Retirees in the United States, who collectively hold nearly $6 trillion in public pension assets, are increasingly looking at Bitcoin ETFs as a potential investment opportunity, according to one analyst. Although the new spot Bitcoin ETFs have broken inflow records since their launch in January, they have yet to show their full potential, according to the analyst.
Darius Tabai, co-founder of decentralized exchange Vertex, believes the true power of these ETFs will emerge when millions of people with retirement accounts are exposed to these products. He predicts that once this happens, “coins will be bought continuously.”
Tabai, the former global head of metals trading at Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse, explained that ETFs tend to absorb assets. “Unless they are very poorly managed, they only go in one direction,” he said. However, after two months of aggressive inflows, most funds experienced days with no inflows and even net outflows in some cases.
According to Tabai, this is the nature of Wall Street. “People don't distribute their capital all at once,” he said. Financial advisors are unlikely to advise their clients to invest a large percentage of their money in BTC. Instead, if a portfolio is already performing well, advisors may encourage clients to allocate 1% to 5% of their funds into Bitcoin and scale over time.
“Once someone sets this and presses the button, this order will buy forever,” Tabai said. “When you get millions of people to do this, that's when you see the real impact. Naturally, this takes time.”
Tabai drew parallels with the launch of a gold ETF in 2004, which he said was vastly underestimated by investors at the time. Despite initial skepticism, gold has risen nearly 370% in almost seven years. Today, the largest gold ETF has over $61 billion in assets, and the price of the commodity is almost 500% higher than when the ETFs launched.
Tabai argued that Bitcoin is in a similar situation today.
*This is not investment advice.