John D’Agostino, the Head of Strategy at Coinbase Institutional, appeared in CNBC’s Squawk Box show to discuss Bitcoin and institutions buying it recently.
VC investor Anthony Pompliano published a post about that on X. Pompliano was excited about what D’Agostino said about large institutional players accumulating Bitcoin. He commented that this “would have been unfathomable just 2-3 years ago.”
Bitcoin price jumps above $94,000
The host, Andrew Sorkin, asked the Coinbase top executive about what is driving Bitcoin’s current growth. On Wednesday, BTC reached a local daily high of $94,510 after soaring 3.67% over the previous 24 hours and having added 6.68% over the two previous days, soaring from $88,570.
Commenting on the factors that are currently driving the Bitcoin price upwards, D’Agostino first talked about de/coupling of Bitcoin and the stock market. He referred to it as a negative and positive correlation of BTC and stocks. A negative one happens when the market is panicking, the executive said, and a positive one when the market is blooming. Nobody minds a positive correlation, he stated.
As for the current drivers of Bitcoin growth, D’Agostino made it clear that the situation they are looking at is a short-term one and everything may change next month, for instance. Besides, he said that a similar set of tailwinds in another period of time could trigger a different reaction from Bitcoin than it is showing now. And that also implies to gold and any other asset in the market.
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“Bitcoin mirrors characteristics of gold,” traders believe
Currently, financial institutions believe that due to the tariffs, global trade is likely to be strictly limited and face a massive decline. And much of this trade is denominated in US dollars. Therefore, the demand for dollars is going to plunge. D’Agostino referred to this as “de-dollarization.”
Those financial institutions, like sovereign wealth funds, large insurance pools, etc, have been buying Bitcoin and then selling it for fiat when they need it. But if they believe that the dollar is going to weaken, when stop converting BTC to fiat and then they just keep buying Bitcoin to hold it.
D’Agostino also mentioned that many traders now start believing that Bitcoin is one of the few assets that mirrors the characteristics of gold and start buying it when markets get unstable.
