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Consensus: Invest, a digital asset investor conference hosted by CoinDesk, was in full swing in New York on Tuesday. Asset managers, traders, entrepreneurs, and other interested parties packed in to hear all things related to blockchain and cryptocurrency, but they probably weren't expecting one of the biggest bitcoin bulls to talk bubble.

Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

"This is a bubble and there is a lot of froth. This is going to be the biggest bubble of our lifetimes... But bubbles happen around things that change the world," CEO of hedge fund Galaxy Investment Partners Michael Novogratz said. And he fully intends to start a $500 million fund to invest in crypto. But he was also more measured than what critics might think about bitcoin enthusiasts. His son's friend's mother called him wanting to put all her savings in bitcoin. "Not a good idea," he said. "Maybe 5%."

The appeal is obvious. The price of bitcoin jumped 1.55% to around $9,890 and Bitcoin Investment Trust (ticker: GBTC) climbed nearly 11% and trades at a near 70% premium to its net asset value. And just a month ago, Bitcoin Investment Trust was trading at a 20% premium. Must we say how much it has risen in the last year? It's a lot.

The crypto world moves fast -- "too fast for books," said Patrick O'Shaughnessy of the eponymous asset management firm based in New York, who led a panel at the conference. He noted how a recently published book's crypto figures didn't jibe anymore.

Ari Paul, the CIO of crypto hedge fund BlockTower Capital and former portfolio manager at the University of Chicago, thinks endowments should be looking into owning crypto. "Endowments don't care about idiosyncratic risk," he said. "If one allocates 1% of assets to crypto, for example, it will be additive to diversification, because it is absolutely uncorrelated to other asset classes."

Will University of Chicago ever consider it? O'Shaughnessy answered on Paul's behalf: At a dinner, when this question was asked, the CIO apparently responded: Sure, six months after Harvard. Given Harvard's endowment added a modest stake of a short VIX ETF in the third quarter, maybe some sort of crypto allocation isn't out of the realm of possibility. CME Group's (CME) bitcoin futures are due to arrive any day now.