The recent sell-off in Bitcoin, which took it below $21,000 at one point, is certainly spooking the majority of investors — particularly those who are new to digital assets. Some industry players, however, are undeterred by the recent plunge across the board in cryptocurrency prices.
Binance cofounder and chief marketing officer Yi He remains unshaken amid 2022’s downward pressure on cryptocurrency prices. Volatility from the stock market is spilling over into the crypto market, causing the two to correlate.
That correlation runs counter to bitcoin pundits who view the asset as an alternative path that diverges from the stock market. Nonetheless, Ye compared the recent sell-off to the other price plunges and doesn’t think it’s getting progressively worse than prior instances.
“If you just look at the price of bitcoin right now, I don’t think it is totally winter,” Ye told Yahoo Finance. “Every time there’s a winter, it’s always warmer than the last winter. So sometime you can say it’s 100% Winter. Like if you look at 2014, 2015, or like two years ago, I think the nastiest things are probably stronger than last summer. So for the moment, I don’t really feel it’s so terrible.”
A Maturing Futures Market
Last year brought forth the introduction of a bitcoin-related investment vehicle to the traditional financial markets. An exchange traded fund (ETF) that focused on bitcoin futures certainly helped propel the leading cryptocurrency’s profile during a bullish 2021.
The ETF gave investors the option to get exposure to bitcoin without investing directly in the coin itself. For investors worried about security via online cryptocurrency exchanges, the ProShares Bitcoin ETF (BITO) offers the opportunity to invest with confidence in a traditional market exchange — in this case, the New York Stock Exchange.
As the crypto market continues to mature during these volatile times, the Financial Times noted that the future of crypto trading is actually in futures. Adam Farthing, chief risk officer for Japan at crypto-specialist market maker B2C2, noted that “price swings have been much more muted in crypto futures than elsewhere, and dislocations between exchanges — which can give rise to arbitrage opportunities — have been fewer than in previous episodes of market turbulence.”
“With all the doom-mongering around crypto markets, it is worth noting that the futures markets are increasingly behaving in a mature manner,” Farthing said.
This could be a boon for the pathways to more crypto future products like BITO. A spot price bitcoin ETF in the U.S. is already a possibility that’s looming.
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