The
tumble in cryptocurrencies that erased nearly $500 billion of market
value over the past month could get a lot worse, says Goldman Sachs
Goldman
Sachs’ Steve Strongin was more upbeat about the blockchain technology
that underlies digital currencies, saying it could help improve
financial ledgers. Photo: AFP
Hong Kong: The
tumble in cryptocurrencies that erased nearly $500 billion of market
value over the past month could get a lot worse, according to Goldman
Sachs Group Inc.’s global head of investment research.
Most
digital currencies are unlikely to survive in their current form, and
investors should prepare for coins to lose all their value as they’re
replaced by future competitors, Goldman’s Steve Strongin said in a
report dated 5 February. While he didn’t posit a timeframe for losses in
existing coins, he said recent price swings indicated a bubble and that
the tendency for different coins to move in lockstep wasn’t rational.
“The
high correlation between the different cryptocurrencies worries me,”
Strongin said. “Because of the lack of intrinsic value, the currencies
that don’t survive will most likely trade to zero.”
Today’s
digital coins lack long-term staying power because of slow transaction
times, security challenges and high maintenance costs, according to
Strongin. He said the introduction of regulated bitcoin futures hasn’t
addressed those concerns and he dismissed the idea of a first-mover
advantage—noting that few of Internet bubble’s high fliers survived
after the late 1990s.
“Are any of today’s cryptocurrencies going
to be an Amazon or a Google, or will they end up like many of the
now-defunct search engines? Just because we are in a speculative bubble
does not mean current prices can’t increase for a handful of survivors,”
Strongin said. “At the same time, it probably does mean that most, if
not all, will never see their recent peaks again.”
Strongin
was more upbeat about the blockchain technology that underlies digital
currencies, saying it could help improve financial ledgers. But even
there he sounded a note of caution, arguing that current technology
doesn’t yet offer the speed required for market transactions. Bloomberg
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