Bitcoin Is Here to Stay

Bitcoin holders who are panicking about its wild recent price swings should wake up and smell the blockchain. Crypto is here to stay, says Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency entrepreneur Dave Chapman.

Chapman said bitcoin’s erratic price jumps and the angst surrounding escalating regulatory scrutiny is just par for the course whenever something new comes to market. We’ve been here before, he said. Like when the Internet first became a thing. Or when Facebook and Twitter first launched.

“Everyone says crypto is so bad, but there’s no difference between this and any other time when people have gone into something (new),” Chapman told the South China Morning Post. “Is it new? Yes. Does it need to mature? Yes. Will it be regulated? Yes.”

Dave, who previously worked at Credit Suisse, Bear Stearns, and HSBC between 2007 and 2012, got turned off by traditional finance when the global financial crisis erupted in 2008 and the aftershocks continued well into 2012. “It broke my confidence a little bit to see how it operates,” he recalled.

In 2013, Chapman co-founded ANX, a blockchain solutions provider, and ANX Pro, a cryptocurrency exchange. He recently launched a crypto trading firm called Octagon Strategy. Octagon currently trades seven digital currencies, but Chapman hopes to expand those offerings to 40 or 50 by the end of 2018.

The Australian businessman, who describes himself as a “corporate refugee,” is a firm believer in the future of virtual currencies and in blockchain, the technology that undergirds bitcoin.

‘No One Can Stop’ Crypto
While tech billionaires like Mark Cuban are bitcoin bears, Dave Chapman loves that the crypto ecosystem is decentralized.

“One of the really fascinating things that kept me coming back to bitcoin when I first saw it is that there was no central authority,” he said. “That means no one can stop it. A bank can’t stop it. A dictator can’t stop it. Parents can’t stop it.”

When he first got into cryptocurrencies, Chapman said former investment-banking colleagues thought he was crazy. “It surprised a lot of people: leaving a respected career to go and play with ‘magical internet money,'” he recounted. “That’s how a lot of people viewed it.”

Now, Chapman says, bankers either dismiss cryptos altogether or are riddled with FOMO (fear of missing out).

Chapman: Stop Obsessing Over Daily Prices
As CCN previously reported, Chapman has set a $100,000 price target for bitcoin for the end of 2018.

Even though bitcoin bears laugh at his bullish projections, Chapman said they also dismissed him when he predicted BTC would hit at least $10,000 by the end of 2017. Bitcoin climbed to more than $13,000 on December 31, 2017.

“I was quoted back in August (2017), when bitcoin was trading at around $4,000 that we would have a five-figure headline by the end of this year,” he said in December. “I think a lot of people thought I was crazy, a lot of people scoffed at me, but that’s OK.”

While most bitcoin investors obsess over its daily price fluctuations, Chapman says BTC prices are the least interesting thing to him about the market.

“The price to me is probably the most uninteresting component about bitcoin,” he said. “I’m more excited in the applications and more excited about what this means for people who don’t have access to financial inclusion. If we focus on the price, we’re losing track of the big picture.”

As it is, Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee believes bitcoin prices will rise after April 17, when Tax Day in the United States passes. Lee attributed the recent drop in BTC prices to investors trying to sell off their cryptocurrency holdings to avoid paying capital-gains taxes.

Lee predicts selling pressure on bitcoin will ease after Tax Day.