Leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin is worlds away from its $19,873 high reached back in mid-December of last year, falling to $4,236.16 as of 12:15 p.m. ET. Of course, whether it will bounce or continue to bomb depends on who you ask.
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chairman Jeff Sprecher was optimistic that despite its latest correction, Bitcoin will move forward, but as far as prices go, Sprecher can’t say where the cryptocurrency will be.
“The unequivocal answer is (digital assets will survive),” said Sprecher at the Consensus: Invest conference in New York. “As an exchange operator, it’s not our objective to opine on prices.”
“Somehow bitcoin has lived in a swamp and survived,” Sprecher added. “There are thousands of other tokens that you could argue are better but yet Bitcoin continues to survive, thrive and attract attention.
“Often times in finance, it’s not about being the best — it turns out to be about being the broadest and the most commonly accepted and for whatever reason bitcoin has become that.”
It should be noted that while the bears are quick to pile on the digital currency’s latest 80% drop in valuation, it’s not the largest decline in its own history of market corrections.
— Dennis Parker⚡️ (@Xentagz) November 21, 2018
In addition, other optimists are keen to say that the latest price declines will allow for an influx of institutional investor capital as the number of retail investors flee from cryptocurrencies.
“Through 2017 all of the buyers were retail — as the price is drawing down you’re starting to see institutional investors come in,” said Anthony Pompliano, founder and partner at crypto investment firm Morgan Creek Digital Assets, who remains bullish on Bitcoin in the long term.
And then there’s the flip side of the digital coin where the future looks murky and that Bitcoin’s run as the proverbial toast of the town in the world of digital assets has come to an end.
“Bitcoin was an extremely clever idea. Sadly, not every clever idea is a good idea,” a European Central Bank Executive Board member said at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. “Few remember that Satoshi embedded the genesis block with a Times headline from January 2009 about U.K. banks’ bailout. In more ways than one, bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis.”
The price of Bitcoin has fallen 2.42% the past 24 hours, but has bounced back slightly from its post-Thanksgiving drop to about $3,600. However, according to some, the bottom has yet to show itself.
“I could gloat about bitcoin collapsing 10% in a day to $5700. But that is still some way to zero where bitcoin belongs. Actually, since bitcoin is The Mother of All Toxic Pollutions & Environmental Disasters its true fair value is highly negative with the right externality tax,” said U.S. economist Nouriel Roubini, who teaches at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is chairman of Roubini Macro Associates LLC, an economic consultancy firm.
Related: The Key to The First Bitcoin ETF
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