Bitcoin hyperbole is back – and better than ever. As the cryptocurrency rallied by nearly 50% in December – before starting 2021 by touching a new record above $34,000 – an informal year-end competition developed to see who could make the most eye-catching prediction about how high the price could go.
Guggenheim Investments chief investment officer Scott Minerd was an early frontrunner in the contest when he went on Bloomberg TV to say that his firm’s fundamental analysis showed that bitcoin should be worth $400,000.
This was an excellent opening gambit. There are plenty of crypto bros who post clips supposedly shot on their tropical island lairs predicting that bitcoin should trade at $1 million, or $10 million.
Guggenheim, by contrast, is a large investor with more than $295 billion of assets under management and a track record of adopting new financial structures that makes it one of the most important fee payers to Wall Street banks.
Minerd is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s investor advisory committee on financial markets, an adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and a fixture of World Economic Forum meetings in the good old days when Davos in January was still a thing.
Minerd’s