Cryptocurrency Today: Bloomberg’s Eric Balciunas says Zcash could dilute political and cultural support for Bitcoin, and BlackRock clients aren’t factoring Bitcoin’s global payments potential into their investment thesis. Meanwhile, Peter Schiff says OG’s selling into “weaker” hands will make future economic downturns more severe.
Bloomberg ETF analyst warns Zcash risks ‘splitting the vote’ against Bitcoin
Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, warned that Zcash could have a negative impact on Bitcoin at this critical moment.
In a recent post on X, Balciunas said that Zcash (ZEC) has “the feel of a third-party candidate like Gary Johnson or Jill Stein,” and argued that promoting a separate privacy coin risks “polarizing the vote” at a time when Bitcoin (BTC) needs unified political and cultural support.
Balciunas’ comments come as the Bitcoin vs. Zcash debate heats up. Timestamp founder and CEO Arman Megerian dismissed the idea that BTC supporters are leaning towards Zcash. “I don’t know a single Bitcoin Maxi who thinks about Zcash,” he wrote to X.
Jan3 founder Samson Mo echoed this sentiment, claiming that Bitcoin’s biggest players are “just looking at Zcash to roll their eyes.”
BlackRock’s Bitcoin clients aren’t ‘underwriting’ global payments litigation
Robbie Michnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, said most of the world’s largest asset management firm’s clients do not consider using Bitcoin for daily payments when deciding whether to invest in assets.
“For us, and for most clients today, I don’t think they’re really taking on that global payments network case,” Mitchnick said in a podcast interview published on YouTube on Friday.
“This is probably like a money-out-of-the-money option value upside,” Mitchnick said.
He said this doesn’t mean Bitcoin won’t eventually become widely adopted for payments, but called the scenario “a little more speculative” and stressed that investors are much more focused on “digital gold” or the store of value theory.
“There’s a lot of work to be done in terms of scaling Bitcoin, Lightning, etc. to make that possible,” he said. In August 2024, Galaxy Research suggested that most Bitcoin Layer 2 scaling networks, particularly “rollups,” may not be sustainable in the long term, despite their popularity as a promising way to make Bitcoin payments cheaper, faster, and decentralized.
Bitcoin’s rotation into “weak” hands will make future drawdowns even more severe: Peter Schiff
According to gold advocate Peter Schiff, future Bitcoin market declines will be more severe as Bitcoin (BTC) moves from strong hands to “weak” hands due to continued selling by long-term holders, also known as “OGs.”
Schiff is one of Bitcoin’s most vocal critics, continuing to argue that it is overvalued and doomed to failure. In a Saturday X post, he said:
“Some argue that after many years, BTC is finally having its IPO moment, now that there is enough liquidity for OG to cash out. I agree, but for BTC to move this much from strong to weak hands not only means more float, but more future declines.”
The comments come as investors are concerned that the crypto market has weakened significantly and that the next bear market has already begun.
