trading for $103,300 per coin—unmoved in the past day but up more than 7% over the past week, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko. It is off just 5% from its all-time high near $109,000, despite a late winter, early spring swoon. 

Back, who holds a computer science doctorate in distributed systems from Exeter University and has long been involved in cryptography, told Decrypt: “I’m thinking this cycle could get quite high, but the cycle stretches out a few years, right? So I was thinking $500,000 to $1 million, because there’s a lot going on.”

He added: “There doesn’t seem to be a clear logical reason to me for why we are only at $100,000. That’s not very high given all of the things that are different compared to a couple years ago.”

Back noted the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., which have generated more than $41 billion in net inflows, and the crypto-friendly policies of U.S. President Trump. 

Wall Street’s top regulator, the SEC, last year approved Bitcoin ETFs—funds managed by the likes of BlackRock and Fidelity—which give investors easy access to BTC with shares that can be bought via brokerage accounts. 

The approval of the funds has led to a flow of new money into the space from investors previously locked out of the crypto investing sphere. 

Bitcoin’s latest record—hit in January—isn’t that high compared to previous cycles when looking at the coin’s movement following its historical halving events. BTC tends to move in four-year cycles. 

But Back said that he thought brokers and individual investors tend to buy things that have already risen, so more money will flow into the space as Bitcoin climbs, creating price momentum. 

“I think if you get a new all-time high, it could quickly become a lot higher,” he said. 

Back is the co-founder and CEO of Blocksteam, a company building Bitcoin infrastructure, like crypto wallets. 

Back had an email exchange with Bitcoin’s mysterious creator—or creators—Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, the year that the original paper outlining the blockchain network was published. Bitcoin’s mining process is derived from Hashcash, a proof-of-work system that Back invented.

Edited by James Rubin