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The crypto market’s late 2017 rally has created massive wealth for investors who were able to buy Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and other digital currencies earlier. This wealth creation process has repeated in the current rally which saw the prices of most cryptos soar to new all-time highs.
Bitcoin, for instance, set a new record when it traded above $64,000 before retreating to $63,136 at the time of writing based on Coinmarketcap data. A crypto expert said that the crypto market rally has created the opportunity for a different kind of investor to create wealth.
“Here’s what’s great about it for me: Bitcoin has created a lot of wealth for people who weren’t part of the traditional financial system, weren’t money managers,” CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” CoinShares is a digital asset investment company based headquartered in London.
She also predicted that the Coinbase IPO on Wednesday will create more millionaires as the event pushed the prices of most cryptocurrencies upwards. “The Coinbase IPO is going to mint hundreds if not thousands of multi-millionaires and billionaires who all love crypto and are probably going to take some of their listing proceeds and continue to invest in the crypto ecosystem,” Demirors added.
Indeed, crypto prices soared with Coinbase’s Nasdaq listing. Aside from Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) also set a new record of $2,476 on Thursday based on Coinmarketcap data. Ether is the second-largest crypto by market cap and is the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain.
“So there’s really this nice recursive effect where this industry isn’t just about the asset,” she said. “It’s now really about the companies, which we’ve been investing in for almost a decade now.”
Another expert in the crypto industry said that Coinbase’s direct listing is just the first of many upcoming exciting developments in the space. “The crypto story doesn’t end with Coinbase going public,” Soona Amhaz, a general partner of crypto venture firm Volt Capital, said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “This is very much a stake in the ground for crypto companies being built now. We’re going to see more crypto companies that are building to help on-ramp the next 100 million users into crypto and be exposed to this new financial paradigm.”
