BlockFi exec explains institutional outlook on altcoins

Could institutional investors begin expanding into altcoin purchases? BlockFi’s vice-president for Europe and Asia, David Olsson, mentioned liquidity as a component of consideration.

Some digital assets on the market, including newer ones, may see high volumes at times. “The question is, how long can that be sustained,” Olsson explained during a CfC St. Moritz conference segment on Wednesday, adding:

“Chainlink (LINK) is one that has held up decent volume over time, but a lot of them tend to, you know, be kind of the next greatest thing, and then fizzle out and volume disappears.”

Ethereum (ETH) sits right below Bitcoin with a market cap of roughly $152 billion. Tether (USDT) is in third at approximately $24 billion, and Polkadot (DOT) in fourth with about $15 billion. At 100th on the list, Lisk (LSK) holds a market cap of about $186 million. Thousands of other crypto assets have market caps which descend from there.

Olsson said of prospective altcoins:

“So I think that, from our trading desk perspective, we really want to see kind of one year trading history where the market cap is sort of nearish $1 billion and that it’s at least trading sort of $100 million a day in volume and that the sources of liquidity are reliable in terms of the exchanges where they’re trading.”

The crypto industry still has its skeptics, however, including billionaire Mark Cuban, who recently compared crypto assets to the dot-com bubble of the late 90s and early 00s.