The value proposition of Bitcoin $28,280 is on full display throughout the present banking crisis, which, according to ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood, will only “draw more institutions” to the BTC market over time.
In a March 21 Bloomberg interview, Wood discussed BTC’s recent price spike, suggesting that its pricing behavior during the crisis “will attract more institutions.”
“The fact that Bitcoin moved extremely differently than equity markets in particular was quite illuminating,” she continued.
According to Oliver Linch, CEO of Seattle-based crypto exchange Bittrex, institutional interest in Bitcoin may have already arrived.
In a March 21 interview on The Wolf Of All Streets podcast, Linch stated that several large banks invested in cryptocurrency as an investment product far before the recent banking crisis:
“Institutional interest in cryptocurrency is the great talking point of this bear market.” Every major bank now has a substantial crypto desk, not only for trading but also for collaborations.”
But, he stated that there is still a gap between traditional financial institutions and crypto businesses, which has hampered institutional adoption in recent months.
“Historically, those major players have been the biggest drivers of innovation,” he said, adding that the two sides are currently “locked in a bit of a rut” and that the “real change” will not occur until they quit competing for superiority.
“It’s not cryptocurrency vs Goldman Sachs or cryptocurrency versus institutions. It’s a competition to see who can do crypto best.”
In terms of the impact of institutional interest on Bitcoin’s price, Wood explained in the interview that ARK Invest’s $1-1.5 million BTC price prediction by 2030 was based on an institutional investor BTC allocation analysis, which estimated that most firms would allocate between 2.5% and 6.5% to BTC in their investment portfolios.
“These are the kinds of allocations they would have made to growing, new asset classes like real estate in the 1970s and small caps in the 1980s and 1990s,” Wood noted.
