The chief of digital assets at Susquehanna has recently shared on CNBC
the reasons for the most recent Bitcoin price surge
On Thursday, May 30, the head of digital assets at Susquehanna International Group, Bart Smith, gave a stream interview during CNBC’s Squawk Box program.
Bart Smith first stated that there are numerous reasons for the recent rise of Bitcoin, such as geopolitical, technological and regulatory, among other factors. However, the expert picked out three most important drivers for the BTC price growth.
Reason 1. The US-China trade war
This was the first driver mentioned by Smith. Since the US imposed high tariffs on Chinese goods, the yuan began dropping. This made many Chinese investors start using Bitcoin to hedge their financial risks against the sliding rate of the native fiat currency.
However, as Forbes has assumed recently, the situation may change for the best for Bitcoin even further thanks to China. The article author mentioned that China is seriously considering beginning to sell US Treasuries back to the US. An almost incredible thing was assumed that the Chinese government would start purchasing Bitcoin instead of Treasury bonds of Germany or Japan (the most valuable after US Treasuries).
Should this indeed happen, Bitcoin price would
fly high up.
Reason 2. The Consensus 2019 conference
The second driver that Smith put forward was
to do with the Consensus 2019 conference that has recently taken place in New
York.
It was during this event that the BTC rate
surged from $6,000 by one third of that amount.
The expert pointed out that there was a lot of excitement in the community regarding the approaching launces of state-regulated crypto platforms, such as Fidelity Digital Assets, Bakkt and ErisX which were discussed at the event.
As per Smith, the recent fact of Starbucks and Whole Foods embracing Bitcoin also gained a lot of attention at the conference.
Reason 3. Brokerage firms offering Bitcoin to retail clients this year
The third reason for the recent BTC price surge, as per Smith, is the fact that a great number of US brokerage firms, online ones especially, have begun to offer BTC to their retail clients in 2019. He mentioned this reason as the most important one among all the three.
“While no one has come out and said that openly, there’s a lot of talk about that, and I think people are buying bitcoin ahead potentially of that new investor demand.”
When he was asked to give some positive
assessment to a few things to do with Bitcoin, Smith refused, though.
“I’m not a bitcoin evangelist, so it’s not my job to convert the
unconverted,” said Smith. “And I’m not necessarily rooting for anything. I’m a
market maker. I provide liquidity . . . I’m not making a price prognostication.
I’m simply pointing out there’s a lot of optimism from people within the
bitcoin community over things that have happened in recent months, and I think
that’s reflected in the price.”
Bitcoin price is rebounding
Over the last few days, Bitcoin price has been
in a correction, pulling the rest of the market down as well.
However, as per another expert, this is
actually good for the market in the long run.
Josh Olszewicz, a crypto trader and a person with an influence on the crypto community recently said, when speaking on an Apple podcast, that he has been expecting a small pullback of the BTC price soon.
He believes that this is good if the market
wants to avoid a tremendous retracement later on.
“It’s to the point now where it’s like if we don’t pull back, the pullback eventually that will come will just be super painful. There’s really no other good reason to pull back, other than we should have already pulled back.”
