28.03.2024

BitPay CCO Bullish on Bitcoin in 2019, Bearish on Altcoins and ICOs

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency–Despite the ICO market otherwise thriving throughout 2018, with the total volume of projects started and investment capital raised doubling that of last year by the midway point.

While Initial Coin Offerings have drawn the ire of those within and outside of the industry, primarily over the empty projects that have come to litter the space and constitute nothing other than pump and dump schemes, it does provide one of the more efficient means for driving development and innovation in the industry–even if the investment base has yet to develop a necessary discerning eye.

However, not everyone feels the same about the outlook for ICOs and the greater altcoin market they come to constitute. Chief Commercial Officer of the cryptocurrency payment processor company Bitpay has stated that he does not see a revival coming to the altcoin or ICO market as prices continue to fall off and exhibit extreme price volatility.

Sonny Singh, speaking in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, claimed that the overall health of cryptocurrency was nothing to be concerned over and that the trajectory of the industry looks overwhelmingly positive. He outlined the idea that cryptocurrency is on the cusp of a new stage of progress, one that will constitute a “defining moment” for the industry in terms of both developmental growth and new adoption.

Citing as his reasoning for the coming of growth of crypto was the looming presence of big time institutional investors, capable of pumping billions, if not trillions worth of new capital into the market, in addition to bringing a general level of professional regulation that will benefit even the average investor.

Principal among these future investments was Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, two companies that Singh believes will take the plunge into cryptocurrency in 2019, bringing about a bullish return for Bitcoin even if altcoins continue to be left behind. Singh also remains bullish on the potential of a Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund, seeing approval for the investment vehicle by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) coming within the next year to prompt Wall Street investors into crypto,

“But next year you’ll see the talk of the big entrants become real, where you’ll see Goldman does launch a trading desk, Fidelity does launch a Bitcoin product, Square offers Bitcoin processing for merchants, BlackRock launches an ETF… So all that will become real, and you’ll see some adoption actually. And then … the price will bounce back up again.”

Despite the positive price outlook for the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Singh remains bearish on the prospect of altcoins and the aforementioned ICO market. In relation to how the altcoin market would fair this year and beyond, Singh stated that altcoins “will never come back”, citing a failure to reach the all time highs experienced across the board in early January 2018.

Rather than looking to new ICOs for investment or backing little-known coin projects, Singh believes that major firms such as Fidelity and BlackRock are going to want to invest in Bitcoin products which hold the household name appeal and sway over the majority of the crypto market.

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