Part of it is we have a great team. We work really hard. But I'll be honest, part of it is just crypto is such an amazing space. And so it is so much less risky than the press, you know, kind of makes it seem. Um, and you know, so that's why I think, you know, getting exposure, you know, now versus 5 years from now is still so important.
Let's get to the first guest of the day, a pioneer who launched one of the first crypto funds in the US back in 2013. Pantera Capital's founder and managing partner, Dan Morehead. Dan, hello.
Hey, thanks for having me.
It's great for you to be here. How are you doing?
I'm great. It's a great conference.
It is a great conference. Now, Sam and I were just talking about markets this morning. Sea of red out there. I love that we have you at the desk as our first guest because Pantera first launched its crypto fund in the US when Bitcoin was just at $65 a coin. You've been through the ups and downs. What should folks, advisers, institutions, and even retail traders who are looking at what's happening in the markets and trying to make sense of it before they maybe dive in for the first time, what should they be thinking about?
Sure. Hey, I'll admit if we sat down on New Year's Day 2025 and listed out all of the very positive developments that would happen with the SEC and Congress passing stable coin legislation and all those things and you would have said, 'Hey, crypto up or down?' I would have said up and crypto was down 9% last year. I think it's a function of this hype cycle. Crypto is going to change the world and anything that important gets a little too hypy and it also does have a four-year cycle. And when I got into this in 2011 someone mentioned it to me and I was like, 'Hey, if we all know it's going to happen it can't happen right?' But it does happen each time. And after Terra and FTX and Bitcoin was at about 20,000, we did all our work on previous cycles and said Bitcoin would peak at $171,452 on August 11th, 2025. And it did that day, which is pretty freaky. But one of our LPs said, 'Hey, congrats. Great call, but doesn't that mean it's going to go down tomorrow?' I was like, 'Oh, no. This time's different.' You know, everyone says that this time's different.
Unfortunately, it wasn't different. And in hindsight, I think the factors were there was a huge demand from two publicly listed things, ETFs and digital asset treasury companies combined for over 100 billion of net buying and that drove the market up a lot and it stopped in September and the market sat back. What I would say to your the long answer to your short question is you got to view crypto as a multi-decade trade and it's going to change the world but not overnight. And so only invest as much as you can afford to withstand a pretty, you know, severe downdraft, but hold it. You know, hold it for five or 10 years. Anyone that's ever held Bitcoin for four years has doubled their money or more. So, you know, just put on the amount you can hold and hold it.
Dan, you mentioned the ETFs. I think about the average price entering ETFs for Bitcoin, as an example, is about 7,000 higher than it is right now. So, most people are kind of underwater at the moment. But I think to someone who has had to manage the volatility up and down and obviously in the great trajectory of up for you long term, how do you just day by day look at it? Is it something that you get down about or something you're just like I know it's going to happen. It's just about when?
Yeah. So first couple cycles totally sweating at every cycle. Now I've just seen this so many times and still so few people actually own exposure to this that we're still in the very earliest stages. So for people that are 7,000 price points underwater, you know, just hold it. Bitcoin as a proxy for our industry has almost doubled every year for the 13 years we've been doing this. You know, if you hang out for like 6 months, it should be back in the money. And you know, 5 or 10 years from now, way higher.
I got to ask you this because it was very popular on CoinDesk. I talked to Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan recently. He said Bitcoin could be $6.5 million within the next 20 years. And now that we're talking about long-term holdings, you don't have to give us a projection if you don't want to, but what do you think when I say that?
Yeah. So, that's the greatest part of the trick is like everyone coming up with an even bigger number for their price. We forecast three orders of magnitude already. I think you go up a fourth order of magnitude, but once you get there, you're starting to get to be maybe 10% of assets in the world and things like that. So, I think a number a little bit below 6 million gets you to $750,000 for Bitcoin gets you to kind of starting to be real in the financial markets. It'd be hard to go another 10x from there.
Dan, I want to get your take on, you know, you guys had Bitdeer last week that you guys were early supporters of. You've been in Circle, Amber Group, Gemini. It feels like the last six months has been an amazing time in public markets for crypto. Do you think we're going to see that trend continuing?
Well, part of the answer is the SEC had restricted IPOs for so long and so we are seeing kind of a pent-up pressure that's been building and so we probably won't have the same pace. Pantera's had five IPOs in the last four months. We're probably not gonna have five every four months going forward, but it is a huge milestone for our industry because all those investors like Bitdeer also went public recently. I've known Mike Kagny for 25 years. All that money can now get recycled and that's the huge thing. Once companies go public, the original investors can then get their cash back, reinvest in new entrepreneurs who are going to bring the next wave of innovation. And it's really important for our industry.
