The Writing is on the Wall
With the surge of retail investors entering the market in 2017, and some of the main exchanges increasing their man power by 8x to deal with the demand, we can see the roadways being built in 2018 for the institutions.
Since the inception of Blockchain technology in late 2008, ten years on, the technology has grown into one of the hottest emerging markets on the planet. Off the back of 2017 with the market cap maxing out at close to $850B this gave birth to the development of institutions entering the space.
Evidence is now public that the biggest financial institutions on the planet are moving in, and it’s only a matter of time before the roadways are laid, and the big money enters. Northern Trust, one of the biggest custodial’s for the last 100 years in money(so big they only manage funds of over $1B) are now working with 3 of the biggest hedge funds to come into the space; and a further 100 hedge funds recently announcing their interest in the space in only the past few months.
Coinbase, the largest U.S. Bitcoin exchange, launched new professional-grade trading products for institutional investors in May, citing rising demand for cryptocurrency from smart money heavyweights.
Intercontinental exchange and the NYSE are now opening trading desks for cryptocurrency and the biggest news so far this year is the appending approval of the SEC on the bitcoin ETF. The final decision will be made in October, if this ETF gets approved this will open the flood gates for tens of billions of USD to come pouring into the space, there is a very strong vote of confidence in the community that the bitcoin ETF will get approved and put forward by the CBOE. Some very credible individuals like Teeka Tiwari have been coming forward from the plam beach research group and saying “this ETF will get approved”.
We can see here from Bloomberg and SEC.gov website that there are many ETF applications put forward by many credible institutions so what makes the CBOE different? The two main differences with the CBOE application is insurance and custody, whereby they guarantee insurance over each individuals holdings, and complete custody of the crypto holdings — something that some of the other applications failed to deliver on.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Adds Four Cryptos to its FRED Database
“FRED has added four series on the prices of different cryptocurrencies” the St. Louis Federal Reserve posted without much fanfare in june, including ‘Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin.’ The price data is updated daily, and spans from as early as 2014 to the present. The St. Louis Fed is one of 12 regional banks within the system, collectively constituting the most powerful central bank on the globe. Known to be part of the 8th District, which includes midwestern Fed banks, it is also considered an economic research powerhouse.
Goldman Sachs revealed in early May that it is opening a BTC trading desk, and JPMorgan said that the bank is “looking into the space,” naming its first-ever head of crypto-assets strategy to lead those efforts.
Conclusion
It’s a very interesting time in the markets, and many are calling this ‘Gold 2.0.’ One thing is for sure; Cryptocurrency is here is stay, and it’s becoming adopted by the mainstream. We now have evidence to see the market moving from the Billions into the Trillions.