Combined with our last media news from almost a week ago, we bring you a rather bullish crypto news update, banks are on board!
Banks + Crypto= Bullish
There have been rumors that Banks will allow for crypto custody services in the future, this has just been confirmed. US Bank, the fifth-biggest retail bank will begin offering custodial services, this will aide in bringing larger old school investors to the space [1]. This is important because many wealthy investors do not want to learn about self-custody, they simply want to buy the asset and hold it long term. This service will begin with Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, and Litecoin, but certainly will extend to other tokens over time. US Bank has almost 9 trillion in assets under management, even a sliver of this capital could aide in our Q4 upward trend. Another important thing to note is the partnership with New York Digital Investment Group, which will aide in the custody service, having a strong and knowledgeable digital firm will be helpful with security measures. Just imagine, large investors can not convert 1% of their cash reserves into BTC and they can hold it with their same bank they have used for years, this brings the old money to the new frontier.
In other bank focused news, Bank of America has released a massive report, referring to crypto as “too large to ignore” [2]. Bank of America has shown that three times as much institutional capital has come to decentralized finance in 2021 as compared to 2020. In the report Bank of America stated that 221 million have traded a cryptocurrency or used decentralized finance directly in simply June of this year. The report also stated, “Regulatory uncertainty is the largest near-term risk,” they said. “But regulation may drive increased investor participation over the long term once the ‘rules of the road’ for digital assets are established”[3]. Having an official report from a massive Bank in America could support the idea of an ETF in the near future.
Old School Investors
With this bullish momentum, famous old-school investors are joining the scene and de risking some of their dollars buy buying BTC. Michael Novogratz, an ex-hedge-fund manager, worth over 8 Billion dollars, has been a massive BTC advocate since 2017. Novogratz is also the founder of Galaxy digital, a large asset management company focusing on the digital investments. Raoul Pal, an investor famous for retiring in his 30s, has been bullish on Bitcoin and Ethereum and continues to push the narrative. Paul Tudor Jones, who founded his hedge fund in 1980 (40 years ago!) has been increasing his Bitcoin weight recommendation as a “Great diversifier to protect wealth over time” [4]. Jones started with 2% weight last year and has steadily increased the amount this past year. George Soros, age 91, perhaps one of the most famous investors of all time, recently revealed his fund holds BTC. His fund even referred to BTC as “mainstream”, and not to only view it as an inflation hedge [5]. Bringing the massive old wealth into this newer market, having only a 2.4 trillion Dollar market cap, could easily double, if not triple the inflow of cash.
SEC Allows for Crypto Holding ETF
The SEC just approved the closest thing to an ETF that we have at this point. This ETF is designed to track stocks that have a high exposure to BTC, of course Microstrategy is the highest weight[6]. Marathon Group and Bitfarms are other holdings in the portfolio.This is an important step as it allows standard licensed financial advisors to recommend the ETF, giving clients BTC exposure indirectly. This also helps the companies that are pushing the narrative by increasing their stock value. This is yet another way for investors who are not yet allowed to buy BTC directly to gain exposure and aide the companies that are supporting digital assets.
Institutions Building on Ethereum
Finally, as discussed in our last media update, institutions are building heavily on Ethereum. If you have read our article on holding Ethereum instead of Bitcoin, or simply like Ethereum, this will hit home, this is ultra bullish news. We now have Ubisoft and a Dutch bank joining the party. Ubisoft has made their own NFT Raving Rabbids, and has also started an investment group for digital startups, which invested in eight blockchain companies already[7]. ING, a Dutch bank has stated they are testing an Ethereum-Based payment settlement system that should be finished by the end of the year.
This added to the Twitter Integration, Tiktok, and Visa news proves that mass adoption is right in front of us. Google is now working to aid the New York Stock exchange expand customer access to crypto-related assets. Bakkt, which is essentially owned by the NYSE, is a company focused on digital asset trading and storage [8]. Google has made a partnership with Bakkt which should greatly expand the companies overall reach. It is hard to deny that all this positive news won’t pump the price of BTC. BTC has already begun to rally, we hope to work alongside you during this exciting Q4!
[5] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/07/george-soros-fund-owns-bitcoin-ceo-confirms.html
[7] https://decrypt.co/36990/large-companies-building-on-ethereum
[8] https://news.bitcoin.com/google-help-digital-asset-platform-bakkt-crypto-millions-consumers/
