Bitcoin bull , co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, is sticking to his forecast of a bitcoin price in the $20,000 range by year’s end, he told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Friday.
Lee said he is “trying to change the calendar year” with respect to his prediction, but remains bullish about it.
Hedge Funds Play A Bigger Role
Lee said hedge funds are playing a bigger role in the bitcoin market, which he thinks can have an impact on its price.
“I do think in 2018, trading has shifted,” Lee said. There is now more bitcoin trading in the U.S. as certain exchanges have attracted hedge funds. “I do think hedge funds are playing a role right now,” he said.
More of the analysts hedge funds are hiring are interested in cryptocurrencies, Lee said, but hedge funds are not yet aggressively adding bitcoin into their portfolios.
We're living at a time of unprecedented concern over identity. Fears abound that our personal data is being abused by distant third-parties, while this data has become more valuable to us at a time when our identities and the identity politics we base around them have become more central to our lives. It's in this context that blockchain technology has appeared, and while its application beyond cryptocurrencies is still limited, protecting our online identities and data more securely looks set to be one of its most central applications.
Meanwhile, feedback from clients has been negative in reaction to the current bitcoin market, he said.
“Reflexivity is much bigger in crypto,” Lee said. Where it is not uncommon in traditional markets for investors to be looking to be contrarian 80% of the time, in the crypto market it is difficult to be contrarian in a bearish market.
By contrast, the use of blockchain tech grants newfound control to the user, who will be empowered to share their ID data only with the parties they approve. This is achieved primarily through the utilization of “decentralized identifiers” (DIDs), as explained by the Sovrin Foundation, which is building a blockchain platform aimed at providing individuals with "self-sovereign identity" (i.e. an ID they can take with them from platform to platform). As it notes in its white paper, "decentralized identifiers" (DIDs) not only encode information that identifies someone as, say, female, Asian, 35, and living in France,