As bitcoin (BTC) wobbles around the $90,000-$95,000 area, down more than 10% from its all-time high touched a bit less than four weeks ago, a contrast is growing between traders — whose technical analysis tools show the top cryptocurrency may be due for another plunge — and long-term investors who believe the bull run is nowhere near done.
That’s according to David Siemer, CEO of Wave Digital Assets, a firm that provides asset management services to funds and high net-worth individuals in the crypto space. The company counts Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of the firm behind Cardano, as one of its clients.
“In 14 years of owning bitcoin, I’ve never seen a dichotomy like this,” Siemer told CoinDesk in an interview. “The traders are all worried and nervous and hedged, fully neutral or worse. And the long-term people are all super bullish.”
“There’s a really good chance we’ll go to $200,000 [per bitcoin] this year,” Siemer said. “Do I think we’ll see $1 million dollars per coin in my lifetime? Sure. Not soon, you know, not in the next year. … The smart, more connected people that I know are also really bullish. More is going to happen in the next six months than most people realize.”
Top of the list of developments for the year to come is that numerous jurisdictions — including the U.S., Russia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and some European nations — are looking to take big steps in crypto’s favor, according to Siemer. (Wave runs crypto educational programs for various branches of the U.S. government, like the Internal Revenue Service or U.S. Marshals Service, as well as other executive bodies across the globe; in fact, government practices is the firm’s fastest growing business.)
These steps, whichever form they take, will likely have positive knock-on effects on some of these countries’ private sectors, Siemer said. “[Japan or Singapore], those are societies where they actually trust and rely on their governments. If their government says it’s okay, it’s actually really okay. It’s different from the U.S. where we think our guys are idiots.”
What is spurring such sudden interest in the crypto industry? The tremendous success of the U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), for one, is forcing financial institutions worldwide to think of ways to compete. That means spinning up exotic new products, like multi-token yield funds, to make up for the liquidity that was sucked away by BlackRock’s IBIT.
“The ETFs launched in America and they absolutely devastated all the bitcoin ETPs around the world,” Siemer said. “All of them had these terrible products, charging 1.5%. All of those guys got crushed.” Regulators, for their part, will tend to be supportive, Siemer said. For example, the European Union could end up producing a friendlier version of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
The chances of seeing new strategic bitcoin reserves is also high, Siemer said. “Even if the U.S. doesn’t do a reserve, at least several other countries probably will,” he added. Not that he’s bearish on prospects in the U.S. Wave, he said, is currently in talks with seven different states that are considering the matter of creating a reserve, Texas, Ohio and Wyoming among them.
What about the federal government? Siemer put the odds at slightly better than 50-50, in part thanks to the nearly $19 billion worth of bitcoin it already owns.
“That’s a decent start on a bitcoin reserve,” Siemer said. “All they have to do is not sell it. It’s a lot more palatable to the tax base than buying, you know, $10 billion worth of bitcoin.”
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