Arthur Hayes Warns of Institutional Hold on Bitcoin – Innovation or Centralization?
Cryptocurrency entrepreneur and BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes recently expressed his views on how the success of Bitcoin may be stifled due to institutional control. Speaking in a live stream with Lex Fridman on YouTube, Hayes stated that there is a risk of the institutionalization of Bitcoin, which could reduce its price and decrease its use case.
Hayes explained that with the major financial institutions entering the cryptocurrency space, they may gain greater influence over Bitcoin, changing its dynamics and values. Such an effect may stop Bitcoin from becoming a global decentralized system but instead help push it onto a centrally-managed system.
Hayes gave the example of major banks potentially forcing Bitcoin users to trade their coins on ‘The Bank’s Exchange’ and even pushing through Hard Fork decisions to change the Bitcoin protocol. If this happened, there could be significant price manipulation in the cryptocurrency market with all of the major institutions driving the decisions behind the Bitcoin protocol and its pricing.
Many Bitcoiners may be weary of this prediction as it could reduce the value of Bitcoin and damage its future adoption. However, some could argue that this is actually a positive step and could be seen as an opportunity for institutional holding over Bitcoin, rather than a hinderance. After all, it is possible that these institutions may inject significant liquidity into the market and push the cryptocurrency to a wider audience.
It is clear that this debate is ongoing amongst cryptocurrency communities and it will be interesting to see how events such as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust could affect the future pricing and institutional control over the currency. For the moment, it looks like institutional investors have a lot of control over Bitcoin, and this could have significant effects on the long-term adoption and usability of the digital asset.