Thomas Lee of Fundstrat spoke about the long-term picture for Bitcoin [BTC] when appeared earlier this week on CNBC. He believes that the regulatory environment is changing.

He began by speaking about exchanges, and why banks should look into becoming exchanges. He stated top exchanges like Coinbase and Binance which have a 2-3% market share make close to a billion dollars, while Goldman Sachs themselves made $8 billion over the past 12 months. Exchanges provide lucrative opportunities for banks to increase their profits and move into the crypto space.

He also stated that there wasn’t as much speculation in the cryptocurrency market as people expected, stating that the ratio between the on-chain and exchange currencies is 4:1. This means that for every 1 coin on the exchange, there are 4 on the chain. Other resources like oil have a much higher ratio such as 40:1, with USD being traded 141:1.

He said:

“Crypto is a digital payment system which is actually widely used.”

He said that around 7 billion payments occur using Bitcoin. He spoke about BitPay Checkout service, which conducts 6% of all Bitcoin payment transactions. It is a Point of Sale mechanism that allows brick-and-mortar establishments to accept cryptocurrency payments.

He also stated that cryptocurrencies are currencies that are global, and these account for the high amount of payment transactions. He said that it was actually easier to send a payment in Bitcoin across the world than it was to transfer money overseas.

When asked about his famous prediction of Bitcoin reaching $25000 by the end of this year, he stuck to his prediction. He called it “completely reasonable” quoting the peak last year at $20000 as his data. He also relied on regulatory visibility by the end of the year, as the big regulatory parties in the US were moving towards a clear conclusion.

Many financial institutions are pro-crypto, he said, with a great regulatory environment outside the United States. He also stated that a lot of exchanges were being launched. A significant milestone earlier this week was the launch of SBI Japan’s Virtual Currencies platform being launched, marking one of the biggest institutional player’s entries into the market.

He also backed up his prediction with the mining process. Going by the current difficulty, he said that the price for one Bitcoin to be mined would be around $14000, which when traded up twice becomes $25000.