Alexander Hoptner, the chief executive of BitMEX, shared his thoughts about the appetite of institutional investors for crypto in a recent interview.
According to the CEO, they have certainly not lost their appetite for cryptocurrencies in general, or Ethereum, despite the bear market in crypto.
Growing appetite
On September 28th, the CEO spoke in Singapore at the Token2049 Conference and said that the bear market had not seen a slowdown in the institutional push where cryptocurrencies are concerned.
He said that finance industry players and institutions usually take advantage of bear markets for the purpose of innovation.
The crypto executive said that a bull market comes with greater pressure for delivering, but the luxury of more time is only available in a bear market.
According to Hoptner, there is a long horizon for the finance industry’s adoption due to which institutions will use this time to buy and hold crypto assets, while the retail sector does the opposite.
He was also asked if he believes retail or institutions will help the crypto industry pull out of the bear market and he said that the former was pulling out, while the latter was pushing.
Therefore, he said that institutions were gearing up to offer their services and retail would eventually return and push the market up again.
Ethereum
The BitMEX boss also believes that institutional investors would also begin pushing into Ethereum once more since it has made the transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm.
This means that the blockchain has now assuaged the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) concerns.
He said that Ethereum was the top protocol for building stuff and Ethereum’s transition gives the opportunity to develop financial products for conforming to ESG.
He stated that ESG conformity is essential for now and said that institutions would be able to offer products meant for a wide audience while ensuring their compliance.
Ether prices
According to Hoptner, he believes that the price of Ether will climb up to $3,000 by the year end and this is because of the environmentally-friendly nature of the crypto.
It is also the fact that some of the big banks are making use of the token as well. At the time of writing, Ether had recorded a rise of 3.8% in the last 24 hours, which has taken it to $1,336.
This shows that the token has a long way to go before it comes close to the $3K mark because it is not even halfway there for now.
It had recently been reported that as opposed to holding regular Ether tokens, it is becoming more profitable for people to hold liquid staking products.
These include those like the Staked Ether (stETH) offered by Lido. They are likely to see their popularity go up, while it would become obsolete for people to hold ETH.
Currently, the crypto market is facing what is commonly called the crypto winter, as the prices of all assets have come down significantly from their all-time highs (ATHs).
