UPDATE ON INSTITUTIONAL INTEREST IN CRYPTO

At Fifth Era we make a point of reading through the newsletters of other Internet, Fintech and Blockchain investors and commentators, and we have been struck by the sudden swing in tone of many of their writings with specific regard to the building institutional acceptance and use of new digital monies and assets. We were very impressed by the way in which BlockTower and Bitwise synthesized the discussion.

BlockTower made a simple but important point during their quarterly update webinar. When some of the world’s leading asset managers and investors start taking allocations in new asset classes such as Bitcoin, and advising their clients to do so too, the pendulum begins to swing from ‘you can lose your job if you take this risk and it fails’ to ‘you can lose your job if you miss out when our competitors get superior returns’, especially if you don’t have a thoughtful narrative for why you remained on the sidelines when others were jumping in. The point of course, is that with voices like Paul Tudor Jones, Jefferies and Bloomberg starting to tell investors to buy cryptocurrencies, it becomes incumbent upon every other wealth manager in the world to at least understand the asset class and how to explain why they are not investing in it. Ignoring it is no longer acceptable. And as the laggards become educated, some increase in investing is inevitable.