Wall Street Mixed Feelings About Bitcoin
A fantastic business opportunity? The future of the Bitcoin remains uncertain, but that does not stop the most adventurous speculation with the cryptocurrency and the giants of Wall Street prepare the ground for heavier investors.
The Bitcoin is not exchanged in the form of coins or bills that can be used to buy bread, such as the dollar, or metal that can be transformed into jewelry such as gold . Nor is it produced by a company whose stock is listed on the stock exchange or is linked to the reputation of a State. But it is exchanged for money.
Driven by euphoria at the end of 2017, the Bitcoin reached almost $ 20,000 per coin. Then he went down to get currently about $ 6,400. This fall may seem overwhelming . But the extreme volatility of the cryptocurrency, upwards or downwards, generates smiles among some brokers that prosper generating short-term gains.
Other investors sincerely estimate that the bitcoin will appreciate over time. And for this, they have at their disposal a range of tools, more or less risky.
The most direct way is to buy all or part of a Bitcoin on specialized platforms . The holders of these assets are exposed to the risk of virtual theft, since the platforms are regularly victims of hacking.
The arrival in late 2017 of forward contracts on several stock exchanges in addresses such as the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) brought a new degree of legitimacy.
This solution, which consists of betting on the future price of the Bitcoin, avoids holding them directly. But it is mostly used by professional investors.
It is also possible to place the money in investment portfolios composed exclusively of Bitcoins , such as the Bitcoin Investment Trust managed by the Grayscale company. But this product, reserved for a certain category of investors, is negotiated only directly and with high costs.
The grail expected by the Bitcoin supporters is the arrival of exchange-traded funds replicating the evolutions of the cryptocurrency, the ‘Bitcoins ETF’.
” Your arrival is a priority for institutional investors,” says Michael Graham, an analyst specializing in new technologies at Canaccord Genuity.
These investors, who manage billions of dollars for accounts in pension or insurance funds, are so far reluctant to place money in a potentially lucrative but still very risky asset.
They could be convinced if the authorities, by giving their approval to the ETF Bitcoins, give their legitimacy to the virtual currency still associated with the traffickers and a bubble ready to explode. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not show much agility.
The Winklevoss brothers, known for their participation in the beginnings of Facebook but also in their cryptocurrency platform, Gemini, had two refusals . All the other ETFs presented had the same destination. Each time, the SEC indicates that the Bitcoin is exchanged on platforms that are mostly unregulated and at risk of being manipulated.
Caution
Fearful of not being able to generate many resources in an asset that is still not well known and poorly controlled, traditional financial actors advance with a foot of lead. Jamie Dimon, the director of the first US bank JPMorgan Chase, has been skeptical of several opportunities after having considered it in 2017 as a “fraud”.
Among the big Wall Street banks, since May Goldman Sachs has offered its services as compensation agents , without yet proposing its own products linked to the Bitcoin.
Some went further. Fidelity Investment, one of the largest asset managers in the world, last week launched bitcoin brokerage services and deposits reserved for some “sophisticated” investors, such as hedge funds.
ICE, the head office of the New York Stock Exchange, should launch the Bakkt platform dedicated to cryptocurrency in Dovember.
But the problems on the platforms persist: lack of transparency, conflicts of interest, absence of firewalls.
“As for everything, it takes time to reach maturity and with the arrival of additional institutional investors, I think we will arrive,” said Christopher Giancarlo, president of the agency responsible for regulating derivatives markets in the United States, to the chain Fox Business