Bitcoin (BTC-USD) surged past $57,000 on Tuesday, reaching the price threshold for the first time in over two years. Oppenheimer Executive Director Owen Lau joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss Bitcoin's rally.
Lau cited MicroStrategy's (MSTR) $155 million Bitcoin purchase as "part of the reason why" Bitcoin saw such a big jump during Tuesday's trading. Going forward, he expects continued "catalysts" from strong demand for spot Bitcoin ETFs.
He notes new institutional money is flowing into Bitcoin, but financial advisors are also doing their "due diligence" to guide investors into crypto. This could mean even "more money" entering Bitcoin in the coming months.
Lau says Bitcoin's growth can benefit from various macro factors such as lower rates and rising tech stocks. To him, Bitcoin is "a little bit of everything" right now.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith
Video Transcript
- The price of Bitcoin reaching its highest level since November 2021 briefly pushing past that $57,000 mark. The big catalyst this time, a big investment for MicroStrategy. Bitcoin miners and crypto exchanges, including Coinbase and Robinhood are also seeing gains alongside the leading digital currency.
So can Bitcoin bulls expect more upside in the months to come? For more on the crypto market, let's bring in Owen Lau, Oppenheimer executive director and senior analyst. Owen, we're talking about this big buy from MicroStrategy as one catalyst at least today. But is it really at the end of the day about the Bitcoin ETFs and having the easier access?
OWEN LAU: Yeah, so, first of all, Thank you for having me. You are definitely right. Yesterday, we saw the news from MicroStrategy buying 3,000 Bitcoin for $155 million. And I think that was part of the reason why the Bitcoin kind of breaks through that $52,000 range.
And going forward, I think going into April and maybe even May, we are going to see the catalyst from Bitcoin halving and the catalyst of further adoption from spot Bitcoin ETF continues. When we track the numbers, we continue to see more and more new money coming into this product in iBid, in BlackRock, and also Fidelity.
So I think the trend could continue. But just be mindful that there may be sell the new event in April.
- Is that all just institutional money as you pointed out when you say new money flowing in?
OWEN LAU: Yeah, so I think it's a little bit of everywhere. Some institutional monies, I think most of that, if you have retail investors, you have the access to Coinbase, and Robinhood, and some other platform already. So I would say most of these money is coming from institutional investors.
But this is against the backdrop that, remember, many of these financial advisors and RIAs, they are still doing due diligence. So what we are seeing is there could be potential more money coming into this space. Once they finish the due diligence, and they change the policy.
- We always try to make sense of where Bitcoin is moving by seeing where the correlation is with equities. Are we seeing-- is this a hedge? I mean, is there anything that we can point to that tracks with where stocks have been moving? Or is it just the general risk off sentiment we've been seeing in markets broadly?
OWEN LAU: Yeah, it's hard to gauge. If you run the correlation, it may correlate to high tech companies, high beta tech stock, some people view this or many people view this as a hedge, a digital gold to hedge inflation. The good thing about interesting thing about Bitcoin is it is just a little bit of everything.
But what we saw is if we are going to see weights coming down, Bitcoin should benefit from that. And if we see high tech companies to go up, it also has a high beta characteristic that can also drive Bitcoin up as well. So I would say it's hard to find one point to gauge Bitcoin because Bitcoin, it's kind of a combination of many things.
