The bitcoin price is trading for well over $30,000 at the time of writing, though to be fair, it has experienced one of the biggest dips in recent months, having fallen from a recent $40,000 high. With this latest dip of around $7,000, the currency is being called into question by many industry analysts, including Scott Minerd, the chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners.
Scott Minerd Is Bearish On BTC
In a recent interview with CNBC, Minerd commented that he wouldn’t be surprised if the present bull run behind bitcoin was suddenly over and done with, and that the world’s number one digital currency by market cap fell all the way back to $20,000 per unit, ultimately losing nearly half its present value.
He states:
When we have a doubling of a price of an asset over the course of a month, we are prone to have a setback. We’re likely to see a full retracement back toward the $20,000 level.
It’s interesting to see such bearish mentality coming from a member of Guggenheim Partners, a company that recently placed quite a bit of money into bitcoin. Following the institutional trends set by the likes of MicroStrategy, Square and Stone Ridge, Guggenheim placed a healthy portion of its Macro Opportunities Fund – worth more than $5 billion at the end of November – into the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, allowing it to invest in the digital currency without experiencing all the risks associated with it.
While the company initially took a safe route towards getting involved in the crypto space, it took that route nonetheless, and placed a hefty portion of its funds into the asset, which at that time was trading in the high $20,000 range.
In a statement, executives of Guggenheim claimed at that time:
The Guggenheim Macro Opportunities Fund may seek investment exposure to bitcoin indirectly through investing up to ten percent of its net asset value in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.
In early January, Minerd commented that he could see bitcoin reaching a whopping $400,000 per unit sometime in the coming future, claiming that the asset was rare enough and that its value was equivalent to gold’s. His latest words, however, suggest nothing but gloom and doom awaits the world’s primary cryptocurrency, and it’s unclear if Guggenheim is now planning to step away from bitcoin activity given that they clearly think the asset is going to fall in the coming months.
Nothing But Dips as of Late
Bitcoin initially peaked in price on January 8, reaching (briefly) beyond the $41,000 mark. At the time of writing, however, the currency has fallen to just over $33,000, which is still a bit of an improvement over the $31,000 it saw just 48 hours ago.
Either way, the asset’s most recent dips have caused several industry analysts to pause and panic about which direction BTC could potentially move in the next few weeks.