Digital Assets: Is Crypto Adoption Breaking Out?

Mike Novogratz suggested that bitcoin is gripped by the “network effect.” There might be evidence of that.

Novogratz of Galaxy Digital fame, who is also a noted crypto evangelist, recently said on Twitter that the “network effect” might have caught up with bitcoin. He assigned a target of $65,000 for the cryptocurrency.

Here’s a look at recent, interesting developments surrounding crypto and bitcoin that suggest Novogratz might be on point.

Grayscale Investments scales Mount $10B AUM in cryptos

On Tuesday, Grayscale Investments, the biggest digital asset manager in the world, revealed that its AUM had scaled $10.4 billion including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether, horizen, ether classic, litecoin, stellar, XRP, and zcash. (Coin Desk)

It also said that it now holds more than 500,000 bitcoin in its bitcoin trust. According to Coin Telegraph, that means the Trust possesses nearly 3.37% of bitcoin’s outstanding supply (considering that about 3.7 million bitcoin maybe lost).

Last week, the Trust recorded its largest-ever weekly inflow of $215 million representing nearly 16,000 bitcoin.

Grayscale is popular with institutional crypto investors who seek exposure to digital assets without the accompanying hassles, and risk, of physically holding them. In return, they pony up a hefty premium and an annual fee of 2%.

Massive open interest in bitcoin futures on the CME

According to a Coin Desk report today, inflows from institutional investors has pushed up open interest in bitcoin futures on the CME Group exchange to a record high of $976 million.

In another statistic made available by CME, “the number of large open interest holders (LOIH) is once again at a record 102 holders and we are averaging 101 holders so far in November.”

Note that LOIHs are entities that hold more than 25 CME Bitcoin futures contracts, with each contract sized at 5 Bitcoin.

Platform interest in crypto

Entities such as PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and challenger bank Revolut have lately turned cryptocurrency-friendly. They are allowing users to buy, sell, and hold digital assets through their accounts and apps.

Interestingly, Airbnb, which filed for an IPO on Monday, said in its filing documents that it would need to adapt to emerging technologies such as “tokenization, cryptocurrencies [and] new authentication technologies.”

It said that distributed ledger and blockchain technologies, as well as biometrics, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and cloud technologies, could be relevant in its future operations.

Corporates make a beeline for bitcoin

MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) flagged off a trend for corporates to invest their treasury reserves in bitcoin to safeguard against dollar debasement and purchasing power. MicroStrategy invested $425 million in bitcoin in two tranches, then a $50 million outlay by Square (NYSE: SQ) sealed the trend.

More recently, Anthony Scaramucci’s mega hedge fund SkyBridge Capital’s SEC filings show that the fund seeks exposure to digital assets such as crypto.

Prominent personalities are talking up bitcoin

As bitcoin rose like a phoenix from its COVID -triggered collapse, more and prominent investing personalities and analyst firms have come out with bullish pronouncements on bitcoin.

These include Paul Tudor Jones, Mike Novogratz, Bloomberg’s Mike McGlone, JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM), and Citi (NYSE: C).

Even crypto-scoffer Ray Dalio appears to be veering from course.

In a recent tweet, he said: “I can’t imagine central banks, big Institutional investors, businesses, or multinational companies using [Bitcoin]. If I’m wrong about these things I would love to be corrected.”