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A leading finance expert believes that the current growth stage of the Bitcoin price mirrors Google’s expansion in 2017, suggesting that the network is yet to reach its true potential. The expert’s comparison positions Bitcoin as a maturing digital system that has established core utility, with a larger phase of value capture still ahead. His remarks about BTC come at a time when its price is navigating sharp downside risks and heightened market volatility
Raoul Pal, the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Real Vision, has highlighted a compelling connection between Bitcoin’s current price growth and Google’s early years. In an X post this week, Pal argued that digital assets clearly follow a network-driven growth model, comparing the sector to major technology giants that expanded rapidly as their user base increased.
The Real Vision founder emphasized that crypto behaves like a Metcalfe’s Law network, similar to Google, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla, where value scales with the number of participants rather than traditional financial metrics. He stated that attempting to value cryptocurrencies using cash flow models overlooks the essence of what makes a network valuable.
In his view, the structure of blockchain ecosystems means that their worth is tied to usage, adoption, and the network effects generated by millions of users. This unique framework underpins Pal’s belief that Bitcoin’s price growth today is a reflection of Google’s position in 2017. The financial expert supported his argument with a GOOGL US equity chart, showing its multi-year growth curve on a logarithmic scale. During 2017, Google was already dominant in areas like search, yet many of its long-term value drivers, such as cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI), were still developing.
While the Bitcoin network is secure, widely adopted, and increasingly integrated into the global financial system, Pal’s view suggests that the cryptocurrency’s long-term development and true potential are still far from realized. He added that Ethereum may be even earlier in its growth curve, suggesting the second-largest cryptocurrency could follow a longer trajectory as its technology and applications evolve.
Pal’s remarks on X, which compares Bitcoin to Google, were made in response to statements from Santiago Roel Santos, the founder and CEO of Inversion, a technology-first investment company. Santos initially argued that network effects in crypto have been overstated and are often misused to justify valuations resembling those of social networking companies.
Santos suggested that many cryptocurrencies have not demonstrated meaningful value capture and therefore resemble open source software systems like Linux rather than platforms such as Facebook, which benefit directly from rising user numbers. Pal challenged this view by insisting that crypto networks exhibit real and measurable network effects. His entire argument is built on the idea that user activity and transaction volume support the growing value of digital networks like Bitcoin.
