Is Bitcoin Digital Gold? Genesis CEO Moro Answers

By Rishma Banerjee

Bitcoin has over the years gained gradual popularity and has been called everything from a money launder’s tool to the first ever truly global currency.

CNBC’s post-market talk show, hosted by Melissa Lee invites Wall Street employees to discuss stories and developments related to business, the stock market and the sectors of finance and economy. After a week-long hiatus from talking about crypto assets, the show finally invited Michael Moro the CEO of Genesis Global Trading onto the Fast Money panel.  The burning question as asked by Lee was- is Bitcoin digital gold?

Moro, in response, pointed out the most significant advantage of bitcoins as being its apparent non-correlation with the capital market. Bitcoin and its trading price are rarely influenced by the price action in global stock markets, and this characteristic is quite similar to what is exhibited by the value of physical gold. Moro, however, noted that whether Bitcoin can genuinely be considered as a legitimate form of digital gold is debatable. He said.

“Whether Bitcoin is ultimately a digital form of gold, I think that question is still very much an open-ended question. I do think that investors believe that it is digital gold and use that as a case to buy the asset, but it needs to prove itself as digital gold.”

Brian Kelly, Founder & CEO of BKCM LLC, who was also on the panel questioned Moro about Genesis’s in-house digital asset lending platform, to which Moro said that out of the 130 million USD issued as an active loan, by their firm, only one-third was being used actively to short the market. This he believed was an indication that the short sellers weren’t responsible for the deflation of the crypto bubble which took place in the late 2017s. However, this according to him was due to the “natural holders” who were liquidating their crypto altogether.

Moro’s initial stance had been that BTC would trade at more than 10,000 USD. On that issue he said,

“The last time I was on this show, I said that we were more likely to see $10,000 in Bitcoin then $5,000. So far, I’m not wrong. So I am still sticking by that prediction. Because of what we are seeing in the ebbs and flows on the loans side [of our business] I have that confidence that I don’t think we will see $5,000 flat. [However,] timing wise, I am not too sure when this is going to happen.”