Mati Greenspan, senior analyst for eToro, has been a voice of both reason and wisdom when it comes to all things crypto. Often sought out for comments about the pricing behavior of Bitcoin and its altcoin brethren, Greenspan has never shied away from expressing his thoughts on the state of the crypto industry. This week has been particularly worrisome, especially after the Bakkt futures opening was lackluster and Bitcoin and others plummeted down a dark rabbit hole. Greenspan is not perturbed.
There have been many theories proffered to explain the bloodbath in the digital asset world, but the majority of analysts point to what they perceive as a Bakkt debacle, as the smoking gun with the most smoke, so to speak. There was such pent up anticipation for the launch within the Bitcoin community, which expected a wild herd of institutions to bust down the Bakkt doors, as if Christmas shopping had just commenced. Such was not the case. In the first 24-hour period, 71 BTC were traded for roughly $700,000.
It did not matter that there had been ample warnings that infrastructure demands would slow down the Bakkt lift-off process. According to Forbes, Su Zhu, chief executive of Singapore-based hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, tweeted:
Bakkt will be likely first a trickle and then a flood. The reality is that most regulated futures contracts get low adoption on day one simply because not all futures brokers are ready to clear it, many people want to wait and see, the tickers are not even populated on risk systems.
Unfortunately, an old aphorism seems apropos at the moment:
Facts do not matter – It is the perception of the facts that rules.
The perception was that Wall Street and its minions that had supposedly been waiting on the sidelines for a regulated futures exchange. Now it appears they did not care about Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. Greenspan’s take on this chain of events appeared in a tweet, reported by Bitcoinerx:
After 24 hours, the @bakkt futures traded a total of 71 BTC. At today’s prices, that’s about $700k. That’s actually not too bad for a day that the price was fairly stagnant.
In the stampede of negative articles that covered the ongoing collapse of crypto valuations, Greenspan’s comments were apparently lost in the shuffle. He has often referred back to Bitcoin’s famous run up in 2017, which was fueled both by retail investors, as well as by manic speculators, as a time when Bitcoin demonstrated its ability to have “legs”. During this period the SEC had rejected nine BTC ETF applications, but Greenspan remarked:
Bitcoin made a statement, loud and clear, that it does not need Wall Street in order to thrive.
Does Wall Street really understand Bitcoin? Analysts have debated this issue for the past 18 months, while exchanges like Coinbase and Binance have purported to receiving hundreds of million of dollars in deposits from institutional clients. Survey after survey have touted how 20% or more of institutional investors already have positions in the crypto market, while another 60% expects to be a “player” within twelve months.
After a year of Bitcoin bashing, JPMorgan Chase, along with its argumentative CEO, Jamie Dimon, in tow, announced its “JPM Coin” project to the astonishment of the banking community and to crypto enthusiasts, as well. Even investment giant Goldman Sachs had been ambivalent in the past, but now shows signs of eagerness to get into the digital asset space in a big way.
Wall Street may seem to be dragging its collective feet at the moment, but it is time to remember that large investment institutions are very conservative. They take an inordinate amount of time to make a decision, but when they do, they push the pedal to the metal. It may be just a matter of time, before actions taken in the background begin to show up in market pricing behavior. Patience is called for, a rare trait in Crypto-Land.
Mati Greenspan concludes:
Wall Street has shown us quite clearly that they still don’t understand Bitcoin.