$BTC continues to follow pattern of previous boom-bust cycles: Fidelity exec

As Bitcoin resumed its uptrend after a brief pause, the director of global macro at Fidelity Investments, Jurrien Timmer, took to talking about the top coin on X (previously Twitter).

In doing so, he revisited his thesis from late 2020. The executive thinks of $BTC as exponential gold. “In my view, Bitcoin is a commodity currency that aspires to be a store of value and a hedge against monetary debasement”, said Timmer, expanding on it.

According to him, gold is too deflationary and clunky to be used as a medium of exchange. This is why investors own it primarily as a store of value.

The same is also one of the many reasons why Bitcoin is often compared to gold. He believes that the top cryptocurrency has the potential to perform at least as well as gold has in the past under certain economic conditions.

He then focused on how the traditional store of value tends to historically shine and gain market share relative to GDP during structural regimes in which inflation runs hot, real rates gets negative, and/or money supply growth becomes excessive. Here, some notable examples are the ones occurring in the 1970s and the 2000s.

Back in 2021, Timmer had predicted Bitcoin to reach $100k by 2023. At the time of press, the coin was trading way below this price level as it changed hands for $34,570 on its charts.

However, it has accumulated much bullish pressure in the past few weeks, mostly triggered by the potential approval of the highly-anticipated spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) by the Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC) in the US.

Recently, whales, who are the ones that have a wallet balance of over 1,000 $BTC, were observed acquiring more than 30,000 $BTC in just five days. This was worth nearly $1 billion as of press time. The latest move depicted a substantial appetite for the coin among these major players in the market.

Timmer had expressed similar bullish sentiments for the coin even last year when he called Bitcoin “an aspiring store of value in a world of ongoing financial repression”. He has been with Fidelity since 1995, when he joined the team as a technical research analyst.

Fidelity Investments is a financial services corporation that operates as a brokerage firm, providing fund distribution and investment advice, retirement services, index funds, wealth management, securities execution and clearance, amongst many other things. It also has a crypto unit named Fidelity Digital Assets that offers Bitcoin and Ether custody and trading services.

The company also reigns as the world’s third largest fund manager. It had first applied for a spot Bitcoin ETF in 2021. Recently, in October, it amended a few things in its application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The update detailed how the asset management company plans to secure customer Bitcoin, addressing a few of the SEC’s concerns. It also outlined the various risks involved due to the uncertain regulatory framework surrounding cryptocurrencies.

Tagged ‘Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust’, Fidelity’s updated spot Bitcoin ETF filing took into consideration the specific issues that the SEC had when it initially rejected the application.

If approved, this ETF will allow investors to trade shares that represent the value of Bitcoin without the necessity of owning or securing the digital asset themselves, offering a more secure path for institutional investors to enter the volatile cryptocurrency market.