A Swiss bank responded to a recent Goldman Report that said Bitcoin was neither an asset class nor a suitable investment, The Daily Hodl reported on June 5.
Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote, hit back at the report. He began by comparing the volatility of Bitcoin with traditional markets.
Although Bitcoin fell 37 percent on March 12, 2020, just a month later, the crude oil market plunged 333 percent in 24 hours, nine times the decline in Bitcoin’s March 12 loss, and crude oil prices hit a low of $40 a barrel at one point. As recently as December 2019, Goldman Sachs predicted that the average oil price would be $63 a barrel by 2020.
In addition, Goldman Sachs believes that the rise in the price of cryptocurrencies depends largely on the willingness of others to pay higher prices for it, and Thomas responds that traditional markets operate on the assumption that capital appreciation is higher.
The decision to buy or sell ultimately depends on whether we believe the price of the investment will continue to rise or fall, and whether others are willing to pay a higher or lower price for the investment.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the driving force behind the ongoing financial changes. Goldman ignores the strong foundations of this new asset class based on encryption, and the arrival of a world in which many assets will be documented and transactions will be democratized.
As for the claim that Bitcoin has long been a tool of primari criminals, Thomas points out that Chainalysis concluded in a January 2020 report that only 0.08 percent of cryptocurrency transactions come from the dark web market and that crime-related transactions account for only 1.1 percent of total transaction activity.
In addition, Tomas says, the cryptocurrency scam is dwarfed in scale compared to Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion scams. He concluded by saying that major financial institutions such as Fidelity Investments and JPMorgan Had enough confidence to enter the sector showed that financial institutions believed in the future of cryptocurrencies.
While security and private key management remain challenges in the cryptocurrency world, Thomas believes institutions like Swissquote can keep money secure and open deposit insurance services in the event of a hacker attack.
