Seven months into a severe cryptocurrency market downturn, the bears have finally run out of steam, leaving the bitcoin price primed for a breakout.
That’s according to Barry Silbert, founder of the Digital Currency Group (DCG), perhaps the cryptocurrency industry’s most prolific investment fund.
Speaking with CNBC on Tuesday, Silbert said that the recent surge above $7,000 likely indicates that the bottom is in for the bitcoin price.
“I think the bears just kind of ran out of energy,” he said, noting that “a lot of institutional money” was looking for an opportunity to get in.
As CCN reported, Grayscale Investments — the creator of the Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTC: GBTC) and a DCG portfolio company — revealed this week that institutional capital accounts for 56 percent of the more than $248 million that has been invested in GBTC and other Grayscale products during the first half of 2018. By comparison, Silbert said, the fund was onboarding virtually no funds from institutions as recently as one year ago.
The DCG founder, who bought his first BTC when it was trading $10, also said that he took it as a bullish sign that U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, as well as several billionaire investors, have recently issued public statements criticizing cryptocurrency, yet the bitcoin price has held steady.
Powell, for instance, told Congress yesterday that the nascent asset class raises a number of consumer protection issues for “unsophisticated investors” and that cryptocurrency should not be considered real currency.
“When the chair of the Fed says negative things about bitcoin, and Howard Marks says negative things about bitcoin, and Ken Griffin says negative things about bitcoin, and bitcoin doesn’t move, I think that’s a bullish sign,” Silbert said.
The bitcoin price traded up approximately one-half-of-one percent on Wednesday, reaching a present value of $7,506 on cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Bitcoin now has a market cap of $128.3 billion, which represents a 43.8 percent share of the total value of all cryptocurrencies, which currently stands at $292.7 billion.
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Featured Image from YouTube/DLD Conference
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