Amid a multi-month downtrend, the price of altcoins and Bitcoin have fallen to yearly lows, pushing market sentiment to near bottom. While price action wanes, BitPay’s Chief Commercial Officer Sonny Singh maintains an optimistic outlook on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Gaining Institutional Traction
Following the drastic Bitcoin price drop last week, Singh appeared on Bloomberg to discuss the state of the cryptocurrency market and the future of the industry.
Founded in 2011, BitPay offers Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash payments processing and storage services for merchants around the world.
With institutional solutions to cryptocurrency investing on the rise, Singh believes the market is too eager for certain catalysts to arrive:
“Right now, you’re just seeing rumors that somebody might do something–someone might launch a trading desk; someone might not be launching a trading desk. But I think next year, you’re going to see the big entrance become real; where you 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 then become real and you’ll see some adoption, actually, and you’ll see the price start bouncing back up again.”
Wall Street firms continue to explore digital asset investment products and services, but few have confirmed their plans to follow through. Currently, there are no major investment banks that offer direct cryptocurrency trading services to clients.
Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs CFO Martin Chavez confirmed that the firm never had a defined timeline to launch a Bitcoin trading desk, which had been largely anticipated earlier in the summer.
On Aug. 22, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected nine Bitcoin ETF applications by ProShares, Direxion and GraniteShares.
The SEC cited failure to prevent manipulation and fraud as well as failure to prove Bitcoin markets are “markets of significant size” as reasons for rejection. This was similar to the reasoning provided by the SEC when it issued a denial of the Winklevoss ETF.
While investment products may still be farther off on the horizon, it’s apparent that the development of blockchain technologies and adoption is still growing. With increasing Bitcoin payments volume on BitPay, Singh gave a bullish stance on the largest cryptocurrency’s future growth:
“Bitcoin will rebound next year when all these products become mainstream adopted. And we’re seeing no slow down at all at BitPay. Our merchants are seeing great growth still every week. They’re signing up more and more all the time. We’re hiring more salespeople.”
Maintaining an optimistic outlook on Bitcoin, Singh did not share the same sentiment for the falling altcoin market, stating:
“It’s still full speed ahead in the Bitcoin space. I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen in the altcoin world. There’s a lot of dodgy ones that are out there that are still overvalued. They can go a lot further down. Who knows what’s going to happen to them. But Bitcoin, again, is the leader in this space.”
The overall cryptocurrency market continues to show a general downward trend. While institutional solutions and emerging regulations continue to develop, it’s unclear which way the market will move.
Traders are reminded to remain cautious and invest only what they can afford to lose.
