"If lots of optimistic things happen, then it can't be more than X" doesn't require predicting the future. For example, the total value of all gold is somethin

"If lots of optimistic things happen, then it can't be more than X" doesn't require predicting the future. For example, the total value of all gold is something like $10-20T. At 21M coins, if bitcoin fully replaced all gold you'd be looking at something like 500k-1M. I don't really get the difference between M1 and M2 for money supply but this is about the same as all US dollars. So $500k-$1M seems like a realistic maximum value. That's different from "I think this will happen" and you can have a value much lower than this but the key part here IMO is saying "I cannot see a way it can be higher". I think there are other investments that require significantly less optimism to see 5-10x growth over any reasonable timeframe. > Also I'm not sure how to process "the max value is only 5-10x from current prices so the big money has already been made". Can you explain? A maximum upside of 5-10x assuming lots of things go extremely well for your investment requiring massive global shifts is a tricky sell. To make a huge amount of money you have to put a lot on the line. So I think broadly this is just about whether you read "realistic max value" as "the maximum I expect this to reach" or "scenarios where it goes above this are unrealistic even with a lot of optimism".