In recent months, bitcoin has garnered the support from some high-profile Wall Street investors. From pouring money into bitcoin ventures to acquiring stock associated with the digital currency, it seems there are more bulls in bitcoin these days and is becoming a popular investment.
The latest to tip their hat to bitcoin is Michael Novogratz, Fortress Investment Group’s Director and Principal, who spoke with Bloomberg News on Monday from the 2014 Sohn Investment Conference in New York to discuss the future of bitcoin why he’s buying and how payments systems will dramatically evolve.
Novogratz explained that the reason he is buying the peer-to-peer decentralized virtual currency is because the market cap is between $4.5 and $5 billion and there are approximately 30,000 programmers working on bitcoin.
“So there is an open source community where there is huge brain power, let alone all the seed money that is going in,” said Novogratz. “And so from Marc Andreessen and his company, to Benchmark, to Wences Casares, there’s lots of smart money going in. I’ve never seen a small project with more human capital going into it, and so I kind of want to bet just on that alone.”
Although many say that it’s is its greatest curse, Novogratz believes bitcoin has the advantage because it’s the very first of its kind. Despite this, the payments systems of the future will be revolutionized and perhaps even a “democratization of finance at one point.”
“I think you’ll see peer to peer lending,” Novogratz elaborated. “The banks’ biggest threat is the same thing that’s happened in so many other industries now. Happening to finance industry. Right. The internet disintermediates large players, and I think Bitcoin is just one of the threats that the finance industry as we know it, has come against it.”
It is reported that Fortress maintains $13 million worth of bitcoins and also became the very first publicly traded firm to file bitcoin holdings.
We also reported in March that Novogratz announced that his firm would be purchasing Pantera Bitcoin Partners, an investment fund with a focus on bitcoin and other virtual currencies.
Bitcoin has become one of the major investments for venture capitalists who are seeking to cash in on the next big thing akin to the Internet in the 1990s. Angel investors have doled out approximately $100 million in companies dealing with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Not everyone is buying bitcoin, though. As has been reported, prominent individuals like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and Jamie Dimon are steering clear of bitcoin because they believe it’s a “mirage” and that all investors should avoid it entirely. Buffett has gone as far predicting that bitcoins will cease to exist within the next 10 to 20 years because it does not have any legitimate store of value.