The CEO and founder of Digital Currency Group, Barry Silbert, says that most cryptocurrencies will fail and become worthless. However, bitcoin will rise and potentially replace gold.

Most cryptocurrencies might become worthless

Silbert is a well respected and widely followed crypto expert. He is the founder of Digital Currency Group and Greyscale Investments. He has earlier claimed that Bitcoin is a great investment and that 99 per cent of the cryptocurrencies will go to zero. Their portfolio consists of Bitcoin, Ethereum Classic, ZCash, Decentraland and Zerncash. However, most of the other ones will go to zero according to Silbert.

Silbert now states that a bear market is just the beginning of the pain for most cryptocurrencies. The rise of the initial coin offerings (ICOs) last year brought the market to a market capitalisation of over $800 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com. Retail investors put their money in projects that had not gone live yet or projects that were frauds. He adds:

“I’m not a believer in the vast majority of digital tokens and believe most will go to zero. Almost every ICO was just an attempt to raise money, but there was no use for the underlying token. The vast majority of what’s out there will be eliminated.”

Bitcoin will stand out from cryptocurrencies and might replace gold

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) already eliminates projects. They created a new set of laws a couple of months ago and went after ICOs that was dishonest. Paragon and AirFox were the first two that had to refund investors. Some suffered an even worse fate, and the CEO of AriseBank got arrested by the FBI because of illegal business.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, will survive and become very valuable, according to Silbert. However, bitcoin’s price fell with other major cryptocurrencies and are down more than 80% from its peak in January 2018. Silbert still argues that he is as bullish as ever on bitcoin. As an early investor, he lived through multiple price plunges. Despite bitcoin’s relatively short 10-year existence, it’s already on its third bear market plunge of 80 per cent or more. The most recent one has yet to bounce back.

He argues that institutional players still have a huge interest and a recent story shows that two pension funds in the US are involved. Digital Currency Group has made the most active seed investments in the industry, more than three times the amount of Andreessen Horowitz, according to Pitchbook. Part of the upside Silbert sees in bitcoin is based on its potential to replace gold as a haven asset. A statement shared with the Winklevoss Twins.

“As far as I’m concerned bitcoin has won the race to be digital gold,” Silbert said. “I’m convinced that whatever money is in gold is not going to stay in gold. That gets handed down to millennials — I’m highly confident a lot of that will go into bitcoin.”



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