Most investors still think bitcoin is a bubble

Wed, Apr 14, 2021, 3:27 AM 2 min read

The oldest crypto critique just won't go away.

Over the last decade, every critique in the book has been thrown at the cryptocurrency space.

But none is more pervasive than dismissing the excitement around these assets by simply saying — "It's a bubble."

And yet, this is exactly what Bank of America's latest global fund managers' survey found most of the respondents think when it comes to bitcoin.

Among the survey's 200 respondents with more than $500 billion in assets under management, some 74% in the firm's April survey said the digital coin is a bubble. Meanwhile, just 16% said bitcoin is not a bubble and only 10% sat the question out.

Nearly 3 out of 4 investors surveyed by Bank of America say that Bitcoin is currently a bubble. (Source: BofA Global Research)

Wednesday morning, the price of bitcoin (BTC-USD) traded to a record high north of $64,000. Since the start of 2021, its price has more than doubled.

Later Wednesday, Coinbase (COIN) is set to debut on the public market in a direct listing. This is a coronating event for the crypto space that should, to our minds, put to rest any doubts investors have over whether crypto is here to stay.

Like any financial asset, people can and will argue over what the "correct" value is for any one thing at any one time. And a certain reading of BofA's survey results suggests only this: 74% of respondents think the price of bitcoin is too high.

But critiquing the cryptocurrency's price, or dismissing it as a bubble, is often an underhanded way of gesturing towards the more pointed critiques of the asset class: That it's for criminals, that it will accelerate climate change, that it's an outright Ponzi scheme. A critique that says, in short, crypto is a fraud.

Meanwhile, banks ranging from Goldman Sachs (GS) to JPMorgan (JPM) alongside financial services firms like Visa (V), PayPal (PYPL), and Square (SQ), have all deepened their commitments to the space. Coinbase joining the ranks of publicly-traded companies only further builds out the financial industry's crypto infrastructure.

And while the role crypto does or does not play in anyone's portfolio is a decision for them and their advisor, that this asset class continues to grow in import and interest for the traditional asset management space is not in dispute.

No matter how many investors think the price suggests a bubble.

By Myles Udland, reporter and anchor for Yahoo Finance Live. Follow him at @MylesUdland