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- Bitcoin may have to drop to $25,000 before investors really start to buy the dip, Amber Group’s CEO said.
- Michael Wu said institutions are still interested in crypto, but are wondering where the bottom is.
- Bitcoin has fallen dramatically from its April record high, thanks in part to a Chinese crackdown.
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Bitcoin may have to fall as low as $25,000 before major investors start snapping up bitcoin in large quantities again, the chief executive of $1 billion crypto lender Amber Group has said.
Michael Wu told Insider in an interview this week he thought bitcoin has to fall further before institutions such as hedge funds are attracted to the asset again. He said he thought that level was probably between $25,000 and $30,000.
Bitcoin fell 5.5% on Thursday to $32,640. That was well below April’s record high of close to $65,000.
“If we really have a flush down to, say, $25,000, or even briefly below that, I think there’s tremendous interest waiting to buy very cheaply at those levels for long term entry,” Wu said.
Bitcoin has tumbled since April, with selling driven by Elon Musk’s U-turn on accepting the token as payment for Tesla cars and a crackdown on crypto mining and transactions in China.
The breakneck rally in the first few months of the year was in large part driven by interest from big institutions like hedge funds and banks, analysts have said.
According to JPMorgan’s crypto expert Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, institutional interest has all but dried up in recent months. He told Insider in June: “There is no evidence here of a buying-the-dip mentality.”
Wu, whose Amber Group recently gained the backing of major hedge funds and a $1 billion valuation, said institutions are not rushing into the crypto space “like they were doing last year, or the beginning of this year.”
But he said he still has plenty of conversations with institutional investors that are interested.
“I think most of them are still very confident and optimistic about the long term outlook of crypto assets. But in the near term, they are not sure [if we are] at the bottom or near the bottom,” he said.
