(Kitco News) The adoption of bitcoin has accelerated to a “shocking” pace, said billionaire investor Mike Novogratz, who sees bitcoin’s market cap catching up and then even surpassing that of gold.
“Adoption’s happening faster than I predicted. It’s shocking to me how fast people are moving into the system,” Novogratz told CNBC.
A wave of institutional money and wider adoption have accelerated bitcoin’s rally, with the cryptocurrency rising more than 100% year-to-date after hitting a record high of more than $61,000 back in March. At the time of writing, bitcoin traded at $58,204, down 0.12% on the day.
It is only a matter of time before bitcoin’s market cap is equal to that of gold, Novogratz said.
“At the beginning of the year, I thought $60,000 was my target because that would have been 10% of gold’s [market cap]. But I told myself and our investors that once it gets to 10%, we’re all going to say it’s going to 20%, and then when it gets to 20%, it’s going to go to 50% and then 100%,” Novogratz said. “I do think bitcoin is on an inevitable path to having the same market cap and then a higher market cap as gold.”
Bitcoin’s market cap is currently at around $1.1 trillion. In comparison, gold’s market cap is at about $10.9 trillion.
Novogratz sees more institutional players entering the space.
Last week, there were reports that Goldman Sachs was close to offering bitcoin and other crypto assets to its wealth management clients. This comes after Morgan Stanley was the first American bank to offer access to bitcoin funds to its wealth management clients in March.
On top of that, PayPal announced last week that it would start allowing its U.S. customers to pay with their crypto holdings at checkout.
“The more people involved in this space, the more big firms, if it’s Tesla, or MicroStrategy, or Goldman, or Morgan Stanley, the more wealthy individuals – the harder it is politically to say ‘hey we don’t like this anymore’,” Novogratz said.
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