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Why did this executive change his mind about Bitcoin?

Large-cap institutional investments in Bitcoin have been a major driver of this year's exponential bull rally, and investors like Michael Saylor can't get enough.

However, some people have become disillusioned with cryptocurrency, concluding that it isn't all that it was hyped up to be.

Scott Minerd, the Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Investments, recently revealed that he was no longer invested in the top digital asset, despite making wildly optimistic predictions for BTC earlier this year.

The CIO announced his exit from the Bitcoin market in an interview with CNBC, citing a lack of understanding about the asset. He stated,

“The one thing I learned as a bond trader years ago, when you don’t understand what’s happening, get out of the market. So discipline tells me now, I don’t fully understand this.”

Guggenheim filed an amendment with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last year, seeking to invest $500 million in cryptocurrency through the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Shortly after, the CIO began making extremely bullish predictions for BTC.

In a December 2017 Bloomberg interview, Minerd stated that his firm's "interest in Bitcoin is tied to Fed policy and the rampant money printing that's going on," adding that Bitcoin would be worth around $400,000 in the long run.

Later that month, in February of this year, the investor raised the bar to $600,000, citing Bitcoin's fundamentals such as scarcity and similarity to gold.

However, following the May market crash, Minerd became extremely bearish on the virtual currency in the short to medium term, predicting that Bitcoin's price would be in consolidation mode for a couple of years before rising.

He also predicted that Bitcoin would reach a low of $10,000-$15,000, a level it has not reached since last year. Minerd also mentioned this June price prediction in his most recent interview, saying,

“We were long going into that, we sold, it pulled back to where I thought it was and really after looking at it thought you know, we gonna probably go lower. Well, we didn’t, so we’re not in.”

During the interview, the investor also stated that a $1,000 investment in the meme-coin Shiba Inu in February would be worth around $2.1 million today. Shiba Inu prices have been on the rise recently, rising 261 percent in the last month and 28621577 percent in the last year.

Minerd's latest remarks come at an unexpected time, as the king coin's market has only recently turned bullish again, following a long period of price depreciation. The asset's price has risen by nearly 30% in October alone, owing to an impending ETF approval that was only confirmed on Monday.

While it is difficult to speculate on what prompted Minerd's change of heart, a number of institutional investors are expected to flock to the Bitcoin market now that it has gained the legitimacy of traditional finance.

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