U.Today - During a this Friday, Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, said that crypto's evolution into mainstream finance has begun.
He credits this shift to factors including the increasing interest from institutional investors and continued growth in the industry's infrastructure.
"BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), the world's largest asset manager, putting its flag on the ground and saying Bitcoin matters, and it's the asset that institutional investors will want to own for the next five to ten years. I think we've entered a new era of crypto," Hougan stated.
Hougan suggested that this development wasn't a sudden occurrence, but rather the result of a steady growth trend in the industry. "Prices have been rising since last November after the FTX debacle. We've entered a multi-year bull market that is just getting started now," he added.
The CIO also hinted at a growing number of promising firms in the crypto domain, expecting an influx of IPOs in the near future. He added, "There's a pent-up pipeline of interesting companies in the crypto space, crypto infrastructure companies that are going to see materially stronger results as Bitcoin and other crypto assets continue to rise."
However, Hougan cautioned that the bull market's journey might be interspersed with rough patches. Nevertheless, he remains optimistic about the long-term outlook for the industry. He credited this optimism to significant institutional interest, as evidenced by BlackRock's recent filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF. "Major institutional investors want access to this market. That's why they are launching a spot . The long-term outlook is looking exceptionally strong," Hougan said.
Further underlining the significance of regulatory advancements, Hougan viewed them as a means of further solidifying the industry's foundation. "Every regulatory step forward [is] creating a new building block on which a new bull market can rise," he concluded. This evolution, as he coined it, signals the start of a new era for the crypto industry, the "mainstream era of crypto."