(Kitco News) – In the wake of Bitcoin’s sudden break above $100,000 on Wednesday evening, industry experts and market insiders are scrambling to determine whether this represents a price peak – at least for this market cycle – or if this is a mere steppingstone for the number-one cryptocurrency as it continues its meteoric rise.
One expert who holds the latter view is Alessio Quaglini, CEO and Co-founder of Hex Trust, who said in the hours after BTC first breached 100k that while the institutional phase has only just begun, the next phase will be the most significant: When sovereign nations begin to compete for their share of Bitcoin.
Speaking to CNBC Hong Kong in the early hours of Thursday morning, Quaglini was asked what changes he sees for the digital assets industry under the incoming Trump administration.
“On the regulatory side, until now in the U.S. we've seen a clear stance of rejection of digital currencies and companies operating in the space, especially financial institutions,” he said. “The SEC has put in place actions of enforcement against most of the companies in the U.S., and even outside of the U.S. What I would expect with Trump 2.0, and with [SEC nominee] Paul Atkins, is a critical shift from an era of SEC enforcement to an era of collaboration of U.S. regulators with the main players in the space.”
“This is going to be critical for this institutional adoption phase, if the U.S. really wants businesses to move back to the U.S. and actually the U.S. to become one of the leading markets for digital assets,” he added.
Asked what key indications market participants should be watching to determine Bitcoin’s overall direction going forward, Quaglini emphasized that institutional adoption, while extremely significant, is not the final stage for King Crypto.
“I think it's mainly a matter of cycles,” he said. “We went from the initial, I would say, ‘pioneer’ cycle, when we had the tech developers, etc entering the digital asset space, then we had the retail speculative phase. Now we are just at the beginning of the institutional phase, and we haven't even seen a lot of distribution of the main actors in the institutional space to the broad public for Bitcoin.”
“But I think we will really need to see when the next, more important phase will start, which is the sovereign phase, when we see nations racing to acquire and purchase Bitcoin,” Quaglini said. “When this happens, there's going to be 195 countries competing for a very tight supply of Bitcoin.”
“It's going to be a gold rush,” he said. “It's going to be a fierce competition for nations to get their share of bitcoins.”
After hitting its latest all-time high of $104,000 just after 3 am EST, Bitcoin has encountered firm resistance around the $103,650 level. It has since pulled back below 100k, last trading at $99,480.00 for a gain of 0.74% on the 24-hour chart.
