Appraising ICP Like a House
What would Internet Computer Protocol be if the crypto market was rational instead of just basically a coin speculation insane casino? Today, I want to look at what would an appraiser, if they came in and saw ICP and looked at the technology, looked at the rest of the world, the same way when you buy and sell a house, you have an appraiser come to your house and they look at the surrounding properties and they determine a value that they think the house is worth. So I'm going to act like that today for ICP and we're going to explore what would ICP be worth if the market actually acted this way instead of based on old price charts, narratives, hype cycles, because ICP has real technology and the speculation on crypto started with the technology.
Like, wow, Bitcoin is amazing. Look at this technology. That's where it started. Somewhere it's got lost into something else. When I look at ICP, I don't see. I don't see a normal crypto project. I see an outlier, something that looks closer to Internet infrastructure, plus an AI ready developer platform, plus a protocol token. Like, this is an incredible combination. So the first valuation lens, you have to figure out how exactly are we going to put this? Like, when you're buying and selling houses and appraising them this is a house. Although there's different, is this a boat that somebody's living in? Is this a trailer park?
Is this a house, that's a regular house? Is this a mansion? Like, there's different mindsets. So to me, to begin, we need to look at what frame is ICP in for appraising. To me, the first one that makes sense to appraise it is cloud infrastructure. And that's a bigger thing than anything else in crypto is looking to do. Because cloud infrastructure includes all the other crypto narratives. You can send transactions. You can connect, banks to each other. You can do all that stuff. And it's a cloud. It's a cloud infrastructure layer.
Lens One: The Global Cloud Infrastructure Market
So a rational appraiser to me would not even compare ICP to other blockchains. Because ICP is a whole nother level of blockchain. A whole nother level of asset compared to the rest of crypto. Like, the rest of crypto is like a bicycle. And ICP is a sports car. Like, you wouldn't appraise ICP as, you wouldn't put a, look at a sports car and say, let's appraise this in terms of bicycles. You, thus, to me, we begin with the, look at the whole global cloud computing market, which is roughly 750 billion to, 780 billion 2024 and 2025 with forecasts aiming that the whole cloud computing market is on the way to a trillion dollars.
Thus, if ICP captures even a tiny share of that, which there's a very good argument because it's the most secure cloud infrastructure, it's the only infrastructure that has a native coin and crypto and financial functionality built, directly in, all secured, ICP is the best solution we see for cybercrime. And you can run AI on it. And Caffeine AI is allowing people to build on it right now. Thus, an argument for one thousandth of the whole cloud market seems incredibly reasonable. I think more like 1 would be a rational argument that ICP is easily able to capture in a relative, relatively short period of time, 1 of the global cloud computing infrastructure market.
I walk through the technology and the case for ICP as cloud infrastructure across my my ICP Crypto playlist.
Now, ICP, if it captured 5%, we'd be looking at 37 to 39 billion a year in revenue. And so these are revenues that it would bring in. And I talked about that some in terms of burning the coin in the previous couple of videos. So here's what that would mean for valuation. If a rational market saw ICP as an early stage infrastructure with real execution, but still not a real one, I think the 0 1 is easily, like super easily reasonable as a minimum valuation. So that valuation would be $10 to $30 billion. Meanwhile, the ICP token right now is valued at $1 3 billion.
That is ridiculous. Because to me, the absolute minimum valuation that I would give this is around $10 to $30 billion. Depending on how you wanted to get into the details. If ICP looks like it has a real path to 1 cloud penetration, which I absolutely think, and that's more of a bull case, then the valuation from $30 to $50 to $100 billion starts looking much more reasonable. And that would put ICP in the top five cryptos, which to me is where ICP belongs. Now, full disclosure, I have 6 500 ICP, which is about $1 5 billion. And I have about 1 100 000th of the whole supply.
So that valuation would look pretty good for me, having 1 100 000th of $10 to $150 billion. That puts me in financial independence, to be sure. So that's, but I'm in this position because I already did all this research and I don't see anything better to invest in because I don't see anything today that has as much evidence for a valuation like this and a valuation that's so strong, so small, according to the market. And that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for where can I see evidence that something should be valued way, way higher, and then the market's valuing it way, way lower. If you want to pressure-test how you are thinking about a position like this for yourself, you can join Jerry Banfield Family and we'll work through your own questions side by side.
Lens Two: AI Company Pricing
Now, let's look at the second valuation in AI company pricing. Right now, AI markets are valuing future infrastructure aggressively. Like OpenAI's last reported valuation reached about $500 billion, and some newer ones are talking about IPOs towards a trillion. And you got other AI companies valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars, even though it's a bit unclear how they're going to be able to do in the future. Are they going to get totally outpaced by competitors? Are they going to be able to stay relevant? The AI infrastructure or the AI companies are extremely competitive. Thus, these are huge valuations, even though their futures are uncertain also.
There's no guarantee that OpenAI stays as a dominant AI company indefinitely. And XAI is pretty new. And Anthropa, Anthropic just said they can't even release their new model publicly. So look at these massive valuations, and there's a lot of future uncertainty for them too, just like there is for ICP. How ICP fits into this, and a rational market would ask, whether a protocol that can host applications, run internet services, and support AI related workloads fully on chain, or you can even use, for verifiable data, you don't have to run all the AI, but you could use centralized AI models and interact with data on ICP, and that would help the whole system be much more tamper proof and unstoppable and verifiable.
Now, for the best blockchain technology and the best solution we can currently see to help AI data be more secure, the ICP offers that. Now, is the present market valuation indicative of the best technology we can see in blockchain to support AI? I don't think so. Now, I'm not saying ICP should equal OpenAI or Anthropic. I don't think that's a good topic today, but the gap is so large between how helpful ICP's technology is for AI versus the valuation of the whole token. If AI startups with future narratives, mostly future narratives, a lot of these AI companies are just losing money like crazy at this point, and they're trying to take dominant spots in AI.
So some of these AI valuations are extremely speculative. Then ICP being only valued at a tiny fraction of that looks irrational to me. If the market fully respected, its infrastructure and AI relevance, I think a rational market still might discount ICP for adoption risk. But even then looking at ICP for its unique capabilities with AI should easily support a 20 to $50 billion base case much more easily than a current market does. And that's a 10 to 30 times higher valuation than where it's at today.
Combining the Cloud and AI Cases
But where this really gets nuts is when you bring the cloud and the AI cases together. If I combine the cloud infrastructure with the AI platform lens, the absolute minimum range, 10 to 30 billion is like worst case scenario, like the absolute lowest, like if I was trying to deliver an appraisal as low as possible to somebody who was desiring it, like there's no way I see ICP should ever be valued below $10 billion with what it has today, but meanwhile if the market was more forward looking about future adoption and price these things in, I think 50 to 150 billion would be a much more fair value.
Valuation. And $150 billion would be 100x from where ICP is today. Now, I'm not saying all this should happen tomorrow, although I think we should have repricing towards $10 billion immediately. Like that is the most ridiculous thing I see in all of cryptos, ICP being valued less than $10 billion. Absolutely ridiculous. Very strong evidence all over the place for why ICP deserves a minimum of $10 billion. Now, this is the part some of you will be excited about.
What These Valuations Mean Per Token
Well, what do these valuations mean for the price? Like to me, this means ICP deserves an absolute bare minimum of $18 per ICP. And we're currently under three. So that's a 6x to get to the like minimum appraisal case. Now, if we start getting higher levels of speculation and accurate valuation, so I'd say, higher levels of realistic valuation, $30 billion to me would be very realistic. If I were going to appraise ICP and put the whole thing out in front of the world and I would set the price for it. I think a fair price for ICP should be anywhere from like $35 to $91.
For more on how fast that gap could close, see ICP Can Pump to $100 Anytime.
Like if that was rational, my rational price would be like, $55 to $91 range because this at an absolute minimum, like if I was trying to sell this to my mother too, like if I was setting a price that everybody should buy at, that would be fair and rational based on the technology and the market cap. Like if I was setting a price that everybody should buy and I was dictator and I was setting the IPO for this, for example, I'd set it like $55 to $91 in there. Like that's a range $30 to $50 billion valuation. That's where this technology based on what I see makes sense.
And yes, me having 6 500 ICP certainly looks good at $100 ICP or close to that, we're talking, I'd have like a, quarter to half million dollars worth of ICP and then get like 7 interest on that. And if I were to set a price that every year, yeah, that sounds good to me. To me that if the, if ICP were priced like the most of the rest of the crypto market, to me, I think almost every other coin in crypto is drastically overpriced, especially all the others in the top 100 to me are overpriced based on speculation, hype and artificial price movements through derivatives and leverage and other things like that.
I would say the rest of the crypto market in the top 100 is overvalued by at least 90%. If not some of them, 99%.
If ICP Were Priced Like the Rest of Crypto
If ICP were priced as aggressively as these other cryptos, we'd be looking at easily $150 billion market cap. ICP truly to me should be valued higher than Bitcoin and Ethereum because Bitcoin and Ethereum future use is extremely questionable at this point. Meanwhile, ICP is looking that it has the best chance to be the dominant crypto of the future, the one blockchain singularity. So to me, this, if, crypto pricing applied to ICP instead of suppressing ICP, then to me, ICP, if it were priced in line with the rest of the top 100 would be around $273 per ICP, which would be a hundred X from where it's at today.
I unpack why the headline market caps mislead people in Crypto Market Caps Are a Distraction. Only ICP Is Real.
This is how I see the rest of cryptos priced and ICP is priced the opposite because it's different. Because if ICP were a top three crypto and people started to understand that they wouldn't want the rest of these cryptos. So this gives me a way to think about this. I think about ICP beyond the price chart in a way that ties back to the price chart in very practical terms. And I, I see meme coins today, like Dogecoin has a $10 billion valuation on to me. The blockchain is literally a copy of Bitcoin that has very little real use other than like speculation and holding tokens and narratives and talking.
And occasionally Elon Musk decides to pump it. That is valued higher than ICP. And in time, I imagine that will change where ICP will be valued much higher than Dogecoin because it's insane that it's not. Thus on a pure crypto speculation basis, I already, I got ahead of the outline a little bit and just jumped into covering these things. But my question, I started this video out today is if somebody were really looking at ICP, how much would that be? And I'd say that would mean at least a five, if not a 10 X in the price. So I think the fair market value of ICP will be seen one day in the future.
And we may even get a speculative value of ICP where the price actually gets too high based on what the tech does. And we know where it could be, 500 or a thousand for ICP. And then it could crash back down there to more of a reasonable price. So I don't think anything about the current pricing of ICP is rational. And yet lots of times with education, especially, we can get to a much more rational, reasonable place. I think that the more people in crypto get educated and understand blockchain, the more ICP gets adopted and solves real world problems, which it's doing today. You can go schedule a call there if you want.
It looks beautiful compared to the last website I had. And that's real use case. That's real cloud hosting right now. And that's using AI to, build directly on ICP. So if the market ever combines rational understanding with crypto style speculation, we could see something amazing. To me, this is opportunity though.
The Opportunity in Mispriced Technology
The opportunity is finding this kind of information where something is artificially low priced before it gets valued accurately. Ironically, when it came out, and this is most of crypto, when ICP released, it had a market cap that actually would make sense today. Or, even is still overhyped and speculative from where it's at today. And now, ironically, five years later, when everything has gotten better with it, it's at all time lows. I don't think that's going to happen because I don't count on people staying uninformed forever. Maybe I should. If I'm wrong anywhere, that's where it is. Some of you would say, you should count on people staying uninformed and uneducated and distracted and irrational and insane forever because that's a human condition.
I say that if there are people like me who appear to be, at least from my own point of view, because they say crazy people don't know they're crazy. From my point of view, I'm operating in a rational manner, looking at crypto, seeing that I'm not looking at charts, just trying to decide where price is going to go. I'm looking at the depth. What is underneath? Where is the technology?
Why I Bet on an Educated Future
I'm approaching crypto rationally and looking for what is undervalued. I'm approaching crypto with 12 years of experience. I'm looking for what is undervalued. I'm researching thousands of altcoins and looking at the tech and not just talking narratives and making videos, but looking up all this stuff, using it all myself. Thus, I'd like to think the future of crypto investors at crypto retail are going to be more like me. People who've been in it longer, who've thought deeper, who've researched further, who understand. Thus, to me, I'm looking at a future of understanding. People getting more educated in crypto is a very good thing for ICP, and it's a very bad thing for the rest of crypto.
I'm grateful today to have this information to share with you. Here's to the future where ICP takes the spot it deserves in crypto and where it solves real world problems. If you want another interesting video to watch right now, I just lost a second date because I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. Jerry Banfield Life Channel. I've been going into my dating life in detail, and a girl I just went out with said that she doesn't want to be a part of my YouTube channel on dating. I guess the material there is good enough that you might enjoy it.
Check out this Jerry Banfield channel. If you're dating or interested in that side of me, you might find something interesting enough to not go out with me again.