Fundstrat Global Advisors’ Tom Lee is on a world tour. No, he isn’t pumping out pop songs or signing books. The Wall Street analyst is touting the good word of Bitcoin, and why the cryptocurrency market is ready to be catapulted into its next bull run, expected to be the biggest yet.
Most recently, Lee, who became prominent in the digital asset space after becoming the poster child for Bitcoin optimism in 2017, appeared on Yahoo Finance to elaborate on why BTC is and will do so well. This is the umpteenth time he has made a Bitcoin-related appearance on mainstream media in the past six weeks.
Behind The Recent Bitcoin Boom
During a Monday segment of “On The Move”, Lee sat down, clad in his navy-blue suit, to try and reason why Bitcoin has been outperforming traditional assets as of late. He suggests that much of the recent move has a lot to do with uncertainty on the geopolitical and macroeconomic stage, which has recently been slammed by the ongoing U.S.-China trade war, Brexit, and the financial collapses of Venezuela, Argentina, and other nations.
The Fundstrat co-founder notes that Bitcoin is acting much like “digital gold”, giving investors a chance to hedge their bets against crisis with a revolutionary asset that is digital through scarce.
He isn’t the first to have suggested that the recently geopolitical trends have been a tailwind for Bitcoin and its ilk. A report from the South China Morning Post recently pointed out that after Donald Trump, the president of the U.S., announced tariff changes on Chinese imports, BTC began to rally.
Simultaneously, the yuan purportedly fell to its lowest level in six months, as China looked to move against Trump. Garrick Hileman of Blockchain.com told the outlet that the Yuan has traded inversely to Bitcoin in the past.
And most recently, Barry Silbert, the chief executive of industry conglomerate Digital Currency Group, told Fortune’s “Balancing The Ledger” that in this trade war, Bitcoin is acting as a “non-correlated asset”.
He looks to Brexit news correlating with movements in the BTC market to further illustrate his point that this move may have much to do with geopolitical and macroeconomic tensions.
Lee’s points, along with those made by his colleagues, can be contrasted to those made by Erik Voorhees, the chief executive of ShapeShift. Last week, we reported that Voorhees suggested to Bloomberg TV that the recent move is a result of investors across the board coming to the conclusion that the bottom is finally in, and have begun to scale into the market as a unit.
Why Is Crypto Winter Over?
Let’s say that the geopolitical strains die down, does that mean BTC will return lower again?
According to Lee, likely not. In fact, he asserted that by many measures, “crypto winter” is over, no questions asked. In a recent Twitter post, the Fundstrat representative gave 13 reasons why the bear market is over.
Some of these important reasons include the fact that Bitcoin quickly returned to $8,000 after the $1,700 dump on Bitstamp; the Bitcoin Misery Index passing above 89, a sign only seen in bull markets; a grow in on-chain activity and volumes, which historically have preceded rallies; and the fact that Bitcoin’s chart recently saw a bullish “golden cross” pattern” while BTC moved above its 200-day moving average in spectacular fashion.
After a disturbing pullback to ~$6,200, #Bitcoin back >$8,000 further cementing positive trend intact.
As we said a few weeks ago, Consensus 2019 @coindesk was to prove whether crypto winter is over…
…confirmed pic.twitter.com/M8ni4g2YvX
— Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FSInsight.com (@fundstrat) May 19, 2019
And most recently, Lee noted that the fact that Bitcoin futures contracts on BitMEX for June and September have begun to trade well above spot prices is the fourteenth sign that winter is over. And from here, the analyst expects for BTC to post new all-time highs by 2020.
