Technology
Guggenheim Partners is part of the next wave of bitcoin institutional investment companies that are looking to step in.
Guggenheim Partners is a global investment and advisory firm privately owned and headquartered in Chicago and New York.
Originally founded in the late 19th century by the Guggenheim family, the investment firm currently manages assets of more than $295 billion and provides a range of insurance, capital markets and real estate advisory services. During the $34 billion Redhat IBM acquisition, the firm was the lead counsel in 2019, one of the largest software deals in history. Guggenheim Partners recently turned its attention to the rapidly expanding space of digital currencies and expressed particular interest in one crypto asset.
Guggenheim Partners Wants In on Bitcoin
Guggenheim publicly announced on Nov. 29, 2020 that it had filed an amendment with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow it to allocate about $500 million worth of its Macro Opportunities Fund to the Bitcoin Trust Fund of Grayscale (GBTC). This institutional product enables large financial players to purchase and sell Bitcoin-only fund shares (BTC, +16.31 percent) in excess of 616,588 coins. (Like CoinDesk, Grayscale is owned by the Digital Currency Group.)
On Dec. 17, 2020, Scott Minerd, CIO of Guggenheim Partners, stated it was the company's belief that bitcoin should be worth about $400,000... based on the scarcity and relative valuation during a Bloomberg TV interview, such as things like gold as a percentage of GDP.
A few months later, though, during an episode of CNBC's "Closing Bell" program, Minerd outlined his short-term concerns about the unsustainable price action of bitcoin. The Guggenheim CIO commented, I think we're likely to put bitcoin at the top for the next year or so for the time being. And it is likely that we will see a full retracement back to the $20,000 level.
One of his earlier Twitter posts that mentioned bitcoin was becoming vulnerable to a setback reflected this sentiment and that it was time to take some money off the table.
