Vinny Lingham, an outspoken Bitcoin entrepreneur, has described Bitcoin as a speculation tool rather than an investment asset at this point in time. This comes in the wake of the current impasse in the Bitcoin community which is unhealthy for the landscape.
Not investment yet
Lingham is the co-founder of Gyft, Silicon Cape and the CEO of CivicKey. He expressed his opposition to a hard fork. At this juncture, however, he thinks Bitcoin is speculative because of its misty future as a result of the ongoing acrimony surrounding it. "It is a speculative asset because of all the conflict around scaling. There is no clear path forward," Lingham told Cointelegraph.
The South African serial Internet entrepreneur and VC investor is of the opinion that Bitcoin can only become an investment asset when it breaches $1,300 sustainably. Is it going to happen soon? Lingham doesn’t think so.
SegWit's adoption
"For Bitcoin price to sustainably breach $1,300, we need to adopt SegWit," Lingham explained. From his position, it will take a soft fork to see Bitcoin move to the next level of an investment asset class.
On the outcome of SegWit not being activated, Lingham had this to say:
"Actually, I'm not certain on the outcome. That's just my sense and why it's all speculative. Completely no explicit route ahead at this time."
Bitcoin price recovery
Last month Bitcoin took a painful dive after starting 2017 so well and making admirable gains. It fell to as much as $920 in March with many experts including Vinny Lingham advising the community against holding too much Bitcoin.
The invigorating news is that in the midst of the acrimonious scaling debate, the past two weeks have seen the bellwether of the cryptocurrency rising again. Currently, it is flying around $1,200.
Altcoin holders swap to Bitcoin
When Cointelegraph asked Lingham if he was impressed by the Bitcoin price recovery, he responded:
“Yes and no. A lot of it is altcoin holders swapping their altcoins for BTC...ETH clearly moves inversely to BTC. This is a problem. ETH goes up, BTC goes down and vice versa."
The scaling battle continues unabated and there is no solution in sight yet. We are yet to know whether SegWit will prevail or whether BU will usher in a split of the Bitcoin community, like what happened with the Ethereum community last year.