Bitcoin Is ‘Far From Being a Bubble,’ Pantera’s Morehead Says
The former executive at Tiger Management said its new venture fund, the Pantera Fund V, is looking to invest in a number of assets in the blockchain sector including private tokens, special opportunities like locked Solana tokens from the FTX’s estate
Bitcoin’s record-breaking rally may only be getting started, according to one of the earliest US professional investors in the original cryptocurrency.
“People totally thought we were crazy in 2013,” said Dan Morehead in an interview, referring to when Pantera Capital Management launched its Bitcoin fund more than 11 years ago. “There are still a lot of people very negative. And that’s why I’m so bullish. So many people are still negative. It’s far from being a bubble.”
That fund has generated a life-long return of 132,118% since July 2013, the founder and managing partner of Pantera wrote in a letter to investors on Tuesday. Morehead also predicts that Bitcoin’s price could eventually reach $740,000, as the cryptocurrency’s “15-year regulatory headwinds are now turning into tailwinds.” Morehead cited the increasingly crypto friendly approach of US President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration as one of the biggest catalysts for growth.
Pantera’s original Bitcoin fund is considered to be the first to provide US investors exposure to the cryptocurrency. When it was launched in 2013, Bitcoin’s price was at $74. It traded at around $92,000 on Tuesday, after flirting with $100,000 for the first time at the end of last week. Bitcoin has surged around 120% this year.
The former executive at Tiger Management said its new venture fund, the Pantera Fund V, is looking to invest in a number of assets in the blockchain sector including private tokens, special opportunities like locked Solana tokens from the FTX’s estate. Bloomberg first reported in April that the fund aims to raise $1 billion, which Morehead confirmed. Pantera’s last Blockchain Fund raised about $1.25 billion more than two years ago.
“We were fortunate to have just raised the big fund right before” crypto’s industry-wide blowups in 2022, Morehead said. “And so we’ve had a lot of capital invest for the last two or three years. And it’s great because all the generalist firms have left the industry. And so we’re only competing with a few specialist blockchain firms. And so we get much better prices, much better deals.”
Morehead, who started his career as a trader at Goldman Sachs, said he views Trump’s proposal for a US Bitcoin stockpile as “rational.”
Holding gold in US government’s reserves is “an incredibly crazy way to store wealth,” he said. “If they put some of that money in Bitcoin, that is a fantastic way to have a reserve currency holding and I think it’s going to appreciate a lot over the years.”
