DataTrek Research’s co-founder Nick Colas won’t recommend bitcoin to investors even though the bitcoin price has been rallying of late.
Colas, a Wall Street veteran with experience in equity research, money management and investment banking, stated in a recent CNBC interview that bitcoin’s price has come down “quite a long way and we’re getting a lot of people asking is now the right time to buy.”
The short answer is “no,” he said, for two fundamental reasons.
New Adopters Lacking
“The first is we’re not seeing a lot of incremental engagement with people interested in buying bitcoin for the first time,” Colas said. “Like any new technology, you need new adopters to come in and make it more valuable.”
In terms of Google searches, the searches are “way down” from where they were in December and January, by 85% to 90%, he said.
The second issue is a lack of bitcoin wallet growth. “People are not opening up a lot of new bitcoin wallets to purchase the assets,” Colas said. Wallet growth was only 2.2% last month, he said, compared to 5% to 7% per month all of last year.
“We’re just not seeing the kind of engagement we need to see to make us feel like bitcoin really has a solid track higher here fundamentally,” he said.
Despite Sound Technology, Volatility Exists
“In retrospect, it (bitcoin) was absolutely a bubble based around the futures launch in December and a lot of enthusiasm for the asset,” he said. But at the same time, “we fundamentally believe in the structure of this technology and the story, but it obviously has huge price volatility around it.”
The volatility has even been apparent in the last month, he said, “with the price falling as much as it has.”
Meanwhile, Price Recovers
Bitcoin’ price, meanwhile, continues its upward movement.
In less than three weeks, the bitcoin price rose from $6,500 to nearly $10,00, after a 30-minute candle pushed the value of bitcoin from $6,500 to $8,000. The daily trading volume of bitcoin has increased to nearly $8 billion.
Brian Kelly, a long-time contributor to CNBC’s Fast Money and the founder of BKCM, has laid out three major factors that could fuel the next big rally of bitcoin, now that the bitcoin price has officially crossed the $10,000 mark.
According to Kelly, three major factors that will inevitably lead the bitcoin price to the next support levels at $12,000 and $14,00 are the entrance of banks such as Goldman Sachs, clarity from regulators on bitcoin’s legality, and the initiation of the blockchain week in New York on May 14.
Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs officially confirmed that it has begun the development of its cryptocurrency trading desk, which will allow the bank’s clients to invest in bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market. Executives at Goldman Sachs stated that the growing demand from clients for bitcoin as an alternative store of value led the bank to support bitcoin trading.