Bitcoin bull Mike Novogratz has shelved plans to launch a cryptocurrency fund, claiming that its price could drop as low as $8,000.
In a report from Bloomberg, the former Fortress hedge fund manager said in a phone interview that:
We didn’t like market conditions and we wanted to re-evaluate what we’re doing. I look pretty smart pressing the pause button right now.
Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Assets Fund was due to launch on the 15th December. However, he informed potential clients several days beforehand that there were several obstacles in place that prevented him from going ahead with the launch. These included buying bitcoin or ether for clients, while simultaneously selling crypto investments in his personal account, Bloomberg reports.
The former Fortress manager added:
I didn’t want to have to deal with the schizophrenic emotional side of it. There are just so many conflicts in that business. It was going to be more complicated than I wanted.
In the past Novogratz has called the digital currency as the ‘biggest bubble in our lifetimes.’ However, while he thinks the price of bitcoin will fall to $8,000, he doesn’t believe that a bubble is necessarily a bad thing. Back in September, he said:
Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live,” he said. “The railroad bubble. Railroads really fundamentally changed the way we lived. The internet bubble changed the way we live. When I look forward five, 10 years, the possibilities really get your animal spirits going.
He clearly still believes in the digital currency. Earlier this year he made the price projection that bitcoin would reach $40,000 by the end of 2018.
The price of the cryptocurrency recently saw its biggest drop by as much as 42 percent in four days since 2013, falling to $10,776. However, at the time of publishing bitcoin appears to be steadily recovering its price gains. It is currently trading at over $15,500, according to CoinMarketCap, pushing its market value to $260.1 billion.