While countries like El Salvador have welcomed Bitcoin with open arms, other regions are pushing to legally ban the digital currency. Although this may be, some industry experts believe that Bitcoin 

BTC

$20,759

 is here to stay — for good. 

For example, during an exclusive interview at Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, Yoni Assia, CEO of eToro, told Cointelegraph that he considers Bitcoin to be the “king of crypto,” noting that the most popular digital currency is here to stay:

“I'll be surprised if we don't see a significant rise in the price of Bitcoin over the next three to five years, as there are still 5 billion people in the world that basically don't have good local currency.”

Yet in order for this dream to become a reality, Guy Hirsch, managing director of eToro U.S., told Cointelegraph that people need to believe in the morality of decentralizing money:

“I think that the moral case for Bitcoin and teaching people that it is the right thing to do is to basically separate state and money. It will ultimately create that vision that we all aspire for.”

Regulations: Bridging the old world with the new world

In order to prepare for a decentralized future, Assia mentioned that eToro is building a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto industry. As such, Assia explained that the combination of crypto assets and equities is important. “The majority of our clients trade both cryptocurrencies as well as stocks in the platform. I think that's definitely a trend that we'll see continuing in the future,” he said.

Assia further mentioned that it’s good to see more institutions entering the crypto space, especially when it comes to innovating within decentralized finance, or DeFi:

“DeFi a bit of a Wild West right now. No regulation, no real financial institutions, but a lot of amazing innovation. I think we're going to see a lot of that innovation going into traditional or regulated financial institutions, centralized companies, to be able to offer that innovation directly to consumers.”

Moreover, Assia mentioned that he thinks there will be a transfer of over $100 trillion dollars over the next 10 years into native digital assets. He noted this will be spurred by the notion that nearly all financial assets will eventually be incorporated into blockchain networks moving forward.