Brad Garlinghouse, the famous CEO of Ripple, a micro-payments company and XRP issuer, spoke to CNBC from the US media and said that the year-end cryptocurrency market prediction is $5 trillion.

“Demand is increasing, supply is decreasing”

Stating that both macro-economic factors and other factors that directly concern the crypto industry will play an important role in this, Garlinghouse said:

I’ve been around this industry for a long time, and I’ve seen these trends come and go. I’m very optimistic. I think the macro trends, the big picture things like the ETFs, they’re driving for the first time real institutional money. You’re seeing that drives demand, and at the same time demand is increasing, supply is decreasing. That doesn’t take an economics major to tell you what happens when supply contracts and demand expands.”

Garlinghouse also said that the US is still by far the largest economy in the world and is now starting to change direction in terms of regulations:

“The U.S. is still the largest economy in the world, and it’s unfortunately been one of the more hostile crypto markets. And I think that’s going to start to change, also. I think this change will drive prices up and a more transparent regulatory regime will increase prices. The overall market cap of the crypto industry … is easily predicted to to double by the end of this year … impacted by all of these macro factors,” he said.

As it is known, halving, one of the most important elements of the Bitcoin blockchain system, will take place on 20-21 April, and the 6.25 BTC reward miners receive per block will drop to 3.125 BTC. The daily supply of 900 BTC will also decrease to 450 BTC.

Bitcoin is trading at around $71,960 at the time of writing.