Crypto Twitter has a different outlook on digital assets than Wall Street institutionals but not in the way you might expect. According to a recent survey by Fundstrat Global Advisors, institutions, usually the more reserved ones, are more optimistic when it comes to predicting a bottom for BTC.

Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat, has recently polled 25 institutions, 54 percent of which responded that bitcoin has already reached bottom for the year. The second half of the poll was completed in Lee’s Twitter, where only 44 percent of more than 5,600 respondents said the worst is over for bitcoin.

CRYPTO POLL (3 of 6 questions):

When do you think Bitcoin will bottom? — Thomas Lee (@fundstrat) September 30, 2018

Wall Street investors are also more bullish towards the other end of the spectrum. 57 percent of institutionals told that they expect BTC to rise anywhere between $15,000 to “the moon” by the end of 2019. Crypto aficionados in Twitter were far more negative, with only 40 percent of them predicting a similar price movement pattern.

Interestingly, crypto community believes that XRP will be the coin of 2019, with 46 percent of twitteratis saying it will be the best performing token in the next 12 months. However, 31 percent claimed XRP “made the least sense”. Institutions appear to be bearish in terms of XRP as none of them picking XRP as their favourite token and 28 percent saying it makes least sense.

XRP has doubled in price in the last three weeks, briefly overtaking ETH as the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the process. The token has somewhat dipped after the end of Ripple’s annual Swell conference but has remained relatively stable to trade at around $0.52 at press time.

Lee outlines two major conclusions from the poll. First, institutionals are significantly more bullish on BTC than crypto Twitter. Given that institutional interest is likely to strongly increase in 2019 with the introduction of bitcoin ETF and Bakkt, BTC should outperform. Secondly, polarization on XRP and the fact that every third institutions considers it “least understood”, makes analysts believe it may be a contrarian buy signal.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that institutionals such as hedge funds or investment banks have replaced high-net-worth retail individual investors as the biggest buyers of crypto in transactions worth over $100,000. This was revealed by Bobby Cho, global head of trading at crypto trading unit Cumberland, who also said that coin suppliers (miners) have started doing regular coin sales, instead of waiting for market upturn.

According to Cho, “What that’s showing you is the professionalization that’s happening across the board in this space. The Wild West days of crypto are really turning the corner.“

An almost identical sentiment has been echoed by security expert Julie Myers Wood, who claimed that regulators are taking an increased notice in the crypto sphere. This inevitably leads to a more regulated and professional market, which is beneficial for all involved, despite the wariness towards authorities by the crypto community.

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