On Wednesday (May 29), Thomas Lee, Co-Founder, Managing Partner, and the Head of Research at independent research boutique Fundstrat Global Advisors, explained why he believes that “real” or “full-blown” buying of Bitcoin (BTC) based on fear of missing out (FOMO) would probably only start once the BTC price exceeds $10,000.

Lee, who has been bullish on Bitcoin for a quite a while and is very well-known in the crypto community for his Bitcoin price predictions, made his latest comments about FOMO in the Bitcoin market in response to a tweet posted by Adam Samson, Global Head of fastFT at the Financial Times:

We are apparently headed straight for LEVEL 10 FOMO in the #bitcoin market (via @fundstrat) pic.twitter.com/YzFkrazWz2 — Adam Samson (@adamsamson) May 29, 2019

As you can see, Samson had embedded in his tweet an infographic from Fundstrat that shows the percentage of days the Bitcoin market experienced different degrees of FOMO—Level 1 (“Baby”), Level 5 (“Medium”), and Level 10 (“Full-blown”)—in the periods 2010–2011, 2011–2013, and 2013–2017.

This infographic also shows what today’s equivalent Bitcoin price levels are for each of these three levels of FOMO, i.e.

“Baby” level FOMO: $6,950 (BTC price went above this level for the first time in 2019 on May 11);

“Medium ” level FOMO: $8,350 (BTC price exceeded this level for the first time in 2019 on May 26); and

“Full-blown” level FOMO: $10,000 (we have not seen the BTC price reach this level so far in 2019)

This is how Lee replied to Samson’s tweet:

Actually the point of the chart is to say “real FOMO” probably starts when #bitcoin exceeds $10,000 as that is a price level only seen 3% of all days… …mathematically equivalent to exceeding $BTC $4,500 in 2017 Looking back, that price was a level that indeed triggered FOMO — Thomas Lee (@fundstrat) May 29, 2019

Previously (during the past few weeks), Lee has said the following about Bitcoin:

May 28: “The resilience of Bitcoin in the face of heightening tensions shows that Bitcoin/crypto is one of the few places to find alpha”

May 13: “Less than 22% believe there is any FOMO as long as #bitcoin is below $10k” (According to the results of a Twitter poll he conducted on May 12)

May 19: 13 events that have occurred during the period Nov 2018–May 2019 “confirm” that crypto winter is over

May 7: “I believe >50% of ETF volume is institutional investors (HF, etc) so it is not necessarily a retail product. And similarly, a bitcoin ETF would be a big deal. Especially since it does simplify key management for a retail investor”

April 4: Fair value of Bitcoin is $14,000

Although “real” FOMO may not have quite started, the increase in the assets under management (AUM) of Grayscale Investments’ “Grayscale Bitcoin Trust” (GBTC) from $1.172 billion on April 30 to $1.950 billion on May 29, i.e. more than a 66% increase in one month, shows that U.S. accredited and institutional investors are already in the FOMO stage.