(Bloomberg) -- Ark Investment Management analyst Yassine Elmandjra is standing by his firm’s prediction that Bitcoin’s price will shoot past the million-dollar mark, despite this year’s massive sell-off in the digital currency.
Cathie Wood, the fund manager behind Ark’s flagship innovation-themed ETFs, forecast earlier this year that the world’s largest cryptocurrency would top $1 million per coin by 2030. Yet, coin holders and miners have been selling off the token en masse in 2022 as the Federal Reserve continues to aggressively tighten monetary policy, driving investors away from riskier asset classes, such as crypto.
The bellwether virtual currency is down nearly 60% to around $19,000 this year, according to Bloomberg data.
Yet, Ark crypto analyst Elmandjra said that there is still a sizable opportunity to be found in Bitcoin, in an interview with Bloomberg TV Tuesday, reiterating his firm’s view of each coin exceeding $1 million in the coming years.
“When we look at Bitcoin’s potential, we segment it across several use cases -- everything from it competing as a digital store of value, to a settlement network, to an insurance policy against arbitrary asset seizure,” he explained. “When you stack every use case one on top of another, you come to about a 28 trillion-dollar opportunity, which translates to more than a million dollars per Bitcoin.”
Even so, the firm gave up its place as the third-largest shareholder of US-based crypto platform Coinbase Global Inc. over the summer, dumping some its holdings amid a US Securities and Exchange Commission probe. Three Ark Investment Management LLC funds sold over 1.41 million shares toward the end of July, worth $75 million at the time.
Ark’s $7.1 billion Innovation ETF (ticker ARKK) has not had a favorable year, lingering near its lowest closing level since March 2020 on Tuesday. The fund has plunged 62% in 2022 as global risk sentiment sours, compared to a 24% fall in the S&P 500.
Elmandjra’s long-term view of Bitcoin remains bullish, nevertheless.
“When you look at Bitcoin as a strategic asset, non-sovereign, censorship-resistant money, competing against central banks and fiat currencies, Bitcoin supply being capped at 21 million, I think there is an arms race -- especially as we shift from the digital to the physical world -- to be an asset independent of the traditional financial systems and traditional asset classes,” he said in the TV interview.
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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