HAMPTON ROADS, Va — Cryptocurrency expert Scott Enders examines the recent surge in popularity of “meme coins,” explaining the factors driving this renewed interest and the impact on the broader cryptocurrency landscape.

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UK Fintech giant Revolut has teamed up with hardware wallet firm Ledger to expand cryptocurrency payment options in specific European Economic Area (EEA) countries.

Announced today, the partnership will allow Ledger customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, through Revolut’s on-ramp service, Revolut Ramp.

The alliance will integrate Revolut as an official buy provider within Ledger’s wallet application, Ledger Live, in 27 EEA countries, including Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland, Malta, and Switzerland.

The partnership is said to simplify the process of buying cryptocurrency while maintaining full digital ownership. Revolut customers who have completed Know Your Customer (KYC) checks can now bypass additional verification steps when buying crypto through Ledger, making the process faster and more secure.

Revolut Ramp also allows non-Revolut customers to complete KYC checks and make purchases using Visa or Mastercard in minutes. The integration includes Revolut Pay as a payment method on Ledger, facilitating instant online payments.

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Revolut, the UK’s highest-valued fintech company, has been providing cryptocurrency services since 2017 and currently serves over 40 million customers globally.

“We’re delighted to be working with Ledger, a leader in the self-custody space, as we further cement Revolut as the go-to financial app for crypto investors,” said Revolut’s general crypto manager Emil Urmanshin.

Meanwhile, Ledger has integrated MoonPay’s instant crypto purchasing and token swap capabilities into its Ledger Live.

The collaboration also introduces a limited-edition Ledger x MoonPay Nano X hard wallet, which is purple and includes a $25 crypto voucher from MoonPay. A one-year subscription to Ledger Recover, a key recovery service, will soon be available with this product.

Ledger already allows users of its popular crypto hardware wallet to buy cryptocurrency directly in the App with bank cards after it has inked a partnership with Canadian payments firm Nuvei. The agreement gives Ledger users a fiat onramp to conduct and settle crypto transactions, a grey area of business where a gauntlet of KYC requirements and other regulations kick in.

Despite the price of Bitcoin (BTC -4.19%) struggling to stay above $60,000 these days, many top investors remain confident that the world’s most popular cryptocurrency will eventually reach a price of $1 million or higher. In fact, at last month’s Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, MicroStrategy (MSTR -3.70%) Executive Chairman Michael Saylor predicted that Bitcoin could hit a price of $13 million by the year 2045.

At current prices, that would represent an eye-popping gain of more than 20,000%. Against this backdrop, it’s perhaps not surprising that billionaires — including some who were once longtime crypto skeptics — are now lining up to buy more Bitcoin. But the opportunity for huge returns is not their only incentive.

Bitcoin as a top-performing asset

Who wouldn’t want to buy a digital asset that could soar in value by 20,000% during the next decade or two?

You might want to take Saylor’s recent Bitcoin price predictions with a grain of salt. He is one of the biggest Bitcoin bulls, and he has a vested interest in getting as many investors as possible excited about the future growth potential of Bitcoin. After all, the company that he runs is now the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin in the world.

But Saylor is not alone. A growing number of high-profile investors have put out price forecasts of $1 million or higher for Bitcoin. Cathie Wood of Ark Invest, for example, now thinks that Bitcoin is headed to $3.8 million by 2030. Investment firm Bernstein has put out a $1 million price forecast for Bitcoin for the year 2033. And plenty of smart folks in Silicon Valley are attracted to Bitcoin’s underlying digital technology and are now suggesting that Bitcoin could hit $1 million or more.

Bitcoin as a hedge against risk

And investors are looking beyond Bitcoin’s value as a speculative asset. They also view it as a potential hedge against political, economic, and geopolitical risk. Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, for example, has likened Bitcoin to gold for this reason. If investors are concerned about what’s going to happen next, he says, they should think about buying Bitcoin.

According to Jones, there are two reasons to be particularly concerned right now. One is the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and the risks of a regional war. The other is the domestic macroeconomic situation. As he sees it, U.S. government debt levels are reaching unsustainable levels, and investing in Bitcoin is one way to insulate your portfolio from a worst-case economic scenario.

Bitcoin as a long-term store of value

Finally, billionaire investors are looking to Bitcoin as a long-term store of value. For example, billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller now views Bitcoin as being similar to gold in this regard. In fact, he refers to Bitcoin as an upstart that could displace gold as the market leader.

Will Bitcoin eventually displace gold as the preferred long-term store of value? A lot of smart people on Wall Street seem to think so. In 2022, Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs suggested that Bitcoin might eventually control as much as half of the store-of-value market. And Cathie Wood’s bullish crypto forecasts also call for Bitcoin winning a rising share of the store-of-value market.

What if the billionaires are wrong?

Of course, there’s always a chance that the billionaires are wrong. After the recent crypto flash crash in early August, when Bitcoin lost 15% of its value overnight, all the usual critics were out in force.

They suggested that Bitcoin had a better chance of going to zero than of going to $1 million. They suggested that investors putting their money into the new spot Bitcoin ETFs are engaged in a massive speculative frenzy. They suggested that Bitcoin was a risk asset just like every other risk asset, offering no particular safety during a market meltdown.

Fair enough. Those are all legitimate arguments. If you are investing in Bitcoin, you should at least be aware of what the Bitcoin bears are saying.

But over the long run, my money is with the billionaires. They are the ones now creating new investment products for Bitcoin, and they are the ones helping to build the regulatory and legal framework that will enable Bitcoin to thrive.