Highlights:
- Bitcoin drops below $ 30,000 mark
- Bitcoin is the oldest and biggest cryptocurrency in the world
- Goldman Sachs is considering entering the crypto market
The price of Bitcoin has dropped to under $ 30,000 (almost ₹ 22 lakh) mark after hitting a low and a high of $ 29,298 and $ 31,919.70 respectively in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin, which is the biggest and also the oldest cryptocurrency in the world pared some of the losses and was seen trading at $ 31,166 which was down 1.88% at around 1:00 PM (Indian Standart Time) on Thursday, according to the data shared on crypto exchange WazirX.
Ethereum, which is the second biggest cryptocurrency in the world in terms of market capitalisation, was also trading at $ 1,283.79, 1.74% lower.
The other major crypto assets including ripple and tether were also in the red with 2.71% and 0.08%, respectively. However, stellar was marginally trading in the green.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of WazirX, Nischal Shetty said, “We saw bitcoin price slipping to the $30,000 level, and interestingly, traders are very bullish about it. Moreover, in the past 30 days, almost 270,000 bitcoins have moved to people who are looking to hold for long period.”
Shetty added, “This has also led to a depletion of its liquidity. We also saw Switzerland’s largest bank UBS released guidance on investing in bitcoin. These are early signs of banks entering into the crypto market. We saw 2020 bringing in Institutional investors into crypto, and I am optimistic that 2021 and 2022 will bring in the banks”.
World’s largest asset management firm, Blackrock, with $ 7.81 trillion under its umbrella, recently authorised 2 of its funds to invest in Bitcoin futures, also the US banking major, Goldman Sachs is also considering to make an entry into the crypto market.
In a report, recently published by the US based ARK Investment Management LLC, the bitcoin market and investors appear to be maturing.
The AMC, which manages around $ 34.5 billion in assets said, “Bitcoin’s realized capitalization, a measure of a holder’s cost basis, has hit an all-time high. A growing cost basis suggests that early investors are taking profits, while newer investors are establishing positions and creating higher price support levels”.
In the report titled, “Bg Ideas 2021,” the fund house said that as Bitcoin appears to be gaining more trust amongst the industries, there are some companies which are now considering it as cash on their balance sheet.
It added, “If all S&P 500 companies were to allocate 1% of their cash to bitcoin, ARK estimates that its price would increase by approximately $40,000”.
If this happens, the price of a single Bitcoin could go above the $70,000 level, it said.
As per ARK invest, as of November last year, around 60% of the Bitcoin supply did not move in over a year, which is a testament to the market’s longer-term focus and a holder base with stronger conviction. The fund house also said that the market cap of Bitcoin could scale $ 1 – $ 5 trillion during the next five to ten years.
