The New Cryptocurrency Bull Market Is Just Beginning
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During the depths of the cryptocurrency bear market in 2018, around a dozen financial firms began laying the groundwork for getting into cryptocurrency. The first was Bakkt Exchange, which is a subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In September 2019, Bakkt began trading bitcoin futures.
Around the same time, we saw another major player enter the bitcoin futures market when the Nasdaq announced that it would allow trading as well.
You see, major financial institutions missed out on the cryptocurrency boom in 2017.. and had to sit idly by while companies built the infrastructure to enable institutional cryptocurrency trading.
But once upon a time institutions like Bakkt and Nasdaq made it easy to buy bitcoin.
Bitcoin was trading at around $3,500 at the time. By the end of the year, the price of bitcoin had more than tripled. But that's not the end of the story.
The initial rally set up bitcoin's epic bull run to a new all-time high of nearly $70,000 in September 2021. I'm looking at a similar setup today.
I know it may not seem like it now with all the regulatory uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin. But 2023 is shaping up to be just as 2019 did.
Let me explain...
Bitcoin is up 82% since the beginning of the year. That makes it one of the best performing assets in the world. But there is much more ahead.
Remember, during each and every cryptocurrency bull market, bitcoin hits its old highs. So $70,000 is a no-brainer from here in my opinion.
Because?
The same reason we saw during the last bull market: Wall Street greed.
This time the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, has sparked the rally.
Last month, BlackRock announced that it filed an application to register a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
BlackRock has nearly $10 trillion in assets under management. Let's say you allocate 5% of that to an ETF. That would drive the price of BTC up 85%.
Furthermore, other asset managers are eager to beat BlackRock as a first mover with a spot bitcoin ETF.
Invesco, Fidelity and WisdomTree all plan to apply for bitcoin spot ETFs, this will be a lot of money coming into the market.
But as big as that capital pool is... It's just the trickle before the tsunami.
Here's the thing...
Bitcoin is the gateway to the entire crypto ecosystem. Everyone starts with bitcoin first.
I think bitcoin will become a core investment for virtually all financial institutions in the same way that stocks and bonds are a core investment for the financial system now.
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