Crypto to hit ‘literally billions’ of users by 2027: Pantera CEO

Morehead argued that crypto was in “a secular bull market” and could trade independently of traditional risk assets for years to come.

Pantera CEO maintains bullish crypto stance

Dan Morehead has made it clear that he is not fazed by the ongoing crypto winter.

IN a Wednesday interview with CNBC‘s Squawk Box, Pantera’s founder and CEO discussed the current state of the digital asset space, asserting his confidence in blockchain’s future despite the market’s sharp decline from all-time highs.

Morehead said he believes crypto is in “a secular bull market” that has been caught in a downtrend with other risk assets in recent months, predicting that the nascent asset class could lose its close correlation with other markets in the future. “I can easily see a world a few years from now where risk assets themselves are still struggling, but blockchain is back to all-time highs,” he said, addressing the adverse macro conditions that have affected stocks and crypto this year.

Morehead argued that crypto’s value would increase if adoption grew, and made a lofty prediction about how the asset class could gain traction over the next few years. “Hundreds of millions of people are using blockchain today, I think in four or five years there will be literally billions of people,” he said.

Bitcoin has grown to roughly 200 million users worldwide since its launch as a niche Cypherpunk movement in 2009, while the broader crypto market approached 300 million users at the start of the year, per Crypto.com data. However, the space has suffered from a months-long bear market, casting doubt on the possibility of rapid growth in the short term.

Retail interest is waning

When crypto experiences a bull rally like the one that saw the market top $3 trillion in 2021, it tends to attract hordes of new users. But many of them exit the space when they experience downside price volatility as the market cycle ends, slowing adoption. Bitcoin is trading over 70% down from its November 2021 peak today, and mainstream interest in the technology has fallen amid worsening macro conditions and weak market sentiment.

According to Google’s trends, worldwide search for “crypto” and “Bitcoin” have hit pre-2021 lows in recent weeks. Google search trends is a popular metric for assessing mainstream crypto interest; “Bitcoin” searches peaked during retail mania periods in December 2017 and May 2021.

Commenting on the ongoing crypto winter, Morehead said he believes “we’re pretty much through the worst of it.” He was referring to the liquidity crisis that hit the space in June, leading to a series of bankruptcies among centralized crypto lenders such as Celsius and Voyager Digital. “When you have a market that goes down 75, 80%, [if] if you add any leverage, it’s going to be tough,” he said, saying June 2022 marked a bottom for the current market cycle.

Morehead also pointed out that Bitcoin and Ethereum’s market capitalization dominance hit a low of 57% on Tuesday, adding that he believes there are “hundreds of really interesting projects” that could see growth in the future.

While Morehead has a positive outlook, it’s worth noting that his firm Pantera is known for investing with long-term time horizons. In the short term, there are many reasons to take a more pessimistic view of Bitcoin and the broader space, including market fatigue, skyrocketing inflation and anticipation of further rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, and a lack of potential catalysts following Ethereum’s “sell the news” Merge event .

In accordance CoinGecko data, the global cryptocurrency market cap is currently around $950 billion. That’s about 70% below peak.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.