Former Wall Street giant turned billionaire private investor Mike Novogratz would not be surprised to see bitcoin price hitting above $10,000 in early 2018.

Michael Novogratz, a retired Wall Street investor and noted cryptocurrency advocate who is starting a $500 million crypto hedge fund – with $150 million of his own money – was speaking to CNBC when he revealed he was an early investor in ‘bitcoin, ethereum and a lot of different ICOs.”

Asked to put an estimate on bitcoin’s value in the coming months and years, Novogratz prefaced his take by stating “the herd [is] coming”, referencing several institutional investors getting into bitcoin – a decentralized cryptocurrency traditionally popular with the everyday retail investor.

He went on to predict:

“I’m pretty confident to say it’s going higher…It would not surprise me if in the next 6-10 months we are over $10,000.

Novogratz was asked if bitcoin’s value gains constituted a bubble, to which he replied in the affirmative while implying that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“Historically, manias or bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live. If it’s the railroad bubble or the internet bubble, it really changed the way we live,” he stated. “This blockchain revolution, this decentralized revolution, is going to change the way we live. We’ve gone from [it being] an experiment to implementing.”

He added:

10 or 15 years from now, blockchain and decentralized systems will be everywhere. Yes, it’s a bubble, it’s going to be the great manias of all time…Bitcoin happens to the bellwether of this entire decentralized revolution. It’s the easiest way people can get exposure to it. Bitcoin probably runs the hardest. But things like Ethereum will be the public utility of this new space. We’ve split our bets and we’re betting on a lot of other ICOs as well.

Novogratz hasn’t been shy in making price predictions for cryptocurrencies. Earlier in June, the billionaire investor claimed the entire cryptocurrency marked cap could reach over $5 trillion in five years.

Featured image from YouTube/Bloomberg TV Markets and Finance.