'The Worst Is Over' for Bitcoin, Hashdex CIO Predicts

Bitcoin dipped under $26,000 earlier this morning amid generally bearish sentiment among crypto traders and the lack of new catalysts to rally markets. Joining us now to discuss the crypto markets is hashtag Cio Samir Age. Welcome to the show. Samir. Hi Jennifer. Good morning. Good morning. Well, let's talk about these markets. It feels like no matter what happens, they are not budging in one direction or the other. What is going on? Yeah, we've seen like a historically low volatility in the markets recently. And I think mostly because there's so many uh events that the traders, the market participants are waiting to unfold that this is creating like a expectation and people are not really looking into taking directional place until you know, like we have more regulatory clarity. Um There's more news around adoption in crypto uh and also on the macro landscape, right? So we're leaving a very uncertain period around like how the fed is going to handle uh inflation. So I think traders are waiting to see how that that's going to play out until they place bigger bats. All right, what's your short term? Look on Bitcoin. Given what you just said, yeah, I think on the short term, like I wrote about this before, I believe the worst is over, right? So we are in a recovery phase in terms of these cycles we see in crypto. Uh So we're really expecting after this period of low volatility, uh the volatility may go up, but we, we probably going to see Bitcoin trading between 55,000 for a few weeks until there are new catalysts like uh like unfolding around like the gray scale lawsuit, the Bitcoin ETF narrative. And also what happens in the macro environment and geopolitical tensions, right? So uh we're probably going to see Bitcoin uh trading in a range for for a few weeks. Uh but we're still very optimistic about the long term. So we always like to zoom out and look at the long term in the long term. We're seeing 22, basically two big trends. There are um growing together the secular trend around crypto uh with like growth of the major networks, crypto adoption going up. Um like Bitcoin value proposition being reassured by the US banking crisis and the largest financial institutions coming to crypto, right, coming to Bitcoin and coming to crypto. So those are secular trends that are going to unfold over the next 5 to 10 years. And in the short term, we're seeing cyclical trends, right? So worse it's over. But like uh the US will continue monetizing its data, we have the Bitcoin housing coming right around the corner in a few months. Uh So we're very optimistic about like uh Bitcoin and crypto as a whole. Uh If you look at longer horizons of, I would say 12 to 18 months in the short term. It's really like it, it's hard to know where the price is going, but we expect it to trade range bound. You mentioned that weak macro environment, you mentioned the potential of rising interest rates. We've talked a little bit about what that means for Bitcoin. What do you think that means for the rest of the crypto markets? It's not only about Bitcoin, we have Ether, we have alt coins. Do you just expect those to follow suit? Yeah, I think Bitcoin and the other crypto assets are very different, right? So um I would say Bitcoin uh has a more like a store of value play. So uh like as we see more inflation and as we see more macroeconomic problems that may be good for Bitcoin's adoptions like we saw in the banking crisis, right? There was a big surprise on the banking prices, Bitcoin going up while all the other crypto were going down. Uh So on the macro scenario, I think if things are are are going in a more uncertain way or a more dangerous way for, for, for like geopolitically that can be positive for Bitcoin, but it's probably going to be negative for the other crypto assets. If we see interest rates going down, that's going to be very positive for, for crypto assets as a whole interest rates going up. That that would be negative for other crypto assets but may be positive uh for Bitcoin. So I'll say like, uh um Bitcoin is its own thing. It's very different from the other crypto assets. All right, I want to take a look at this chart. Now, HASHD tracks insights on indices relevant to the crypto market, the NASDAQ crypto index which has developed in which was developed, sorry, in partnership with hashd experienced a 6.3% quarterly increase. Talk to me about the significance here. Yeah. So what we saw like in, we look at the next last quarter is um basically uh um like um an environment with less news around like uh Macro and crypto specifically, we had the gray scale uh lawsuit. Uh moving on, we had the XRP judge uh uh like uh that, that gave a lot of like clarity for other crypto assets. So, uh we see like uh when you look at the chart here, uh uh A I is still a hot topic and, and it's moving the NASDAQ 100 up. So we've seen like a few names um that are still over performing the overall market. And along those names, we've seen Crypto, uh we've seen Bitcoin and more recently, we saw other assets uh especially because the regulatory uh I would say environment in the US is still uncertain but it's moving in a positive way for crypto. You mentioned A I there is a key market driver. Now, you may not have an answer for this. But um are you, are you following the A I tokens? Are you following what's going on with A I tokens? Given the more macro A I news that um we're seeing. Yeah, as I say, this is mostly a narrative, right? So we really look, we need to look into like a case by case basis. I think it's still too soon uh to, to really understand the implications of A I to crypto. What I can say is that uh um crypto or A I is going to benefit from an open Blockchain, right? As a general long term trend, it makes sense for A I applications for autonomous applications running on the internet to use the Blockchain to exchange value and ex change uh transactions uh using the Blockchain instead of using, you know, like a a visa or a swift network. So I would say uh A I adoption is very positive for crypto, but it's still too soon to, you know, place a specific bets on A I tokens. All right, Samir, we are going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining me this morning. Thank you so much. That was hashtag Cio Samir Kabash.