On Wednesday (May 29), Thomas Lee, Co-Founder, Managing Partner, and the Head of Research at independent research boutique Fundstrat Global Advisors, explained why he believes that “real” or “full-blown” buying of Bitcoin (BTC) based on fear of missing out (FOMO) would probably only start once the BTC price exceeds $10,000.

Lee, who has been bullish on Bitcoin for a quite a while and is very well-known in the crypto community for his Bitcoin price predictions, made his latest comments about FOMO in the Bitcoin market in response to a tweet posted by Adam Samson, Global Head of fastFT at the Financial Times:

As you can see, Samson had embedded in his tweet an infographic from Fundstrat that shows the percentage of days the Bitcoin market experienced different degrees of FOMO—Level 1 (“Baby”), Level 5 (“Medium”), and Level 10 (“Full-blown”)—in the periods 2010–2011, 2011–2013, and 2013–2017.

This infographic also shows what today’s equivalent Bitcoin price levels are for each of these three levels of FOMO, i.e.

  • “Baby” level FOMO: $6,950 (BTC price went above this level for the first time in 2019 on May 11);
  • “Medium ” level FOMO: $8,350 (BTC price exceeded this level for the first time in 2019 on May 26); and 
  • “Full-blown” level FOMO: $10,000 (we have not seen the BTC price reach this level so far in 2019)

This is how Lee replied to Samson’s tweet:

Previously (during the past few weeks), Lee has said the following about Bitcoin:

  • May 28: “The resilience of Bitcoin in the face of heightening tensions shows that Bitcoin/crypto is one of the few places to find alpha”
  • May 13: “Less than 22% believe there is any FOMO as long as #bitcoin is below $10k” (According to the results of a Twitter poll he conducted on May 12)
  • May 19: 13 events that have occurred during the period Nov 2018–May 2019 “confirm” that crypto winter is over
  • May 7: “I believe >50% of ETF volume is institutional investors (HF, etc) so it is not necessarily a retail product. And similarly, a bitcoin ETF would be a big deal. Especially since it does simplify key management for a retail investor”
  • April 4: Fair value of Bitcoin is $14,000

Although “real” FOMO may not have quite started, the increase in the assets under management (AUM) of Grayscale Investments’ “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust” (GBTC) from $1.172 billion on April 30 to $1.950 billion on May 29, i.e. more than a 66% increase in one month, shows that U.S. accredited and institutional investors are already in the FOMO stage.