The crypto market has seen many ups and downs in the last few weeks. Bitcoin, amid the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, slipped below $4000 to a 12-month low, after having touched an all-time of over $20000 in December 2017. Ripple beat Ethereum in market capitalization and climbed to No 2 spot in the crypto market. In spite of the unrest in the crypto sphere, Bitcoin’s supporters have shown unwavering support to the cryptocurrency. Lou Kerner, a partner at venture capital firm CryptoOracle, is among these supporters and he deems bitcoin as the greatest store of value ever created.
Kerner believes that Bitcoin is “the best thing” to have happened in the history of mankind and it will reward those who hold on to it as a long-term investment. He had shown strong support for the cryptocurrency in 2017, and a year later, he is still maintaining his stand.
"Crypto has been so weak because most of it there's no underlying value outside of confidence," Kerner remarked. "[But] bitcoin, itself, we think is going to replace gold eventually. Gold is an $8 trillion thing. I think it's a store of value. I think it's the greatest store of value ever created," he added. "It should surpass gold over time. It won't happen overnight."
Kerner, on Nov 21, told CNBC that investing in Bitcoin is not for the faint of heart, but those who have held on to the cryptocurrency for any two-year long period have been rewarded. He compared bitcoin’s price fluctuations to Amazon’s fall and rise.
“If you go back to the internet bubble, which is what a lot of us in crypto look at for direction, Amazon, arguably one of the greatest companies in the history of the mankind, was down over 95 percent over two years,” Kerner said.
It is to be noted that Amazon has also seen violent price fluctuations like those of Bitcoin’s. Amazon went public at $18 a share in May 1997. Its share value had gained $300 per share by December 1998, despite the June 1998 split. The company experienced two more splits in January and September 1999. The dot com bubble burst happened in March 2000. In September 2001, Amazon’s shares were trading at below $6 per share. The same Amazon company became the second US company to cross $1 trillion in stock market value in September 2018.
Kerner feels that bitcoin adopters must be prepared to endure much worse than what had happened to internet stocks. "There was a day in 2013 when we were down 70 percent overnight. Nobody likes being down like this. But this is what investing in crypto is all about."
Kerner also shared a blog on his official Medium account on November 10 in which he highlighted statistics pointing towards the growth of the cryptocurrency industry.
According to the blog, there were 1,775 job openings in the US in August 2018, which is 300% more than the number of job openings at the same time last year. These figures reaffirm the fact that employers are still confident about the crypto market opportunity, and therefore, are making long-term investments in their teams despite crypto market’s loss of 80% from its all-time high. Government bodies across the world are also working on creating regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies given their growing popularity among people.
It is expected that the value proposition of cryptocurrencies will be recognised when they gain mainstream adoption because of their real-life use cases and people start using them.
Bittoria is a cryptocurrency exchange which will enable cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade in BTC, ETH, XRP and LTC with USD, EUR, GBP and CHF. The exchange will also roll out support for crypto-to-crypto transactions on the same platform soon. Stay tuned for updates!