Investment Bank (RBC) Analyst Still Expecting Crypto Market Cap of $10 Trillion in 10-15 Years

On Wednesday (5 September 2018), Mitch Steves, a research analyst at global investment bank RBC Capital Markets, said in an interview with CNBC’s Fast Money that despite Goldman Sachs’ decision to postpone running a crypto trading desk, he still maintained his forecast that the crypto space could be worth $10 trillion in 15 years.

According to a CNBC report on Steves’ appearance on Fast Money on 4 January 2018, this $10 trillion estimate comes from “taking one-third of the roughly $30 trillion in assets held in offshore funds and gold, as investors embrace digital currencies as a new store of value.” He did provide this disclaimer, though:

“My $10 trillion call is obviously a multi-year call… 10-15 years… something like that… We’ll see a lot of ups and downs…”

On Wednesday’s appearance on Fast Money, the RBC analyst was first asked if Goldman Sachs’s decision to postpone its planned crypto trading desk meant that institutional investors have “cold feet” about Bitcoin due to regulatory issues and whether or not Bitcoin investors should be concerned.

He replied:

“So, I don’t think it is a big concern… All the institutional investors I speak with that have been involved for the last five years or so… they are still involved in the space… they still track it very closely. So, what I think Goldman is having a hard time with is they can’t really find a way to get “Institutional investors to invest… so, specifically, they are invested in Circle, which is essentially a competitor to Coinbase… So, they are already able to get trading flows on the retail side… What they are realizing now is probably the next step to get institutional money is waiting for a Bitcoin ETF to get approved.”

Steves added that despite the recent developments around Bitcoin and all the price volatility we have seen, he still maintains his $10 trillion prediction for the valuation of the crypto ecosystem:

“So, I don’t think it is a big concern… All the institutional investors I speak with that have been involved for the last five years or so… they are still involved in the space… they still track it very closely. So, what I think Goldman is having a hard time with is they can’t really find a way to get institutional investors to invest… so, specifically, they are invested in Circle, which is essentially a competitor to Coinbase… So, they are already able to get trading flows on the retail side… What they are realizing now is probably the next step to get institutional money is waiting for a Bitcoin ETF to get approved.”

At the time of writing, according to data from CryptoCompare, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $6,904 down 6.25% in the past 24-hour period.

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