Billionaire investor and hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz has made the claim that ‘bitcoin will be the biggest bubble of our lifetimes.’
Speaking at a conference in New York on Tuesday, Novogratz explained that there is a lot of fraud in something that’s ‘exciting’ as the crypto market, reports CNBC, adding:
I think this [crypto] is going to be the biggest bubble of our lifetimes by a long shot. To be fair, this is a bubble and there’s a lot of fraud mixed in. We look at tons of projects. And some get funded, and they literally look like Ponzi’s.
However, unlike critics who have said dismissed the digital currency as a speculative bubble, the former Fortress manager wasn’t using his bubble comment as a negative connotation. In October, during an interview, Novogratz was asked whether bitcoin’s gains constituted a bubble. Even though he replied in the affirmative, he added that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, adding:
Historically, manias or bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live. If it’s the railroad bubble or the Internet bubble, it really changed the way we live.
He added that in 10 to 15 years the blockchain and decentralised systems would be in use everywhere, claiming that this bubble is ‘going to be the great manias of all time.’
Since October, bitcoin has not only scaled the $10,000 milestone, but it’s continuing upward trajectory has pushed it up to its current value of $11,147, according to CoinMarketCap, pushing its market total to $185.7 billion for the first time.
The comments from Novogratz, who has compared to bitcoin to digital gold, come at a time when he recently stated that bitcoin could ‘easily‘ reach $40,000 by the end of 2018. Furthermore, he was reported yesterday as saying that the digital currency market cap will reach $2 trillion at the end of next year. At present, it’s worth an impressive $339.1 billion, making it more valuable than Visa and the Bank of America. Slowly, but surely, it’s steadily gaining on the market cap of JPMorgan Chase, at $343 billion, who’s CEO called bitcoin ‘a fraud‘ in September.
However, while Novogratz believes that the cryptocurrency will reach $40,000 by the end of 2018. he doesn’t think that the journey will be smooth sailing.
He added:
There will be wild crashes in it because you’re going to get to levels so far ahead of where the technology’s at. It makes investing really, really exciting, but difficult.
Since the beginning of the year, bitcoin’s value has, so far, increased by more than 1,000 percent.