Crypto’s Just a Fad, Right?
Two years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find many people who thought we’d ever see numbers like we’re seeing right now…
Most figured zero was the next stop…
But here we are.
You might surmise that I’m referring to bitcoin. And you’d be right.
Maybe you saw or heard that that the granddaddy of crypto has established multiple new all-time highs. Indeed, when I started writing this piece on Monday it was at $82,000… then $85,000 a few hours later… and more than $89,000 a few hours after that!
These new records come just two years after Crypto Winter blasted through the industry, destroying asset prices everywhere.
Bitcoin didn’t escape the carnage.
From its previous high north of $65,000 in November 2021, bitcoin sank to just below $15,500 by November 2022. At that time, a Harvard University fellow and crypto skeptic named Molly White told NPR that, “I think people are starting to think of crypto as this big scam that they would not want anything to do with.”
Probably true in the moment.
But then again, skeptics felt the same way about the original dot-com/internet boom of the late-90s. When the dot-com crash came, all those skeptics came out of the woodwork to make their ignorance well known. They claimed the internet was a fad that had scammed investors out of their money, and that dot-com was never going to be anything much.
And yet everyone reading those words was doing so by way of a dot-com web address.
Hmmm…
The idea that “people are starting to think of crypto as this big scam” has certainly proven wrong/wildly inaccurate.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, launched just this past January, now holds more than $33 billion worth of BTC. That’s larger than BlackRock’s gold ETF, which was launched nearly 20 years ago.
The message there is that bitcoin—and crypto in general—is clearly an asset that increasing numbers of mainstream investors and companies are adopting as an investment and/or store of value.
Last Friday, I participated in a post-election appraisal of what comes next in the economy and for various asset classes. I told attendees that bitcoin is headed to more than $100,000 before we reach inauguration day in late January—and that already looks conservative…
The surge is just the start of something bigger.
Which is why I keep saying over and over and over again that investors really do need exposure to bitcoin in their portfolio. Even if it’s just a minimal 5%, you gotta have exposure to this asset class because of the way crypto is changing the world around us.
Big banks are moving in on crypto. Fidelity, BlackRock, and others—all massive players in the investment industry—are driving toward a world where stocks, bonds, mutual funds, commodities, etc. are all blockchain-based assets. That would radically reduce trading costs for the firm, and eliminate the days needed to clear transactions. They’d happen instantaneously, totally changing the way Wall Street has functioned for hundreds of years.
Two years ago, you didn’t really hear of Main Street companies showing much interest in the crypto industry. To them, it was just a novelty enjoyed by a bunch of tech geeks and a relatively tiny band of supremely early adopters of technology, like me. I’d been building crypto-mining rigs since 2017. I saw what was coming and, to me, Crypto Winter was just a pothole in the road to tomorrow.
Now that the road to that future seems so obvious, the next phase of investors is beginning to show up.
That’s going to lead to very nice gains from here.
My bet is that bitcoin pushes past $200,000, while Ethereum races toward $5,000, and Solana sprints to between $300 and $500 per token.
Even though bitcoin has hit a new all-time, we’re nowhere close to the terminus.
There was a point in the years following the dot-com collapse when Amazon was up more than 1,400% and investors were sure the top was in.
And it was.
Temporarily.
Because Amazon went on to gain another 4,500%.
That’s where we are today. Sure, bitcoin has seen a helluva run over the last two years, from $15,500 to where it is today.
But what’s coming… that’s going to be epic.
When the world of mainstream investors realizes what they’re missing out on, they’re going to flood into crypto with such volume that prices for all manner of crypto projects are going to see levels no one thought was realistic.
Today’s price? It’s just the beginning.
