“Ah so”, I said to myself as I got into your article. Why did I do that?
If you look at the charts for the last several days of trading you will see something rather unusual -- Bitcoin was taking off almost like a rocket, and some old stalwarts which normally tag along for the ride did not do so on this occasion. And I wondered to myself whether this was a signal that the long-awaited “Wall Street money” was now starting to flow into Bitcoin (I know, some hedge funds are there already).
I can see American institutional money pin-pointing Bitcoin; because of the depth and international scope of its network. It appears, for example, that in some countries a growing number of ‘ordinary people’ are resorting to Bitcoin as being a better store of value than fiat money. On top of that, I can see more and more institutions thinking they don't "The King's Dollars" as much as they used to need it just do trading; because Bitcoin will do just fine for that purpose. By making options available to international traders of goods and services, they will be able to hedge against price change in Bitcoin while they are holding it for a trade transaction.
Even if I’m wrong, and what happened to Bitcoin this week is not a signal of the long-awaited entry of Wall Street Money, I can see some traders who sit on large pools of money (along with their algo bots) thinking that the commencement of derivatives trading by Ledger X means that it is time to make their move. And, for sure, somewhere in the ‘derivatives chain’ the underlying asset will have to be available for delivery if needed, which could mean progressively tightening supply of Bitcoin for sale!
So, thanks a lot for this story and for your professional documentation around it.
Great comment. My thoughts as well, especially about that part about hedging. If institutions just start adding crypto as a 1-5% allocation, watch what happens to the prices of these things...
Thank you, and this page is now rich value between your post and several of the other comments. Thanks to all taking the time to lay out ideas here, as this could be a really key turning point for cryptos in the USA.
The next big ones will include the arrival of an ETF (the 'smart money' seems to think this is where BTC will get up to 10,000) and the arrival of official regulations from SEC, IRS and perhaps a House/Senate bill.
The official regulations will tell you which cryptos the big banks will try to kill off, IMO. Keep in mind that at this time your crypto riches 'assume' that we will always have bridges to move cryptos to and from fiat, and those guys control the bridges.