Dan morehead


By Bill Taylor/ Fintek Capital Sometimes a whole lot of "groundbreaking" news and events happen in August but goes overlooked because it's

SUMMER!

That's the time to ignore big news in favor of hitting the beach, firing up the grill, soaking up the sun or all of the previous. But in this case we feel compelled to follow up on a story that broke last week. It could very well be

THE

BIGGEST

story of 2018. So, if you happened to be "out" last weekend (when news hit) enjoying life here it is again. And, it's not just little old us saying it's

BIG

.

How about confirmation from Dan Morehead who just happens to run Pantera, a massive $700 cryptocurrency hedge fund?

What are we talking about? The news release late last Friday (the 3rd) that the

New York Stock Exchange's

owner

(ICE)

is teaming up with Microsoft and Starbucks to launch a new bitcoin futures contract

AND

retail ecosystem for digital assets. Everyone, this is bigger than any ETF (which may or may not ever happen). So what does Dan have to say?

“In the last three or four business days, we’ve had two pieces of news. The ETF being rejected for the fifth time. That doesn’t seem like it’s very interesting to me. But on Friday, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, which also owns $42 billion worth of other exchanges, launched a cryptocurrency exchange called Bakkt. That is huge news. The other investors include Pantera, BCG and Microsoft. That is going to be a very profound impact over the next five or ten years for the markets. To my mind, that’s what people should be focused on…

I think the main thing to remember is that Bitcoin is a very early stage venture, but it has a real-time price feed. And that’s a unique thing, and people get really excited about the price and overreact, I think, to announcements. There’s been a couple of big things coming out in the last week, and the ETF rejection is the same story we’ve had for five years. I think the SEC’s been very cautious with an ETF. Bitcoin’s up 82% year-on-year, so it’s still doing really well…

I think it’s going to be quite a long time until an ETF is approved. And here’s the perspective: The last asset class to get approved for ETF certification was copper. Copper has been on earth for 10,000 years and it just got approved in 2012 after a very long multi-year process. I think ETFs and Bitcoin still have quite a ways to go.”

So, that's from a huge player in the crypto, bitcoin and digital asset space, so you can't ignore how big this news is. Oh, to be fair and true, Pantera is also an investor in the project (Some bias? Probably). Anyway, enjoy the rest of the summer and look forward to exciting crypto times ahead.


Bill Taylor is Managing Partner at Fintek Capital & a frequent contributor to FintekNews