Brett Tejpaul, Head of Institutional Coverage at Coinbase
Quote:
"Full-scale adoption could happen sooner than we think." - Brett Tejpaul
Key Takeaways:
The development of Bitcoin custody, in a manner that is safe and trusted, has been a huge development for the ecosystem and enabling institutions to participate.
Pension funds and endowments were early adopters to the space.
US Banks are gearing-up. Brett expects that large US Banks will be involved with cryptocurrencies before year-end.
Corporate clients are recognizing the new macro reality and are accordingly positioning their firms. It’s forcing them to explore and have conversations about introducing Bitcoin to their balance-sheets.
We are now seeing certain insurance companies accepting premiums in USDC and stable-coins.
US Bitcoin ETF will result in wide-scale mass adoption. Unsure of the timing.
Discussions with investors - one year ago, 99% of the conversation was focused on Bitcoin. Today, it is now 80/20% with Ethereum being discussed.
85 Central Banks around the world are doing exploratory work on digital currencies. Next progression is for sovereign wealth funds to add Bitcoin as a store of value. He wouldn’t be surprised if this happened sometime soon.
The train has left the station. Brett does not see anything that can now stop full-scale adoption, which could happen sooner than we think.
Our Take:
This was an insightful talk to get a view from the front-lines, as Brett speaks to institutional investors daily. You get the sense that no institution wants to get left behind, however, it does take time for them to get onboarded into the Bitcoin ecosystem. This onboarding is a multi-step process, but includes institutions have alignment from their boards, shareholder communication strategy, risk management analysis, understanding of custodial services, etc. Nonetheless, companies like Coinbase are providing full-service solutions to enable clients to tackle each of these head-on.
https://www.salt.org/talks/library/brett-tejpaul-206