Guggenheim CIO Says Bitcoin Could Eventually Climb to $600,000

Scott Minerd, chief investment officer of the multi-billion dollar investment firm Guggenheim Partners, has revised his previous prediction for bitcoin's long-term price potential.

In an interview with CNN’s Julia Chatterley on Tuesday, Minerd said, based on Guggenheim's fundamental research, he believes bitcoin could eventually climb as high as $600,000 per coin.

Minerd said the firm has been looking at bitcoin for almost 10 years and previously the size of the market "just wasn’t big enough to justify institutional money."

However, as the total market cap of bitcoin got bigger – around the time bitcoin's price passed $10,000 – it started to look "very interesting."

“If you consider the supply of bitcoin relative ... to the supply of gold in the world, and what the total value of gold is, if bitcoin were to go to those kinds of numbers, you’d be talking about $400,000 to $600,000 per bitcoin,” he said.

However, the cryptocurrency's rapid rise in just weeks from $20,000 to $40,000 "smacks of short-term speculation," he said. Further, the institutional levels of market participation, while growing, aren't yet big enough to support current price levels.

Read more: Guggenheim CIO Says Institutional Demand Not There to Sustain Bitcoin Above $30K

Yet, cryptocurrency "has come into the realm of respectability and will continue to become more and more important in the global economy," Minerd said.

In comments last December, the CIO had said bitcoin could be worth up to $400,000 in time, based on the same rationale.