【英文】高盛报告：加密货币是新的资产类别（41页）

英文研究报告 2021年05月31日 06:00 管理员

With cryptocurrency prices remaining extremely volatile on news about regulatory crackdowns, environmental concerns and heightened tax scrutiny even as interest in crypto assets from credible investors has been rising and legacy financial institutions—including ourselves—have been launching new crypto offerings, crypto is undoubtedly Top of Mind. We first wrote about bitcoin in 2014 and cryptos more broadly in 2018, exploring the potential and risks of the crypto ecosystem. Amid the recent volatility, here we focus on whether crypto assets can be considered an institutional asset class. We start by speaking with Michael Novogratz, Co-founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings, which is active in crypto investing and trading, asset management, and venture financing. He argues that the mere fact that a critical mass of credible investors and institutions is now engaging with crypto assets has cemented their position as an official asset class.

And, despite the price volatility, he doesn’t see the institutional interest in bitcoin, which he primarily views as a convenient store of value, waning as long as the current macro and political backdrop—in which the government has no imperative to stop spending on social issues that the Fed is largely financing— continues, and crypto remains in the adoption cycle. Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital asset manager, agrees that institutional investors now generally appreciate that digital assets are here to stay, with investors increasingly attracted to the finite quality of assets like bitcoin—which is verifiably scarce—as a way to hedge against inflation and currency debasement, and to diversify their portfolios in the pursuit of higher risk-adjusted returns. Even though crypto assets have behaved as anything but a diversifier over the past year—selling off more than traditional assets as the COVID-19 pandemic set in—he says that their faster and stronger rebound in 2020 only reassured investors about their resiliency as an asset class.