The crypto market highs of late 2017 and early 2018, and the down market that has followed, has left a bad taste in some investors mouths. Sterling Witzke, a partner at Winklevoss Capital, believes that institutional investors will still lack confidence in cryptocurrencies in 2019.
Witzke made these comments in an interview with Cointelegraph at the Crypto Finance Conference on January 17. She thinks that the rollercoaster ride, from dizzying highs to desperate lows, has made big investors skittish, telling the outlet:
“Because the end of 2017 was so crazy, people tend to think the space moves at lightning speed [..] At the level of underlying [tech] development it [often] does […] but I think it takes a while for institutions to get comfortable. There needs to be better custody, healthy debt and credit markets to get [them] really excited. So I don’t think 2019 will necessarily be the year.”
She also notes that the most factors that were most worrying to the biggest investors were a lack of regulatory clarity and concerns over security.
Those are entirely fair concerns at this point. The crypto space still sees exchanges getting hacked on a fairly regular basis, and without better security to guard against this threat, prices are more volatile than they should be. Without proper regulation, the space can hardly be considered grownup enough to be worthy of massive investment.
Cointelegraph goes on to point out a report released last year by KPMG, which argued “institutional investors are what is needed for the crypto industry to realize its potential as a full-fledged asset class.” This could not be more wrong. Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin to be digital currency. Its entire purpose is to be used as money; not as asset sitting in a portfolio.
Now that Bitcoin has been reborn as Bitcoin SV (BSV), the focus has to be on creating stability and scaling to the needs of business and the world. The development team behind BSV are creating an environment where businesses can build with confidence on the solid foundation of Bitcoin. If institutional investors are needed, it is in helping those businesses to reach their potential on the BSV blockchain.
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