Bitcoin Forum

The debate is still on-going if large investments from institutional firms, would be good or bad for Bitcoin in the long run. Some are saying it will bring more volatility <price manipulation> and others are just happy that the price will probably go to the Moon.

There are also conspiracy theories doing the rounds that these institutions will use their financial powers to destroy Bitcoin. <Buying large quantities and also dumping large quantities>

Some are even saying that the small fish will be eaten by the big sharks. Let's consider the impact of this and how this will change the Bitcoin scene.

Will Bitcoin go 100% commodity & store of value or will it still be used as a currency? 

I believe its has both good and bad effects. Good because such institutions would be putting up their investment in bitcoins which means they also knew that there is a big opportunity to earn from it. While on the other hand it would be risky too because there is a possibility of monopolizing the current market due to its high demand in the market.

Institutional money flows into assets that are expected to have growth in the long term. This growth is dependent on whether the product/ asset has a market or not. The market depends on the people who are using it. It depends on whether big merchants are going to accept it as a way to fund their commerce activities.
The upside for the common people to use it or store is that its non-deflationary, its value will not depend on government intervention, it will be secure and decentralized in the long run.

This current flow of money is probably just the thing that we fear. Big investors trying to make money off of small investors who scare easy by these constant buys and dumps. It may also just be your average big-pocket traders. I don't think we should worry about it too much.

The fundamentals of bitcoin are as strong as ever. With newer innovations picking up, we'll see another extended lull period. The next wave will come as some of the other alternatives come up with working products and use cases. As usage grows, we can be sure that we'll see the marketplaces getting active again and the merchant revival come in in a big way.
Th institutional money will then come in as a supportive investment and not as a speculative one. That is where we have to head.

This present FUD too shall pass.

This is really why we need bitcoin to be more of a usable currency than just a speculative asset as that would give them more chance to take hold of the market strongly and be able to control it however they wish and like. These are guys who have been living their lives manipulating the fiat system, what makes us think the same will not happen in this scenario with bitcoin. I am still sure what we are experiencing right now is institutional played, so the answer to the OP's question is glaring from what we are seeing in the market presently.

I wonder why this was not attended to since December. Even though your's was post busting, it is good this is brought up. I have asked myself this question several times and to me, I just end up seeing room for pretty much manipulation. Unfortunately, a lot of people are panicking and giving them the chance to be able to have more hold in the market, but I am not sure if this would really mean much in the long run on the amount they are going to be sitting on. I am sure they are having this moment already and we can see how that is leading us. At the end, I only see bitcoin ending up as a store of value with the look of things.

We were much better without any institution, since the future contracts exist we are only falling!

While the current decrease of the price coincides with the future contracts to me the drop in the price seems to be due to factors that can be attributed to bitcoin and nothing more, there is manipulation going on but the drop seems to be related to the fact that china is going to make their controls over cryptocurrencies even tighter which is bad news since we will get less money from Chinese investors.

To make Bitcoin more usable as currency there should be a decent solution for scalabity issues. Also, high volatility doesn't help, and as a decentralized currency, volatility is part of its nature, there isn't much to do about it... Bitcoin goes through the store of value path, with some people using it as currency, but not the mass, not the most part of investors and enthusiasts.

I agree with you, the market's movements smell like manipulation, trying to make little fishes drop their coins, so the whales can take all of it and save for themselves, reaching to OP's possibility, to dump large quantities of coins later, a kind of sabotage. So the institutions come with their own Crypto-Currency (centralized one), saying: "Well, as Bitcoin failed, now you can use this one, it's much better, there are a lot of advantages, join us!".

So I don't think institutions investing hard is positive for Crypto world, especially for Bitcoin, but there is nothing we can do about it, it's a free world.

It's nothing to do with China. China banned bitcoin and closed the exchanges a good six months ago.

What is happening started with profit taking, and then liquidation of stop-losses via bots.

It brings volatility and price manipulations only with a low amount of this institutional investors. If we will have more whales then it will be way harder for a single one to influence on the whole price, Bitcoin is still not popular enough for it. Monopolies do not exist on the free market (on the average and long terms), that will be to expensive to buy a huge amount of BTC. Even if someone do it and then dump all BTC the market will  bring the price back and the whale will lose its influence.
P.S. Current market cap of Bank of Aberica is slightly over the current crypto market cap. They gona have to sacrifice themselve to kill crypto.

I believe that although the participation of these large companies favors the trustworthiness of small and independent investors besides causing more pressure for governments to be approved, it also causes greater price speculation and these volatile increases become the worst enemy of any virtual currency.

Institutional money is one of the causes of speculation that is evident, almost as much as the sale of Wall Street futures. And it is precisely because of this volatility that this has caused that the governments of the world have insisted on wanting to control everything.

Institutional capital is the only way for the Crypto market to sustain its own inflated prices and absorb its irrational valuations.

excluding government, at this point there are no other sources of capital aside from institutional money capable of supporting such disproportional pricing behavior.

Crypto will eventually face two options: clean its act for institutional and professional money, or implode.

I think that institutional capital is good for bitcoin as it would add more credibility to bitcoin.It is also said that if institutional capital enters bitcoin market,it would also reduce the volatility of bitcoin price as such firms would not be reacting like newbies getting panic and selling bitcoins thereby destabilizing the market.

For me, large institutions are not totally bad to invest in bitcoin or any other coins, as long as they have enough capital to invest. In fact, that certain institution can contribute to the total development of bitcoin business because they invest, in bitcoin business if nothing people will access or invest it is totally useless, so why some people said that large institutions are bad in bitcoin business, and some also said that some large institutions manipulated the price, for me, how can large institutions manipulate the price, they are only a member and fan of accessing and investing bitcoin, and without direct power to control the price, investors are no power to control the price. The only person can control the price is only the management.

I recently read an article that Blockchain's first major use case is as the stock market 2.0 and with the way things are going it looks like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are emerging into a new asset class, cryptoassets. Technology stocks always had a significant impact on the market, and being a new asset class, Bitcoin is still in its early phases, a few perceive it as a hedge against traditional markets, but for the rest, it's still a speculative asset, but as its value evolves as a commodity, it would have more impact on traditional markets.

If you look at things from commodity perspective, Bitcoin as being a mainstream financial investment, then institutional money is good, it's not just about futures, but recently Robinhood announced plans to enable Bitcoin trading, NASDAQ futures plan, similarly if some major firms allow Bitcoin trading, it would give Bitcoin much more credibility and legitimacy as an investment/commodity. I think institutional money might decrease volatility and give more stability and liquidity, but yeah, the downside is the possibility of manipulation along with somewhat a barrier for small investors to get into the market, and even though a disrupting technology, commodity adoption might have more speculation than technology/fundamentals. This is where IMO the currency aspect is necessary.

Institutional Capital can bring goodness at the same time will ruin the people. It is good to see that the price is volatile and our investments gradually increase but if we look at the manipulation of others specially the whales, we will notice how it really bad and it will bring us bankruptcy if they will make a conspiracy to bring down the price of a certain altcoin.

Institution capital brought us to good speculation of income in bitcoin.Investments increase and its because of their big contribution in the market to flactuates the value for rising up.Its good thing to know that they encourage bitcoin now worldwide.

I like what you are saying. So it is not just about the manipulation, but more than that, it is about the credibility and legitimacy as an investment/commodity on global stock markets. In your opinion, what would be more beneficial to Bitcoin? Bitcoin Futures or Bitcoin ETF's?

Being such a small fish in the pond, would institutional money suffocate Bitcoin or would it strengthen it's growth. I see a situation where big Wall Street traders will only replace the old Bitcoin whales. <Everyone has their price and these guys have enough money to grow a big carrot for these Bitcoin whales.>

I think it will be more volatile as an increase in investor and investor's money will mean more price movement for Bitcoin. And isn't the whales doing that already? If the business investors will enter late into the scene it will mean that they will be buying up the price of Bitcoin. Some of the people have even said that they have already entered and they are the ones who have pushed the price down because of the bad statements they are doing. Well I don't have any proof of it but there is a possibility that they have done it.

Currently, Bitcoin has not be fully utilize and a lot need to be done with bitcoin and blockchain technology. The most things that I think the blockchain's enthusiasts should do is to be able to convince governments and financials leaders about the benefits of this technology. From my country I discovered that bitcoin  is been attacked because the leaders did not know anything about bitcoin but see it as ponzi. I think institutionalized capital is going to affect the development of bitcoin.

The CME Bitcoin futures are cash-settled, no physical delivery, betting on Bitcoin's price movements, it might or mightn't create an actual demand for Bitcoin. But in case of an ETF, traders don't have to buy the asset, but are buying ETF shares while the underlying asset is held by a trust and traders can redeem their shares for the underlying asset, there is actual demand. So definitely ETF's would be more beneficial than cash-settled futures. The US Senate hearing, although optimistic wasn't much forthcoming about approving a Bitcoin ETF anytime soon.

Cash-settled futures market and Bitcoin market, different markets, but yeah manipulation/shorting is quite possible, institutional investors will directly invest into Bitcoin, unlimited supply of fiat and ideologically driven Bitcoin holders, that's something we have to see. I think it's too early to evaluate the effect of futures market on an unregulated Bitcoin market.

I see this thing in two side, on the first side if they buying now then the price will incredibly surge for really huge price, not saying back at the price of december but at least it will near it or may be of it is a big firm then it will surge more than $20,000. Second side, this is really bad for traders because when they are going to sell it, I believe they will dump it and this will disadvantage traders as well unless traders have really good moment to sell it before it get dumped. So actually it does not really matter whether firm is going to invest or not as long as we can get enough time to buy and sell then it will okay

It is bad of course. Institutional money is what bitcoin is trying to replace. Having banks buy bitcoin is like giving your riches to the enemy.
They will buy Bitcoins not for profit, but to destroy it since it is a threat.

Do you have any news or article with from someone trustworthy? I would like to see that.

From what I saw, by the day that futures came in, they are not the ones responsible for this. New year and chinese new year played a much bigger role in the fall than futures. Futures may have brought a lot of eyes of inexperienced people to bitcoin but that's a good thing to do, unfortunetley they are the ones who panic sell in the slightestes dayprice variation.

I believe that financial institutions and funds need large markets. The capitalization of bitcoin is 145,000,000,000. This is a small market for such players, but they will soon be in it. And then the market will become even more interesting. There will be no more such voluntariness as now on the market.
I think bitcoin will remain an asset for manipulation and profit.

I would much rather attract millions of casual investor with the odd $1000 investment, than some Wall Street cowboy with $10 000 000. These guys are jumping between different commodities at the drop of a Dime and this is causing more problems with volatility.

We now have Fiat whales, competing with Bitcoin whales and this is causing wild fluctuations in the price. ^grrrrrr^

I think that institutional capital would probably be good for Bitcoin unti the moment in which it would eventually start to be bad. Initially, the prices would soar very much. But on the long term, as the institutions will control more and more bitcoins, the tide may turn.

Believe it has two good and bad effects. They believe in investing in their institutions. Their profits can be again and again. Now bitcoin can be lostes.

It is not good news in the market to believe bad news to investors. It will reduce the credibility of new entrants or prepare for investment. Need a healthy playground here to be able to survive long. Hopefully the future will not make the mistakes that they have caused.

Institutional investors, funds, professional traders and investors are a crucial part of every market. I cannot even imagine real market without them because private investors and traders have small capital which is not enough to invest serious projects. Let us have a look at unpopular coins which are not interested to professional traders and what we see. There is no liquidity at all in that coins. Let us have a look at the whole crypto market and as we see it is in the downtrend because professional traders mostly do not buy but private traders are not able to lift the whole crypto market. Professional traders are very important for crypto market and keep in mind thet only they can force crypto market to grow again.

I think if we want to get up in the trillions upon trillion of market cap you will need the bankers and institutions get in.  If we want to keep things free and buck off government we cannot be greedy for money.  We must be greedy for freedom and keep that money out.  I think most want the money though. 

It's going to be a good thing for Bitcoin. Institutions are part of the growth of Bitcoin to become a new class of asset. but, once Bitcoin gets to a certain market cap no institution can manipulate the price anymore. It's just matter of time.

I would say that it would be good for bitcoin as such investments would be mostly of long term basis which would help bitcoin price to be stable reducing its volatility.On the other hand,newbies would only contribute for increase in bitcoin's price volatility as they would be holding bitcoins only for a short time.

it's not as simple as that to monopolize bitcoin assets, we can see that the Japanese central bank finally chose to focus more on xrp and cardano, they can't master bitcoin in the majority. In a free market that does not have strong regulations, there will always be stronger funding.

but on the other hand it runs positively because there is a kind of natural competition, as long as it is not destructive, every institution has the right to be actively involved in it.

Depends on what you want from bitcoin. If you want bitcoin to be a currency that people try to use something like debit card and use it like a payment and so forth which was the initial reason the bitcoin started and than institutional capital is bad for bitcoin because it is not looking for bitcoin to be a payment but for something like commodity. If you want to see bitcoin as something you can make money from than institutional capital is good for you because they will also try to look for bitcoin to be something to make money like gold or silver and at that they are capable of doing. So it all depends on what you want from bitcoin is it becoming a currency or a commodity.

Do you think price manipulation is not happening now ? Everyday we can see some coin being massively pumped/dumped. Even BTC has been facing this since a year now. We may or may not call it price manipulation but certainly the volatility is huge and the price dumps are huge as well. So if at all the institutional capital gives us a risk of price manipulation, let it be, at least there will be chances for every person to make money , albeit it won't happen according to me.

It will be bad if that institutional money will be use to manipulate the market. These investors are also vital to bitcoin's growth because they are also the reason for some big bullruns. Many institutional investors look for in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is its use as a safe haven when the world market is in trouble With global trade wars and some political alignments looming in the horizon, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies value as an investment is becoming more sought after. So I believe that these type of investors will do more good to the cryptocurrencies rather than bad.

Manipulation organizations are now a lot but sometimes it is also easy to go bankrupt because it has to dispute with other organizations. You know, with a decentralized market, the level of manipulation is always very high and so we should always be careful about investing and trading every day. and always have a stoploss order.

It seems to me that the entry of institutional investors into the cryptocurrency market is definitely a positive sign. This will add liquidity to the market and most likely the price of cryptocurrency will go up, because only big money can move the market up. If we act cautiously and intelligently, then I think that any small investor will also be able to capitalize on this growth, but the main thing is to go at the right time and then exit the market.

That is where you are wrong, because institutional capital will in all likelihood gobble up the small investors after the first huge pump. The temptation to sell at a relatively high price will just be too tempting for many small investors. As the price goes higher and higher more long-term hoarders will start dumping some more coins, until most coins shifted to the super rich investors.  ::)

We need to see the warning signs when the price suddenly shoot up and people starts to dump the coins and I predict that this might happen after we breached the previous ATH of $18 000+

when the price of BTC increases to $ 20k, it is also because these manipulators create it. when the price of BTC drops to $ 3k3, it is also due to these manipulating organizations.
But this was natural. Without them, the value of BTC will not increase as high as now. If the SEC joins and dissolves all of these organizations, I guarantee that there will be lots of traders losing money. simply because when these institutions withdraw capital, it will make the whole market go down because the price of the BTC will drop very sharply.
And no one will want to invest in BTC anymore because basically BTC is not the best coin. The transaction is very slow and the fee is very high.
so we should get used to being manipulated.

Depends on how they get into crypto to begin with. For example when they bitcoin in bulk and increase the price it always worries me because they are literally pumping the price but there is no way of knowing if they will dump it or not.

For example, if they could buy bitcoin all together at the same time but sell little by little everyday that could work. However if they invest the money into crypto infastructure that would be awesome, I would love to have couple billion dollars worth exchanges in each country doing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of profit everyday and dapps and ICO's and many other things basically making crypto space alive and pumping action because that would also result with good prices without any trouble of dumping coming up some day.

It will definitely create market manipulation, but at the end (when the market cap becomes high enough) it will bring more stability as more capitalization brings less chances of manipulation. Look at Forex, the most liquid market out there. How much cash do you need to move it in either direction just a few pips?

The SEC is not going to close the doors of services that adhere to KYC/AML regulations. They might close the services that are not regulated or those companies trading without approval.

There are legal and illegal manipulation in all markets and if you have enough goods or fiat to manipulate the price in your favour, then you will do that, I know maze farmers who are working together to manipulate the price of maze on the market and it is perfectly legal in my country.  ::)

Institutional capital is diffidently good for market because with institutional money we can expect more market capitalization and more new industries and new exposure markets will get

Institutional capital is necessary for a more stable and liquid market of cryptocurrency. More so better laws will be make that will make investing very friendly. I hope all hurdles are overcome and the big banks finally bow out.

well it depends how you look at it. In my opinion institutional investors are the big fish which could drive bitcoin become more popular and that means more investors and also more use cases which could turn out to push bitcoin price. I do also think institutional investors are long term investors that will make bitcoin grow slowly and also reduce the fluctuation.

Not to break out your positivity towards this possible scenario but I would tell you this that its really hard to believe

on where traditional money would purely switch to crypto since we do know that they are more focused or much preferred
to make investment into things like forex,stocks and indices.

Bitcoin is for all and not for one, but I believe institutions acquiring large sum of bitcoin has either the good or bad purpose for such investments. The good part is that some of the investments might be for setting up and integrating certain purpose for blockchain while the bad part is likely to be for personal gains and price manipulation regardless of the two reasons bitcoin adoption should be our main focus.

Institutional investors will be the BIG losers. They are only making early bitcoin investors rich.

The second sentence is true but not the first one. Big institutional investors have the power to MOVE the market at their will, and they are instantly drooling at markets with low cap where they can easily step in and step out at their convenience.

I am not sure what you are implying here, institutional investors will not invest unless they are certain that they can earn bigger profits than the rest of the markets and even if the initial investors become rich who cares if they are getting their profit  ::). If you look at any financial market early investors have undue advantage and they will be the biggest earners than the rest of the investors who came in late and there is nothing wrong in that and that is how the world revolves and if you miss the train there is nothing there to be done  :P.

Uuhm I think there is going to be both the advantages and the disadvantages. Institutions will help to increase the volume of trade for crypto, cause they will be investing and trading huge amounts of money and that means that the cryptocurrency market will be growing really fast in price. But my question is whether they are going to hold their capital in Bitcoin forever? Maybe one day there will be a better option for them and that means that they are going to leave Bitcoin for sure and go for something else, which will cause the market to fall and when it starts falling, smaller investors will start running from it as well, unless they are ready to bear the losses.

A time will come that their power will be limited, I mean when it comes to Bitcoin because for other coins, we will always have new projects that they can use their large funds to manipulate anyhow they like, but as for Bitcoin, the supply will become limited one day, and they will not have much quantity left for them to buy, and the little quantity left will be so damn expensive for them to accumulate.

At the time Bitcoin has limited supply, Bitcoin will be more useful for payment and also as store of value, but pending that time, I think they are still very useful and needed for us to always see the increase we need to make profit from our investment.

I don't think that's possible. You indirectly want crypto to replace fiat, even now the bank still opposes crypto. And I myself do not agree that later Crypto will be like that, surely it will have a lot of regulations and restrictions so there is no decentralization in crypto because everything is regulated.

I hope fiat and crypto can work together, and balance the world economy. Because both types of currencies have an important role in the world economy.

I hope the government has a middle ground so that they are still like their original nature. between centralization and decentralization. it will be the same if bitcoin loses its decentralized nature. so that the development of this technology can be appreciated without dropping the old system

We already in the digital age, though the compliance is still quite low now in some parts of the world due to their lack of exposure to technology advancement, but most of the developed countries are exposed to technology and internet technology is like a child’s play to every of their citizens, with this developed countries, it may be possible for cryptocurrency payment to replace fiat since they have the technology to run payment offline.

All needed is for many merchants to strictly go online and stop collecting fiat with the use of crypto atm, and I guess this is why developed countries are more threatened, but for the under developed countries, it will be impossible for them to accept crypto over fiat.

This is not new, they have been practicing this already, and the market is still doing fine.

Institutional capital is good but for them to have more control on the market is not good IMO.
I still believe that massive adoption is necessary so the price could not easily be manipulated, with institutional capital they have the power just like the whales and I'm afraid from time to time they can shake the market so it will dump and they'll buy.

Thus far, the market is pretty moving based on hype and FUD, but as it gets stronger, trends will certainly change and we need massive adoption for that.
Bitcoin will be not best suit as a good payment system since it's not fast and cheap, but it can be a good store of value.

I mean it is the corporations so it is always a bit of a risk for sure but at this stage of bitcoin how can you stop them.
Sometimes arguing about something you can't do anything about is both fun but also very useless, lets say institutional capital is very very bad for bitcoin, can you stop it? Can you slow it down? What can you do about it? Nothing. So why would we care about if it is good or bad if we can't do anything about it.

Maybe instead of focusing on the discussion of good or bad, we should instead shift our focus on how can we make it good. I have always liked the idea of acquisitions for example, if big corporations buy the smaller crypto ones and make it bigger and put more funding into it to get it to higher stage that would be good, maybe instead of buying bitcoin, we should help them buy the crypto companies instead.

Here you go again with you big theory here. As far as I know when CBoE and CME enters the markets, the price suddenly spike resulting to a all-time-high. But it wasn't that sustainable though, that's why they losses a big chunk of their investment specially coming 2018 with a long bear market. As far as making early investors rich, it's their advantage, they see Bitcoin's potential and it was realized in 2017, but we don't have to blame them though.

The market is being driven by speculation, and no matter the number of time they strike, it will not completely damage the market, but I don’t think a genuine financial institution will purposely come with the mind of destroying the market, in fact if not for some of these large financial institution, the whales may have killed interest of investors complete on cryptocurrency.

Financial institution with large capitalization which we usually refer to as bulls has been the ones balancing the equation and has given chance to so many people to understand how to play along with whales that their sole purpose is to pump the market and dump it.

People thinking like that guy are dumb and short sighted. You have to follow what smart money is doing, and they are accumulating even at current levels preparing for the next leg up.

If you worry about making early investors rich then you can't invest in anything, because by that logic you're always too late, whether it's a stock, property, bar of gold, an artwork, a watch, and so forth.

And then we should ask that guy what his definition of rich is. The amount he thinks you need to be rich might be pocket change for others. People here never fail to surprise me with their stupidity.

I think that at this moment the institutional money, its inclusion will be totally good for the market, because it is most likely that they enter in favor of the price so that it rises, that is, the big investors will raise the bitcoin price accordingly so that the majority of people enter LONG and so they can start taking profits as they are selling bitcoins, is a very good tactic, especially because what is generated is a total bullish trend, which is what is in the current phase .

If you are running those corporate institutions then the statement would be true :P , financial institutions deal with multi millions of dollars worth of investment and they have a dedicated team to monitor the market and take good decisions according to the market situation and these investments will aide the price of bitcoin as it will reach new levels but the issue is that they could manipulate the market as they are dealing in huge amounts, it is possible for them to determine when to sell off and crash the market and when to purchase and that is the biggest worry.

I don’t really know this for sure, but there are lots of people that keeps saying they wish for institutions to start investing their money in Bitcoin because they believe that institution money is going to help the price of Bitcoin to go higher. But one thing you should also know is that all these people that are saying all these are just saying for their personal purpose. They all just want institutions to invest their money in cryptocurrency because they believe that it is going to make the price of cryptocurrency to increase and they will use that opportunity to make lots of money.

Till a value it is okay , but you should remember that these institutions generally are more towards gaining their own profits therefore at the end you can never trust them to think good for the community as a whole.

If they hold a huge sum then price may sure sky rocket but they will use it for their own profits which might be a little bad for the market , I think till an extent it is for sure okay , but when it comes to long term investments we cannot trust them for sure.

It is dangerous to assume the institutional capital will come into bitcoin without expecting anything.

I mean we do expect a return and profits as well but we have no power over the politics and basically the world of law whereas the whales of the world do have that and if corporations come into bitcoin then they will bring all their power with them which is a great thing for all of us but if something bad happens and bitcoin hurts them then they will try to use all of their power to make that money back from the crypto world by any means necessary so it would hurt us as well.

Institutional money is not something we can afford to go against and fight right now, we are already volatile and fragile as it is and if we do that then we would be always in danger at any moment.

We are yet to see institutional investment in the bitcoin market and once there is a clarity regarding the market from the regulators we might see huge investment from these institution and they will invest to reap the profits and they will have the power to manipulate the market because of their huge investment and it will be a boon for early investors as the price of bitcoin will go through the roof and the volatility will be high.

With all sincerity, that is why many investors you see now are in the market, to make money, and if we have to wait for adoption, many of us might not be getting the profit we are getting now without some of these institutional investors to put in their money in large sum which increases the price of bitcoin.

Do you know what the total market cap of bitcoin is, imagine that the few average investors we have keeps dropping whatever they have little by little, do you think that the market cap would have been upto that, it is when institutional capital enters that market that it encourages some people too to put in their fund in large quantity which will jointly push the value of bitcoin up for people like you and I to make profit. So, if you see people wishing for these institutional capitals, what else would it be other than to make money.

When we talk of institutional capital, it does not necessary mean that they put in such fund for investment or wants it to increase, we have various institutions that will simply just use it to make payment, maybe they are moving large amount of money from one country to another, and they will have to buy lots of bitcoin.

This type of fund do not usually stay long in the market, because it goes through payment gateways, and those gateways are ready to convert it to fiat immediately it gets to them, but the thing it really helps is that it reduces the quantity of bitcoin left in the market, and we know that as the supply gets limited, demands become higher, and once demands becomes higher than the supply, the effect of this is that it will surge the value of bitcoin higher. So, that is why we really need institutional bitcoin users.

I'm not sure if Bitcoin is used as a currency now

From my perspective, Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies remains and will remain mostly a speculative asset. It is unlikely that we are going to see much interest from institutional investors any time soon. Really, what's in Bitcoin for them? It will be a free lunch and easy money for ordinary folks like you and me. But that has never been the case in the past and won't be in the future. In other words, "local" people tend to overestimate the importance of the whole crypto universe. It is small and insignificant (for big guns)

The Commodity Futures Trading Supervisory Board (BAPPEBTI) sets cryptocurrency as a commodity subject that can be traded on futures trading exchanges. Although the rules and procedures of trading are not completed, Bitcoin is projected to be the most possible reference to the crypto contract in the future.

As the world's most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is now arguably a cryptocurrency with a foundation of capable technology and has the world's greatest community. These reasons make the investors think, Satoshi Nakamoto's currency is potentially a reference to the future of crypto-futures trading.

That's not even so much about legal status of Bitcoin

As they say, you can take a horse to water but you can't make him drink. In the same manner, you can legalize Bitcoin completely but you won't be able to make people pay with it (unless you actually force them, e.g. via taxes). People are using cryptocurrencies for speculative purposes (and as a store of value, to a degree), but paying with Bitcoin for everyday things is like heating your home with banknotes (though it still remains an option)

2 years after this thread started and thankfully Bitcoin haven't yet completely collapsed. Thing is, we can't really easily stop institutions from buying bitcoins en masse, accessibility for all is on of the crypto's features.

We can get the government to legislate that companies only buy a certain maximum amount, etc., but do we really want to government to get even more involved?

In my personal opinion, we should thank these organizations. without them, we would not see the price of Bitcoin rising to $ 19k8 in 2017. without them, I think the crypto market is now only a few businesses really active. without them, no young millionaires will appear.
They really control the price of BTC but they are still on the right track and do not intend to destroy bitcoin. They are trying to raise its price every day.

Bitcoin is still more of a speculative assets this way because it has not yet been regulated, if bitcoin can get regulated, I think it will even be more beneficial to these institutional investors, and this institution will not only use it for investment purpose, but for digital payment purpose, which is the main goal of bitcoin, but I guess it will really takes lots of time for it to be regulated as the governments that is need to regulate it has not yet picked interest in it.

Anyway, their regulation is just to fast track the adoption rate and make it quickly become less speculative market, but without government regulation, as we gradually proceed in the usage of the technology by ourselves, a time will show up when bitcoin becomes a stable coin, and then it would be difficult to speculate it, once it becomes less speculative, institutions will tend to use it as means of evading task, and many more reason other than this.

I think it is not just about institutional capital but just basically whales. It doesn't matter if one person holds one billion dollar worth of bitcoin or a whole company holds it, as long as there is one entity that has too much bitcoin that is bad. I do not want rich people to get as much bitcoin as they can and collect all bitcoins in the world just like they did with dollars.

I want this space to be free from greed and hoarding, I want people with dollars to not just come in and buy as many bitcoins as they want and corner the market. They end up making bitcoin dance for them and do whatever they want with futures shorting and longs and they end up with more money basically winning money from the poor idiots who go against them. This should be a rich free zone if you ask me.

But it's a commodity to be acquired and the more money you have the more money you can spare in exchange for bitcoins.
I believe is what they do with the assets they hold that matter. We do not know how much for certain, bit Satoshi would definitely have a very large stash of bitcoins, but it's unlikely he'd take any action that would hurt the currency in the long run.
The Bitcoin network needs more enthusiasts

any capital ? what if thier capital comes from stealing , hacking , and any other illegal crimes and then they put the money on bitcoin ,  do you think its important or good ?  no thats bad but other bitcoin hodlers think that its still beneficial because the value of bitcoin will be up and old hodlers will get benefit the most  .

what about a big whale ? i think they are the same as a company or institution and they are also a group that compose of many members  but anyone can buy thier own bitcoin if they wanted to   .

I have always perceived large whales as an individual who privately owns cryptocurrency.  Although if you take into account the effect on the cryptocurrency market of cryptocurrency funds and user groups, they can be easily defined as big whales.  Apparently here I fully agree with you.  As for any type of capital to increase the capitalization of the cryptocurrency market, recently the words about the importance of the requirement to provide KYC have been heard very often.  In this way, you can get rid of funds obtained by criminal means.

Recently, information has come to my eyes, where analysts believe that 2019 will be the year when institutional capital changes the course of events on the cryptocurrency market.  There are a lot of examples, but first of all I want to mention the fact that even reluctantly, but still the authorities of many countries see the inevitability of legalizing cryptocurrency and therefore the negative on their part is weakening.  But I also want to draw attention to the fact that the popularity of cryptocurrency futures, derivatives and forwards is growing.  So we only need to wait for the "high point".

They are different, investors means they are gonna be here in crypto starting to run their business.
Big companies can integrate crypto in their payment system and that means institutional money to be in crypto and they are different from investors who sell when they are in profitable because they are here to help increasing the adoption with their influence.

   That`s why people think of Bitcoin as a store of value. Any capital is good for Bitcoin without a doubt, and I`m thinking that companies that buy Bitcoin they will not do that just
for short-term gains.
    When companies start to invest in Bitcoin it meas we are close to the full adoption. Huge money will flow into crypt-currencies, cause there will be not enough Bitcoins for everyone
and every company. They will have to buy some other crypto-currency!

Theory that large buy and sell actions cant destroy btc is BS. Only mining power over 50% can destroy BTC.

Large investment funds definitely are a good thing. More liquidity can do only good to financial markets.

It they will pump it - good, else - bad. thats simple

Although it has its own consequence,  i still believe that institutional investors investment will have a great effect on the adoption of cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology. This will cause other individual investors to see how reliable crypto is

i think that it is good, BTC needs more capital inflow to keep it on these levels and go higher, or to be sustainable
without fresh capital, BTC could be on these levels, but when some whale wants to go out, it will downslide, every time

Institutional money is great if it's going long. If this institutional money decides to short bitcoin we're gonna have a problem :D

Usually it's good because if a company invests it also makes a lot of noise in the media. They want others to hear about it and treat it like a bullish sign. There's at least 90% probability that when institutions enter they will pump prices.

Well, They play both roles, institutional capital has a very great advantage, and they also have a very great disadvantage. When they pump money into the market, it will surely increase the marketcapital of the market that they pump it to, and we know what happens to the value of such coins, those who had invested before they pump the money would have the chance to have some profit based on their own increase while those institutions makes money off those that would out of fomo start investing when they see such increase, which usually come with a very high dump, and this is where it has its own disadvantage, so it depend on which part we fall into, either to benefit from their own pump or suffer losses when they dump the coin into the market.

Its both a boon and a bane. You cannot decide on one side of the deal only, but look out for the other side as well. Its like a double edged sword.

These institutions are more of a predator group who look out for whale signals and create their own whale signals. They want people to be influenced about a movement and they would go against that movement to grab the cash from them. Its not something that is good for bitcoin in the long term but for the traders, yes they help pumping and dumping the prices and thus allow people to make a lot of profit.

It's not the volatility that scares them away but lack of regulation and a lot of hacks and disappearances. They need a backed and regulated exchange to invest. Maybe when something like BAKKT finally launches they will feel safe enough to enter with their money.

People from bakkt knew what was needed in the field: an exchange that has all the paperwork in order and a good cold storage.

I think this is a double sided sword simply because institutional investors will first be more interested in protecting their money which means introduction of a centralized ecosystem despite bitcoin operating in a decentralized manner.

But overall the benefits could be more than we could lose out from their presence, I guess we need these guys.

Institutional investors wants interests on their said investments, they want assurance that their money they invested would give them profit at a specified time, Bitcoin was not designed for this, it is volatile and no specific price, it is unpredictable and no one knows whats gonna happen if you invest on it. Institutional capital is big, they got money and power, it is a big help for Bitcoin in order to push it to another level. Currently some big names in institutional investments are researching crypto currencies, on how they could manage to extend their businesses along side crypto trading and the likes. If more and more money gets in the it could give motivation and the whales would play even harder,leaving Bitcoin to be in a bull state again.

The issue with bitcoin adoption is that many people have just been announcing it based on investment tool but not as a payment tool. When people hear investment, they either interpret it as a ponzi scheme that would scam them, or see it as a short term investment they need to quickly make, and this is one of the reasons why money easily leave the market because people are not there to just save their money in and stay or just put money there to use it for utility purpose.

Utility tool is the actually the major reason why cryptocurrency was even made to manifest in the first place,which on no account should we ever forget this, what can give us adoption is payment feature of it, and how secured transactions through it are secured.

Legalization is the wall street markets led to them being more stable and less pump and dump from happening. Unfortunately this good thing cannot happen to crypto and people should be more careful about what they are investing in. Whether it is some new coin or an old project.

Again the project owners never differentiate investors on the basis of volume of investment. All they do is run a telegram channel where they come once a month to blabber about "developments" going on for more than two years and no progress, waiting for more funds and so on. Basically all these ICOs and then STO and now the IEOs are covered up scams. But you cannot complain because there is no grievance forum. Just your money gone with the wind. Who is institutional there is least bothering them.

Depends on which institution it comes from. I mean we have seen some crypto companies get funding from angel investors so they can get bigger and better, that is a good institutional money for example, I would love to see huge companies invest or directly buy out these crypto companies to make them bigger and better.

However, if we are talking about huge corporations getting bitcoin and manipulating it however they want then unfortunately that is not really good for us since they can shape it the way they want. That is why you have to pick each individual investment and look if it is helping the crypto economy get bigger or smaller, if it helps it get bigger like angel investments than it is good but if its corporations manipulating the price then it is really bad.

Institutional capital is very good for Bitcoin, because it improves its credibility.

Many wealthy people are also more likely to invest if institutional capital is involved.

The instutional money is cheap money wich is produced by rate cuts.

The money is never been so cheap then now.
But even If the money is cheap... The bitcoin price Can move Only When Capital is invested into bitcoin through exchangers.



What we see right now that  the money is cheap and big Institutions investing big billions of dollars
Euros and other Fiat currencies!


Offcourse many of you think that If so much Capital is invested into Cryptocurrency market Why the Price of btc is Still Low???

The Reason, is the OTC.
RICH People who Got access to cheap money created from thin air are buying Up whole Cryptocurrency secretly without moving market prices!! 

To make retail investors to sell their Cryptocurrency their have placed laws and regulations to make You sell your Cryptocurrency to them with cheap price.

Once the instutions have accumulated all Cryptocurrency  the bull run will start.
And regulations will be soft again

OTC works like this.
Step one...
You sell your Cryptocurrency as retail investor or Cryptocurrency holder with cheap price.

Step two.
OTC sellers will transfer Cryptocurrency out of exchangers to private wallets.

Step 3

Private wallet holder will sell it to the large OTC customers.


Step 4
Bankers will make even bigger rate cuts,  cheap money is now for Everybody.


Governments will ban OTC  and offshore crypto Trading...

Only allowed to buy and trade crypto in your own country exchangers like coinbase.


Last Step.


Then the party will Begin  investors have cheap money Everybody will start investing into Bitcoin again.


This will make crypto to the Moon.
The OTC big investors will sell their Cryptocurrency to the retail average joe!! 

Since bitcoin has a scarce supply. Institutional money helps a lot in price of bitcoin. Actually, every investment in regards with bitcoin helps it to grow. Bitcoin is a volatile coin and it raise if there are many whales entering the market. That is why we need a support of the people and treat bitcoin as a new means of payment and currency.

yes all return to the confidence of each investor in investing and needed if indeed with the capital that will be issued for the crypto currency it can bring benefits to investors and in my opinion the development depends on the investor itself investment with capital will certainly benefit

We can't stop institutional money from flowing their money in crypto, if they see some potential, they would surely invest in.
Will it be good or bad? I can't tell right now but I believe its' good because institutional money helps to bring adoption in the market and that is all we need in order for bitcoin to be a mainstream currency and we will see some great development from confident capitalist in the crypto space.

Bitcoin and altcoins will live together, of course those altcoins who are legit will survive despite the fact that they are struggling now and I also think that in time, people will not only focus investing their money in bitcoin but altcoins as well.

Institutions are unsentimental. Yes they have a lot of money and can move the price upwards. But they are unlikely to be hodlers. If they need to liquidate and bitcoin is the easiest thing to sell, they'll sell. They also won't be shy about taking profits if bitcoin makes a big move upwards.

So it's a double-edged sword.

IMO bitcoin would be safer if loads of little people bought into it.

While I'm happy and optimistic that the price will just go to the moon, I don't agree with the statement that institutional money will bring in more volatility. In fact, I believe the opposite will happen and bitcoin and crypto will become more stable the more institutions invest in it. The thing is, institutional money means it's harder for crypto to get manipulated because malicious actors will need more money just to make the price move, it's a safety net of it's own.

institutional didnt bring negative impact only.they just try to add market capitalization although sometime they ofte  use their resources to make market crash and takw their own advantages.but in other sight, when institutional coming to crypto market, its means they judge crypto market was worthed to invest.and hype will coming after their review.

Definitely it's a good thing. there is no way to solve bitcoin volatility unless somebody wanted to invest a lot of money to stabilize the price, buying bitcoin when the price relative to a particular fiat currency goes below the target, and selling bitcoin when the price goes above the target. Without such a stabilizing force, bitcoin will remain volatile while it is in the early stages of adoption and demand is fluctuating and ultimately unknown. when more institutional investors come to the Bitcoin market, we should see volatility decrease, and this problem will be solved soon. Hence, institutional investors help a greater adoption with their funds.

All of these are possible, and it could be happening right now, without us knowing it, we know how this corporate and institutions works, they are double face, they want profit and they also want to protect their interest, but Bitcoin is for everyone we cannot stop them from joining the bandwagon, they might also try to create their own coins, while hoarding the top coins in the market, they can do this because they are capable.

the current situation of bitcoin is very good and has a lot of support because you have to know that a lot of investors have prepared their money to buy bitcoin capital and there will be a halving event that I believe can make the price of bitcoin very expensive, so just wait in 2020 for sure the price of bitcoin can make many people surprised.

If institutional can bring positive effect for bitcoin maybe better for for bitcoin at the future, but if institutional give bad thing for bitcoin we do not need them. Many institutional want to make bitcoin become down and lower price where investor left asset assets from bitcoin to other investment way, if can bring light for bitcoin at the future will positive way for bitcoin and altcoin.

I have seen a lot being said about these institutions and their plans with bitcoin. Some have said that with institutions the price of bitcoin will turn stable and will no longer stagger from one side to another, we all know for sure that bitcoin is highly volatile. And from what I have observed, there are people who want the institution to start investing in Bitcoin because they know it for sure that the price will go to the moon and will make lots of profit, that's why a lot of people wanted Bakkt, but they were disappointed (though I have seen news that Bakkt will gain lots of investment soon).

If institutions start to invest in bitcoin there is going to be an increase, and I don't think any of these institutions are ready to invest for the long term, they will even be the worst competition, none of them would leave their investment in bitcoin seeing that the price is falling.

Institutional capital is good and bad for Bitcoin, in my sense. It may increase Bitcoin's value, opportunities, area of work, and also can decrease the stability of Bitcoin. It can volatile it's the price as many ups and downs. Although this is a massive change to Bitcoin itself, this change can be brought about under certain conditions so that Bitcoin's losses can be minimized and in this age of globalization, Bitcoin will take on a new form.

Generally, institutional capital in the cryptocurrency market is a big investment in cryptocurrency. In any case, this has a very positive effect on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, because investors are investing their funds, even despite the great volatility of cryptocurrencies. It is noted that a significant part of the institutional capital directed to cryptocurrency comes precisely from the European Union, since there are more loyal laws for investing in cryptocurrency and, apparently, a situation is created that other assets bring less income and therefore investors are interested in the cryptocurrency market. In addition, one should take into account the fact that large investments in Bitcoin will increase capitalization, which will lead to a significant rise in the price of Bitcoin.

if indeed the institution firms will join the BTC, then it is certain the price will be higher, and BTC will become a commodity of trading assets. because if only as a transaction tool, the price is too volatile. the potential for a dump and pump is suddenly too large

I don't know if there is a person who can be able to manipulate bitcoin's price movement. There is a thread who discuss how much money that you can increase/decrease bitcoin price just 1% you can read here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5265030.0

Yeah you need $90 M that can be able to just manipulate 1% in bitcoin price movement, meaning it would be hard to do unless there is a person or some billionare who join together to manipulate bitcoin's price movement and I think it is impossible. As for the volatility price of bitcoin, I don't know I really believe that the future market will make bitcoin price become stable.

Well, that shouldn't be the right way to solve the problem of extreme price volatility.  
There are safe and decentralized ways to minimize volatility that will not rely on centralized entities.   Imagine a group of foreign cells regulating the human body from the outside. That's how cryptos hope to solve problems in their decentralized networks.

It is impossible to make Bitcoin stable through currency exchanges

As you notice correctly, some billionaire can easily manipulate the prices of the whole cryptocurrency market (in fact, manipulating Bitcoin alone will suffice for most practical purposes). So are we stuck in an endless self-enforcing and self-sustaining volatility and manipulation loop? A short answer is, there's no definitive answer. A longer one is, it depends of further developments

On the one hand, if Bitcoin remains only an asset for speculative gains (which it is at the moment), manipulation along with volatility is not going anywhere. On the other, however, if most bitcoins are used as a currency (like fiat), market manipulation will become prohibitively expensive as no one will be selling coins below their true value and no one buying above that value as determined by circulation and the entirety of goods and services which can be bought with it

I agree that institutional capital is good for Bitcoin, especially in terms of adoption, however I don't think that will influence the Bitcoin's volatility. Bitcoin is not functioning as traditional currencies and volatility is part of it's functioning, Bitcoin is not stable but its nature. No amount of investment will make Bitcoin to become stable currency.

Bitcoin is like a product to which its value will depend on the demand of its consumers. Institutional investment is all about having money to purchase like real estate property to which it is more solid form of investment compared to bitcoin. However, it needs a huge capital which only few could afford to do it. Besides even if one can afford to invest in real estate property but still bitcoin has the edge of earning huge compared to institutional investment but it could be more risky than institutional investment.

I Think wall street will soon all invest in btc
Cryptocurrency is unregulated but Once the Wall street has the big chunk of cryptocurrency the regulations will be placed.

I think fiat and Not Only fiat but Even stock market Not survive, so cryptocurrency is new thing and btc as a sacred asset is Perfect hedge.

That's not what institutional investment is.  Institutional investors are simply people who manage large pools of assets on behalf of a group, like a sovereign wealth fund or pension managers.  When seeking capital, companies like to target institutional investors because of the large pools of capital they have and are looking for investment.  The amount of institutional investment happening in crypto is extremely small.

And why is it so small?

Right, because all those sovereign wealth fund and pension managers cannot invest in cryptocurrencies as their investment declarations don't list crypto as a legitimate asset for investment. Aside from that, you wouldn't really want your pension money invested in a speculative asset with nearly zero real life use. From their point of view (and it is not very far from how things stand in practice), crypto is just one big casino. Would you play with your life savings in a casino? Even if you would, most people wouldn't

For me, institutional capital is very good for Bitcoin, as we all know institutional firms have a large capital. Imagine they are going
to buy Bitcoin in large quantities, I believe the Bitcoin price will fly high. And there will be volatile prices, We must immediately use
this for taking profit. It's no longer a theory that they will dump Bitcoin after buying large amounts of Bitcoin. We as small fish must
be able to sell the Bitcoin we have before this happens. And it should be in the long run if more institutional firms enter the Bitcoin
market, it can have a good effect on Bitcoin. It's not even possible Bitcoin can truly be a global currency.

Many times it was said here, bitcoin is here where it is (at current price and popularity) because of the people, but next wave that will push the price very high will be from money invested by institutions and corporations. Any capital that comes into bitcoin is good, it will boost entire market, institutional, from corporation, or anyone else is good. More money into crypto is good for all of us, as long as demand rising, there're more chances for price to sky rocket!

his is really why we need bitcoin to be more of a usable currency than just a speculative asset as that would give them more chance to take hold of the market strongly and be able to control it however they wish and like. These are guys who have been living their lives manipulating the fiat system, what makes us think the same will not happen in this scenario with bitcoin. I am still sure what we are experiencing right now is institutional played, so the answer to the OP's question is glaring from what we are seeing in the market presently.

Bitcoin is satisfying to be an instant liquid currency and also satisfying to be an asset like gold.
But currently, the bitcoin market capitalization is too small compared to other currencies or assets, so bitcoin is easier to manipulate, especially with bitcoin derivatives such as margin, future, ETF. is riskier in investment.

What is the meaning of "satisfying" here? Liquidity in bitcoin is still very difficult to attain. Many countries dont allow it to be transacted and some have been banning the use of it. Fiat is more liquid here.

Bitcoin should also not be compared to any precious metal. They are many difference between the two. Price is not a point is comparison of assets, rather the asset class is.

Correct statement but wrong conclusion. Manipulation exists in every market, just that we dont see it clearly. It is a half-truth to sway on that motion but without volatility there would not be any interest in trading an asset.

Institutional capital helps manipulate bitcoin - it is possible but not confirmed and neither provable. This should not matter to retail investors though.

What is lacking is regulation but that is a topic for another discussion.

But those are niche products to trade on. Not every exchange allows those. Moreover ETFs are not yet prominent in BTC yet.

.

Couldn’t agree more. I would not my retirement assets invested in risky assets that are nothing better than a pure gamble. The problem with crypto is it doesn’t create cash flow and it never will, which means the only way you can ever make money on it is to sell it to someone else for more than you paid for it. Hard pass.

Yes, before there are some of the countries don't like Bitcoin and they banned it as well, but as time goes by there are also some country who banned Bitcoin revoke it, were right they've adapted the concept system that bitcoin has. Meaning, We cannot deny that some of the institution capitalist are investing into bitcoin too because they something about it wherein some didn't see it.