Investment firm sees huge jump for bitcoin

Cryptocurrency expected to double to $100,000 by end of year

Michael Novogratz, the founder of cryptocurrency investment firm Galaxy Digital, sees bitcoin more than doubling to $100,000 (U.S.) by the end of the year, spurred higher as more companies allow customers to use the token to make purchases.

The coin jumped to an alltime high of $44,795 Monday after Tesla Inc. said it had bought $1.5 billion of the token with corporate cash reserves. The company also said it will allow customers to buy its electric cars with the coins.

“You’re going to see every company in America do the same thing,” Novogratz said Monday in a Bloomberg Television interview.

“Between corporations adding bitcoin to treasury funds and the city of Miami also considering adding the cryptocurrency to its balance sheet, “It doesn’t have to be a lot. It’s the messaging that matters, you’re seeing the herd here, and it’s coming.”

The long-time crypto enthusiast and investor also speculated that other companies would consider moving excess reserves into bitcoin, perhaps as a hedge against inflation or against a falling dollar.

Novogratz said Tesla CEO Elon Musk was a “genius” in his decision to “listen to the people,” or weighing the interests of a rising generation. “One of the things that connect bitcoin, and Tesla and solar stocks and ESG investing is millennials and Gen Z, young people are buying into the future, and they see cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin and other cryptos — as their currencies,” he said.

MicroStrategy Inc.’s Michael Saylor, among the first to put cash into the cryptocurrency, said in September that the Federal Reserve’s relaxing of its inflation policy helped convince him to invest the enterprisesoftware maker’s reserves.

But Bitcoin’s famed volatility — it plunged 25 per cent in two days last month — has made it difficult for usually risk-averse CFOs to make it a regular part of corporate treasuries.

“Now you got the biggest, the wealthiest man in the world and one of the biggest stories doing it,” said Novogratz, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader and hedge fund manager with Fortress Investment Group.

“You’ve got to think other CFOs and CEOs are saying, ‘What should we be doing?’ ”