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The American retail army became famous in the battle of GameStock to squeeze Wall Street institutions, leading mainstream media "Forbes" and "CNBC" to successively report that the battlefield may be transferred to the cryptocurrency industry, and Bitcoin may become the next target of retail investors.
"CNBC" first pointed out that Satoshi Nakamoto founded Bitcoin because he was dissatisfied with the operation of the current financial system, and this idea is likely to attract the villagers of Wallstreetbets. On the other hand, Robinhood, which restricted retail stock trading last week, also restricted the "instant purchase of cryptocurrency". Retail investors can only rely on existing funds in their accounts for trading. Robinhood's centralized platform management policy also makes some crypto communities believe that this will hopefully promote the expansion of the adoption of decentralized financial products.
Bitcoin fundamentals are strong, different from GME
Although both GameStop stocks and Bitcoin have recently emerged as two major forces of retail institutions, the fundamentals of the two are significantly different. GameStop is a physical game retail business that has been facing a long-term business crisis. ) And large-scale closure of branches; on the contrary, Bitcoin tells a more promising story.
Unlike GameStop, although hedge funds continue to increase their short positions in Bitcoin futures, many analysts are still optimistic about the future of Bitcoin. Earlier this month, JP Morgan Chase analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou predicted earlier this month, The price of Bitcoin is expected to rise to US$146,000 by the end of the year; Citibank (Citi FX) analysts believe that the potential high of Bitcoin at the end of this year is US$318,000.
BTC shorts have grown 218% in the past six months
However, as the price of Bitcoin keeps hitting new highs, the layout of hedge funds with short Bitcoins has become more and more obvious. According to The Block data, short positions in Bitcoin futures have skyrocketed since September last year and reached a new high of US$1.64 billion on January 19th. Currently, there are still more than US$1.3 billion, a growth rate of 218%.
"Short" means that traders and hedge funds bet that the price of Bitcoin will fall. These short positions have increased since the second half of last year. At the same time, retail investors believe that Bitcoin currently has room for upside, so there are still a large number of retail investors entering Buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the market. "CNBC" believes that the opposition between Wall Street institutions and retail investors is also happening in the cryptocurrency industry.
Source: Bityard (https://support.bityard.com/hc/en-us/articles/900004348766-CNBC-also-predicted-Bitcoin-may-be-the-next-GameStop-staged-a-battle-between-retail-investors-and-Wall-Street)