Just yesterday we noted that billionaire hedge fund legend Mike Novogratz said "the institutionalization of [the crypto space] is coming... and it's coming quick."

Novogratz said he expects major financial firms will soon start to offer bitcoin or similar products as an investment option, one that could be easily purchased over the phone.

“When it’s that easy, the price of bitcoin or ethereum is going to go much higher. And that is a lot closer than people think,”

How right he was as the CEO of massive hedge fund Man Group just confirmed they will "add bitcoin to its investment universe" once CME launches Bitcoin futures.

As BI reports, one of the largest hedge funds in the world might hop on the bitcoin trade.

Luke Ellis, the CEO of Man Group, the UK-based investor with $95 billion in funds under management, said the firm would include bitcoin in its "investment universe" if bitcoin futures successfully launch, according to a tweet by Reuters. CME announced at the end of October that it would launch a bitcoin futures product by year-end. On Monday, CME chairman and CEO Terry Duffy said such a product would likely be ready by the second-week of December.

Additionally, as CoinTelegraph reports, earlier today on Nov. 14, Multicoin Capital Managing Partner Kyle Samani revealed that he had met with an institutional investor with a $30 bln fund. The investor disclosed the fact that fund managers within the company are restricted to issuing checks with the minimum value or $300 mln.

“More. Just met with an institutional manager. $30 bln fund. Minimum check size $300 mln. Current crypto allocation: $0. We aren't even close to the top,” said Samani.

Previously, even up until early 2017, it was not possible for institutional investors to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin because the market was premature and the liquidity was limited.

In January of 2017, the market cap of Bitcoin was only $15 bln. The market was simply not deep and mature enough for institutional investors and large-scale hedge funds to commit.

In the past 10 months, the market valuation of Bitcoin has grown to $110 bln, with a daily trading volume of $4 bln. As such, Bitcoin has become more liquid than the most liquid stock on earth, Apple.

Finally, we note that Novogratz's biggest regret this year has been not buying more cryptocurrencies when prices fell, because he knew that they would keep going up. He sees bitcoin, for instance, hitting $10,000 by March.

The basis of the price target of Novogratz was established by several indicators including the Metcalfe’s law, a widely acknowledged metric which has been utilized to measure the growth rate of communication networks like Facebook, and the likelihood of the entrance of institutional investors and retail traders into the cryptocurrency market.