The world’s second largest accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, believes a new wave of institutional investment will drive cryptocurrency adoption over the next 12 months.

Speaking on Bloomberg Television in Australia, PwC executive Henri Arslanian said he believes there’s a big year ahead for the crypto ‘ecosystem’.

“I think there is a lot of exciting things that the crypto ecosystem is looking forward in 2019,” said Arslanian on the DayBreak Australia program.

“One of them, I think, is really the entry of institutional players.

“I think in 2018 we saw a lot of the big banks enter the space and in 2019 I expect many more to enter the space as well, in different ways.

“Some of them may decide to launch their own solutions, like Fidelity did here in the US by setting up a new company.

“Others may try to partner with some of the other crypto firms… And others may try to invest in crypto companies a bit like Goldman did with BitGo and Circle.

“This is very good because it will bring the kind of level of institutional expertise and experience to the sector which is something the crypto industry needs.

Regulatory Clarity

Arslanian told the program he believes the main driving force behind increasing institutional involvement will be regulatory certainty.

“I think a lot of elements are changing at a global level, one of them is the regulatory clarity… If you look at 2018, a number of jurisdictions provided more regulatory clarity than we had before.

“The surprise could be some of the more traditional, or less nimble countries, for example now France is pushing ahead with some legislation on ICOs, even here in the US with all the news going on right now there’s some bipartisan initiatives to try to make the US more competitive when it comes to cryptoassets.

Bullish on Stable Coins and Security Tokens

If you think the 2018 crypto ‘crash’ was a bad thing, think again says PwC.

Henri Arslanian believes the crypto sector is actually better off without the hype about ‘going to the moon’ and Lamborghinis

“In other industries there’s booms and busts, I think some of the positive news of the crypto fall was it actually cleared a lot of noise in the crypto sector,” he says.

“Like in the dot com boom you’ll have some companies that’ll survive this boom and those may change their role in ways we can’t even imagine today, but in the short term there’s definitely a lot of crypto companies that are hurt.

In 2019, KwC’s China and Hong Kong Fintech and Crypto Leader, says he will be watching the rise of Security Tokens and Stable Coins closely.

“Stable coins in particular allow, for example, crypto traders to stay in the crypto space but with an asset that is definitely less volatile and also can be used on a day-to-day basis for people who want to use crypto without the volatility that we’ve seen in recent months.

“The other one is security tokens which I expect a lot in 2019, which are basically security tokens that are backed by real-life assets, for example, real estate.

“It allows not only to bring liquidity in a space, where especially for larger real estate projects there’s not that much liquidity, but also it allows us to streamline a lot of the corporate action and dividends and that is actually very exciting.

Watch the full Bloomberg interview here.

Another ‘Big Four’ auditor predicting mass crypto adoption

The comments from the top PwC executive come after another one of the ‘Big Four’ auditors, KPMG, said “crypto can’t be ignored”.

“More participation from the broader financial services ecosystem, will help drive trust and scale for the tokenized economy and help the crypto market grow and mature,” said the firm in a note to high-profile clients.

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