One of the largest ways in which institutions interact with financial markets is through foreign exchange. LMAX Group provides electronic trading opportunities for institutions as well as cryptocurrency trading. CEO David Mercer discussed his views on the future of crypto on CNBC.
Mercer said that Bitcoin reaching new highs is "inevitable" because of institutional investment, which outweighs selling pressures. He noted that about 900 Bitcoin are mined per day, which is worth between $60 million and $70 million, as opposed to inflows into the exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which reached nearly $700 million in a single day in early March. According to Mercer, this huge imbalance of supply and demand is driving the price of Bitcoin up.
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Additionally, Mercer also discussed the upcoming Bitcoin halving, expected in mid-April. This would lower the amount of Bitcoin mined per day by half to around 450, which could further decrease selling pressures and cause Bitcoin to continue going up. However, some, including Mercer, believe that this is already priced into the market.
He also made a statement regarding the total size of the crypto market, saying that if "3% of the world's assets go to crypto, that would be a $6 trillion asset class." For reference, the entire crypto market is estimated to be worth around $2.5 trillion.
"You should expect most crypto prices to go north from here, and I think that Ethereum and Solana will follow," Mercer said.
Looking beyond crypto, Mercer sees tokenization as "the fourth or fifth industrial revolution" and he predicts that "the token economy will be $20 trillion by 2030." He thinks that tokenization is the true underlying benefit of crypto, and he sees Bitcoin as just a "signpost" and a "proof of concept" for tokenization to take off, "which we will be lucky to live through and enjoy."
"Based purely on supply and demand ... you should see the price of Bitcoin being multiples of what it is today," Mercer said.
Though Mercer noted that he is not in the business of predicting, he is basing his idea of Bitcoin going up on the assumption that it will continue to be allocated into standard investment portfolios. This could happen sooner than some expected; the largest pension fund, Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), recently submitted a request to explore the viability of incorporating Bitcoin into its investment strategy.