Bitcoin (BTC) is “being embraced” by the US Government, and the regulatory future for the asset is bright, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said during a discussion at the Bitcoin 2022 conference on Thursday.
According to him, people used to say about bitcoin that it is “is so good someone is going to ban it.” Now, however, the President of the United States has “given the green light” to bitcoin with the introduction of his Executive Order on crypto in March, Saylor said.
“There has been a 180-degree turn in the last 12 months,” Saylor said during the discussion with Ark Invest’s CEO Cathie Wood at Bitcoin 2022 in Miami.
“Bitcoin is being embraced” by the government, and both congressmen and senators are interested in it and are working on “figuring it out,” the major BTC investor said.
The MicroStrategy CEO also said that he believes bitcoin is a “risk-off asset” and a safe haven, and that this is something more investors will realize over time.
It’s a safe haven from an ethical standpoint for politicians, from a technical standpoint for technical people, and from a financial standpoint for investors, Saylor said.
Similarly, Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, who is also investing in BTC, agreed that bitcoin is now safe from a regulatory standpoint.
“The SEC has declared that bitcoin is not a security,” Wood said, referring to earlier statements from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about its definition of bitcoin as an asset.
However, she added that the SEC is “talking pretty aggressively” about other cryptoassets, hinting that many altcoins could fall under securities regulations.
Speaking about the Bitcoin network from a technical standpoint, Wood stressed the importance of the Lightning Network, which she called “the missing link” needed for BTC to be a medium of exchange and “dominate long-term.”
“I think the number of [Lightning Network] channels is going to explode,” Wood said, referring to Cash App’s Lightning-related announcement today.
She added that liquidity on the Lightning Network has already gone up 10-fold in US dollar terms and 4-fold in BTC terms over the last year. However, that is “just a taste” of what’s going to happen when Cash App makes it “so much easier to use the Lightning network.”
In conclusion, the major BTC and tech investor reiterated her firm’s bitcoin price target of USD 1m per BTC by 2030, which she said is based on the idea that 2.5% of institutional assets will be allocated to bitcoin.
“That’s how institutional investors work, they tip toe in. In the 70s, it was real estate, in the 80s, it was emerging markets, and now I think it’s going to be crypto, starting with bitcoin,” Wood said.
Source: Cryptonews