Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors and a well-known bitcoin bull, recently saw his prediction of bitcoin rallying during this year’s Consensus conference go awry, as the cryptocurrency’s price dropped. The Wall Street analyst is now owning up to it, and explained why the flagship cryptocurrency didn’t surge.
As covered, Lee claimed the cryptocurrency could surge over 70 percent during Consensus, after analyzing historical data that showed bitcoin usually surged when the conference’s attendance did. CryptoCompare data shows that this year that didn’t happen, as Consensus was this week, and in the last 7 days bitcoin dropped from nearly $10,000 to about $8,200 at press time.
Lee, who also argued, using historical evidence, that hodling bitcoin makes sense, has now explained what went wrong. In a note sent to clients, he revealed that a conference like Consensus gives the community a chance to meet and provides a “sanity check” that shows progress is being made, while adding “new interest,” shown by its attendance numbers.
Per the analyst, however, the cryptocurrency industry still needs more clarity from regulators like the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as well as more adoption from traditional companies. He was quoted as saying:
“Crypto still faces significant internal resistance and hurdles within traditional financial institutions. But it is encouraging, nonetheless, that a large share of incremental attendance are financial institutions.”
In a tweet, Lee added that while institutional investors are starting to enter the cryptocurrency ecosystem, with Nomura being the first ever to act as a crypto-custodian bank, institutions need to enter the market as well, getting past the “blockchain not bitcoin” narrative.
Per his tweet, progress is still being done, as “multiple institutional custody solutions were announced.” Zcash, he added, was the only major cryptocurrency rallying during Consensus. It rallied because it’s set to be listed on the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange.
At the end of his note, Lee said most new investors are currently looking for the next bitcoin, as they argue the flagship cryptocurrency is now “boring,” or that other protocols are better. Nevertheless, he noted, bitcoin and ethereum, are the two primary on-ramps for institutional trading.
Notably, Tom Lee still expects bitcoin to be worth $25,000 by the end of this year. As covered, the Wall Street strategist has made other bullish bitcoin price predictions, as he sees the cryptocurrency hit $36,000 by the end of 2019, and $91,000 by March 2020.
