Institutions Coming in Have Turned Bitcoin Into an Asset Class, Says Mike Novogratz

Young Americans want to buy bitcoin, and they will use the stimulus checks to do so, said Galaxy Investment Partners’ CEO Mike Novogratz. He added that the primary cryptocurrency had become a proven asset in the past few months with the entrance of giant institutions and corporations.

Retail Pushed Bitcoin Higher, Says Novogratz

The first-ever cryptocurrency went on a wild run in the past few days. During the weekend, bitcoin broke its previous ATH, breached above $60,000, and marked a new all-time high at $61,700 before it dumped by $7,000 earlier today.

While discussing the latest highly-volatile price actions in the market, the former hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz said that a similar 10% retracement is within the one standard deviation.

However, he focused more on the bullish developments and the latest record, saying that the weekend run had everything to do with retail investors instead of institutions.

“The stimulus checks are coming. People are excited about that. A lot of the stimulus checks are going to young people who want to buy bitcoin.

This weekend was retail. What happens on the weekend is retail gets excited.”

Mike Novogratz. Source: CNBC

Upon approving and signing the latest multi-trillion-dollar relief bill, the US government sent the first stimulus checks to its citizens last week.

Further data supporting the narrative that retail investors induced BTC’s latest record came from the analytics company CryptoQuant. By exploring the Coinbase Premium Index – a metric following institutional purchases on the large US-based exchange, the firm’s CEO concluded that the run was not “US institution-driven, it all came from stablecoins.”

Bitcoin is Now an Asset

Novogratz also touched upon how has the perception of bitcoin changed globally in the past several months, following the entrance of giants like MassMutual, Tesla, MicroStrategy, One Asset River Management, and more.

“In the last three months, we’ve had this secular shift where bitcoin has become an asset. It’s not ‘maybe,’ it’s not ‘it might be,’ it’s now an asset class. Cryptocurrency is an asset class. Every bank is moving in, every tech company is moving in, and all portfolios are starting to moving in.”

Consequently, he concluded that if investors are not long, they are ultimately short on BTC.