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Deutsche Bank predicts crypto freefall to continue while Binance put up resilient face
A Deutsche Bank report has predicted more gloom for the cryptocurrency space even as the CEO of the biggest exchange, Binance, tried to firefight it with assurance at a DIFC Fintech Week event in Dubai.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the industry will overcome price drops, with bitcoin now trading around the $20,000 mark from a high of $68,000. But if an evaluation from the leading German bank is to be believed, the crypto market is facing mounting pressures and the freefall is expected to continue, although it did predict a 28,000 price for bitcoin by the end of the year.
Several cryptocurrencies were on the red on Thursday, with the global market cap falling by 1.71 percent to $889.81 billion as of 9:55am. Bitcoin was down 0.85 percent to $19,982.20 over the last 24 hours, while Ethereum fell 3.94 percent to $1,089.12.
In a report on Wednesday, DB said that it is unlikely for prices to stabilise, citing that there are no “common valuation models like those within the public equity system”. The market is also highly fragmented, it added.
“Some cryptocurrencies may drop in prices, and some projects may fail, but the industry will stay,” said Zhao, the founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, in a pre-recorded message at the Fintech Week on Tuesday.
“In 2000, the dot com bubble saw many companies going bust, but the dot com technology (Internet) went on to survive.”
Zhao’s comments came just a few days after he announced that Binance has 2,000 positions for hiring, a sharp contrast to a slew of job cuts by companies operating in the digital currency space.
Recently, Bitcoin tumbled to a new 18-month low, dragging smaller tokens down with it and spurring a sharp fall in the digital currency market sparked by crypto lender Celsius freezing customer withdrawals.
Zhao went on to say in his speech that blockchain is a proven technology and it is not a bubble that will pop.
“Many different innovations are coming into the crypto space. There are also failures in this industry, but failures are important in this industry. Failures allow us to learn from them and improve,” he said.
Zhao said that decentralised finance (DeFi), which includes now cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) enabled by blockchain technology, has been around for years, and it is going to stay.
“In the next 5 to 10 years, decentralised finance (DeFi) could be bigger than centralized finance (CeFi). That’s why we are making heavy investments in this area,” he said.
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