Investor demand for all things crypto surged amid Coinbase Global Inc.’s public debut on Wednesday. Joining Jackie Cameron of BizNews, to discuss the direct listing of the biggest US crypto exchange and whether forecasts that Bitcoin is heading towards $100,000 (about R1.5m) are likely to be accurate, is Sean Sanders who heads up cryptocurrency business Revix in South Africa. For a primer on cryptocurrency trading, you can put your questions directly to Sean at the BizNews Finance Friday webinar on 23 April. Contact [email protected] for details.
Sean Sanders on the cryptocurency market:
It’s crazy. To say the last 12 months has been exciting in the world of crypto would be a complete understatement. We’ve seen this market going from a few hundred billion dollars to now $1.2trn. That’s about $200bn more than Apple. Six months ago, I think a lot of people would have said this would happen, certainly in the crypto space, it just wouldn’t happen this quickly.
I guess one domino fell and that resulted in a whole other set of dominoes falling. That was one big institutional investor entering the space. That led to a whole bunch of other institutional investors entering the space – and that was essentially Tesla with Elon Musk – he was one of the early corporate pioneers to enter the world of crypto, deciding to take some Bitcoin and put that on his balance sheet.
It has then resulted in a whole host of other CEOs – of big multinational corporates – to enter the market and start buying Bitcoin. Fund managers are coming into the space. All of a sudden, Bitcoin isn’t this weird internet money. It’s actually a challenger to gold and people are actually investigating ethereum.
On Ethereum:
Ethereum is the second biggest cryptocurrency [and] very different to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is meant to be more like digital money or like gold. Whereas ethereum is, sort of, looking to become a decentralised computer, which in simplistic terms really means sort of just like the mobile app – the mobile operating system that you have that allows other applications to be built on top of it – ethereum is looking to do that, just with the Blockchain being its backbone. You’ve got a whole host of competitors that are looking to challenge ethereum’s dominance.
On Revix:
 We are for your everyday investor. We allow your grandmother, you, anyone else to get exposure to crypto. Our job is to make crypto investing really easy, secure and accessible. You can buy Bitcoin, you can buy ethereum through our platform. What we really do that makes us unique, is that we offer these bundles. Bundles are like baskets of cryptocurrency, very similar to a JSE Top 40, NASDAQ 100 or S&P 500, but for cryptocurrency.
What this means is that you can buy our top 10 bundle, which gives you exposure to the top 10 crypto currencies, all equally weighted. Our big narrative with our bundles is to say you shouldn’t be trying to pick which are going to be the big success stories in the crypto space. It’s like the early stages of the Internet. You had all these dotcom companies come about that went extinct. But the likes of Amazon [and] Microsoft really became big and they made their investors a lot of money.
What we’re trying to say is don’t try to guess in this space. Rather try owning a diversified basket. As the market grows – as it has done – that’s the exposure that you get and you get to participate in the overall growth. It’s also slightly different. Buying a bundle is a more prudent way to invest. It is ultimately lowering your risk in a very risky asset class. We think that’s a smarter way to get exposure to the crypto space.
Read more:
- Bitcoin nears ‘all-time high’ ahead of largest US cryptocurrency exchange listing
- Monetary Authority of Singapore warns against cryptocurrency as Bitcoin gains traction
- Bitcoin halving, mining and risk mitigation explained
