Photo: Coinspeaker
While the crypto community is still under the pressure of the bear market, ex-Goldman Sachs partner, Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz remains rather optimistic about the future of cryptocurrencies.
Though his forecasts about Bitcoin reaching $10,000 by the end of 2018 didn’t manage to be translated into life, he still believes that we could see significant institutional money flow in the first half 2019 which would have a positive influence on Bitcoin price.
What’s more, as it has become known, Novogratz has taken a decision to increase his shares of a crypto-focused merchant bank known as Galaxy Digital that he founded.
Galaxy Digital Shares
Mike Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. And now, according to the reports, he owns 221.2 million ordinary shares of the company. It means that he controls almost 80 percent of Galaxy which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange’s TSX Venture Exchange starting from the 1st of August, 2018.
Earlier, Novogratz owned 213.7 million Class B limited partnership units, which means that previously about 76.6% of ordinary shares was under his control.
As it has been recently revealed, the CEO acquired his 7.5 million new shares, which represent 2.7 percent of issued and outstanding ordinary shares, at a cost of 7.42 million Canadian dollars ($4.8 million).
Owning 221 million shares of New York-based Galaxy Digital, Novogratz is the company’s single-largest shareholder.
Galaxy Shares Price
Though due to the regulatory requirements, Galaxy Digital Holdings is not listed on a US stock exchange, since August 2018 the company has been trading on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange. But it is too small to be listed on the main Toronto Stock Exchange.
Nevertheless, news about Novogratz’s shares resulted in some significant intra-day changes in Galaxy Digital’s stock price. Just in a day, Shares of Galaxy Digital increased by 36 percent.
But it’s worth mentioning that the previous year was a rather difficult one for Galaxy Digital. In the context of the bear trend on the digital asset market, the shares of Galaxy lost almost 20 percent in 2018.
Moreover, due to a very significant decline in Bitcoin, Ether and XRP prices, the losses of the crypto bank for the first nine months amounted to $136 million.
Novogratz’s Vision
But despite all these negative tendencies, as we have already mentioned, Novogratz still insists that in 2019 we will see new Bitcoin record highs that will be driven by a new wave of institutional investments.
He says that cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology will successfully continue their way to the mainstream acceptance, the only thing that is needed is time.
To prove that he is serious about his predictions, he has decided to expand his stock portfolio even in the current market conditions which seem to be not very crypto-friendly.
By the way, Novogratz is not the only ex-Goldman Sachs top executive who is now a member of Galaxy team. A number of them have joined Galaxy since February 2018 when Novogratz managed to raise $250 million to finance his project.
