“I don’t think it breaks $9,000 this year,” ventured former hedge fund chief and founder of Galaxy Digital, Mike Novogratz, about bitcoin’s price during a talk he delivered at the Finance Disrupted event organized by The Economist in Manhattan.. The Wall Street heavyweight’s new position is an informed about-face from his previous “$40,000  by year end” prediction.

Novogratz added that bitcoin would likely break beyond $10,000 around the second quarter of 2019, and went on to finger corporations operating in the industry needing to sell-off digital assets to fund their burn rate as a key reason the market was experiencing a bear market. “Companies who aren’t making anywhere near the revenue they did during last year’s crypto boom sold to meet obligations such as payroll”.

Novogratz, who has cryptocurrency-interests in his digital assets-focused merchant bank endeavor, Galaxy Digital. remains bullish about cryptocurrency prices bouncing back. He is betting on institutional money finally making a dramatic entrance in 2019, whereupon the “fear of missing out,” that pervaded as bitcoin neared $20,000 last year” reports CNBC.

Institutional Influx

The inflow of investment coming from institutional investors developing cryptocurrency based financial products geared at offering mass users indirect exposure to the digital assets market will likely set cryptocurrency prices on an upward trajectory.

The former Goldman Sachs macro trader’s predictrionmay not be too far off the mark if one takes into consideration the number of financial heavyweights globally, who are gearing up to enter the realm of cryptocurrencies and the fact that he successfully predicted a bottom in bitcoins price last month.

Bitcoin has dropped some 53 percent from last year’s near $20,000 highs to about $6,567.56 at the time of writing, and has dragged the digital assets market from an almost trillion dollar market capitalization last year to around two billion dollars for the better part of 2018.