“Institutional Money is Moving Toward Ethereum,” says Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd

After Bitcoin, institutions are now getting interested in Ethereum. As we reported last week, there has been an improving appetite for Ethereum compared to poor sentiment for Bitcoin. BTC -1.45% Bitcoin / USD BTCUSD $ 28,004.78
-$406.07-1.45% Volume 22.4 b Change -$406.07 Open $28,004.78 Circulating 19.33 m Market Cap 541.41 b 1 y SEC Commissioner says NFTs Might Fall Within Their Jurisdiction, Gensler Hires Senate Aid for Crypto Policy 1 y A Possible Crypto Recovery Moving Into New Year, Risk-on Sentiments Send The Stock Market to Another Record High 1 y Bitcoin and Ether Dump More Going Into Year-End, ETH Killers Showing Great Momentum

This year, $792 million have flowed into Ethereum products bringing its assets under management to $10.2 billion versus $40.8 billion in Bitcoin, as per CoinShares data.

Guggenheim Global Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd also indicated towards growing interest in the second-largest cryptocurrency. He said in an interview with Bloomberg this week.

“I think that institutional money is moving toward things like Ethereum and some of what I'll call the more credible cryptocurrencies,”

Meanwhile, only the most speculative money is ending up in more peripheral cryptocurrencies, he said. Minerd continued,

“I think it's really difficult for an investor like me to consider something like Dogecoin when the creators outright said that it was a joke. And you can imagine in my role as a fiduciary what that would open me up to if somebody later came back and lost money and they wanted to criticize me.”

This, according to him, is not just an issue with Guggenheim but also for everybody who's an asset manager. So only the most speculative money will move in such cryptocurrencies.

Adding to this interest in Ethereum is the growing number of ETH increasingly getting locked up with over 4 million ETH worth $11.32 billion deposited in ETH 2.0 for staking and 10.6 million ETH locked in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Also, more and more ETH are being bought by Ether ETFs with 19,590 ETH, $53.66 million AUM by Purpose Investments’ ETHH, Evolve’s ETHR has about $14 million, and CI Galaxy’s ETHX has $114 million in AUM.

With a market cap of $321 billion, Ether is currently trading at $2,785 after hitting a new ATH on Thursday at $2,800. Jiangzhuoer, a Chinese miner and BCH supporter who is also mining Ether and previously predicted $100k per BTC by the end of this year, is now calling for $20,000 per ETH in this bull cycle.

People want cryptocurrency

This week, Social Finance Inc. also announced that it is allowing its customers to redeem rewards earned through the company app in BTC or ETH.

With this move, SoFi is joining the likes of Mastercard, which partnered with Gemini to allow cardholders to earn as much as 3% back toward BTC or other cryptos available on the crypto exchange. In December, Visa said it’s partnering with crypto lending startup BlockFi for a specific card that offers BTC rewards of 1.5% of purchases.

Starting this Thursday, SoFi clients can apply their 2% cash-back rewards to the two cryptos on the SoFi credit card. CEO Anthony Noto said,

“There’s a thirst for more and more innovation that we continue to hear from our members.”

“The No. 1 thing they wanted was stocks and fractional shares. The No. 2 thing they wanted was cryptocurrency.”

The company further plans to extend its investing operation to include 15 more cryptos in the following week.

Noto likens the rise of Bitcoin Amazon in the late 1990s when companies were highly volatile and said it “has already established itself as an incredibly valuable asset.”