Market Analysts Naeem Aslam and Ian Balina Debate Coronavirus and Crypto

Published at: Feb. 29, 2020

In today’s crypto market discussion, Cointelegraph is joined by crypto analyst Naeem Aslam, and the CEO of Tokenmetrics Ian Balina to discuss the impact of the coronavirus on the cryptocurrency markets. 

Will the economic impacts of the coronavirus leave people flocking to cryptocurrencies as a safe haven?

Naeem Aslam is skeptical of Bitcoin’s purported ‘safe haven’ status, emphasizing that Bitcoin is a haven from central bank monetary policy, and not infectious diseases:

“I think when we talk about Bitcoin as a safe haven asset, we're really talking about in relation to central banks and their monetary policies. Right now, we don't have that fear in the market right now. The fear in the market is about influence of coronavirus [...] when we have something going wrong with the monetary policy, then, yes, we could see the momentum coming in because obviously Bitcoin the entire fundamentals base against the traditional monetary policy that the central banks are running.”

Ian Balina rejected the suggestion that crypto and coronavirus are correlated, stating: 

“We personally don't invest or trade on specific events [...] the coronavirus has not shown to be correlated analysis with Bitcoin or crypto in general. So because Bitcoin is a global asset class with numerous global events happening in tandem and it's very hard to pinpoint one particular event as being the catalyst, I think perhaps indirectly the equities markets having a huge selloff where over 1.7 trillion dollars was lost in a few days and I think crypto could be really just playing off of that.”

The pair also share their long-term outlooks for the crypto markets, the probable impact of the upcoming halving, and whether Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin by market cap in the next ten years. Don’t miss it!

Tags
Ethereum
Cryptocurrencies
Halving
Coronavirus
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