Sonny Singh, the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of blockchain payment processor BitPay, gave his thoughts on Bitcoin in an interview on Wednesday (21 November 2018) on Bloomberg TV with anchor Emily Chang.
Singh started by explaining that we shouldn’t be so focused on day-to-day price movements of Bitcoin, and that we won’t see any major changes to the Bitcoin price until the major institutional players such as Fidelity and BlackRock are actively participating in the crypto space:
“I would say… Bitcoin has… mainstream adoption around the world. It's got great brand recognition. And again, we shouldn't look at the price so much because it's really what's happening behind the scenes. I don't really think you're going to see any price movements up or down, as I said, for a long time until there is really some new direction. And that would mean things like Fidelity launching their product next year or Bakkt launching their product or Square launching a product or BlackRock launching an ETF.”
Chang then asked Singh to listen to an audio clip featuring Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, calling Bitcoin a “fraud” in September 2017. She wanted to know if Singh felt that Dimon has been vindicated given what has happened to the price of Bitcoin in 2018. Singh replied:
“I completely disagree with him on the fraud comment… Price can go up and down, and obviously anything that can go up that fast will obviously come down… And I would imagine next year when Jamie Dimon sees Fidelity launching products, that his bank will launch a product too… When you are seeing companies moving into the Bitcoin space during the ICOs, [such as] Silvergate [Bank] today announce an ICO… a lot of Bitcoin miners or maybe Coinbase doing an ICO next year… Jamie Dimon will probably try to get Coinbase's business… So, I think he'll be changing that tune pretty soon next year… It might be Q1 [or] Q2 because these big companies take a long time to launch their products.”
Next, Chang asked Singh if we should have different expectations for the altcoins. He answered:
“I think there's a big night and day difference between Bitcoin and everything else. Bitcoin is the 800 pound gorilla, that's the one that has the mass network effect, that's the one that the traditional financial incumbents are building products around. The other ones, I don't know what's going to happen to them… I think it's safe to say the ICO market is pretty much dead right now, and maybe a couple will survive, I'm not sure… But none of them are going to survive unless Bitcoin survives first. So, that's the one everyone is focus on.”
Singh was also asked for his 2019 predictions for the crypto space:
“I would think next year we'll see maybe an ETF launched by a BlackRock-type company… you're going to see traditional incumbents fight the Bitpays and the Coinbases of the world. So, it should be an exciting time actually.”
Lastly, Singh was asked to give his price target for Bitcoin for next year:
“I would say if these traditional incumbents launch their products, you would see the price maybe around $15,000, possibly even $20,000 by the end of next year.”
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