Brett Harrison, President of crypto exchange FTX U.S., has said that the private digital currency sector is booming despite the general market correction.
Speaking to CNBC, Harrison noted that the crypto market is recording a significant interest from investors. At the same, he said that investors are focusing more on other assets like altcoins and Ethereum, in return lowering the Bitcoin dominance.
According to the president, despite the volatility experienced in recent weeks, the future of cryptocurrencies remains bullish.
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However, he acknowledged that the market also faces some anxiety mainly due to geopolitical factors.
“There’s a lot of short term anxiety seeing what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, just the general slowdown of markets in the last two months. But what we are seeing, especially on the crypto side, is that the private markets are booming. People are investing a lot into this bit, and so we think the longer-term outlook is pretty positive,” said Harrison.
Furthermore, Harrison added there is a possible influx of institutional investors joining the crypto space. He revealed that the exchange is recording increased attention from pension funds and large banks exploring ways to enter the space.
However, he acknowledged that the regulatory obstacle is currently the main challenge towards institutional investors joining the crypto market.
Stock market on a recovery path
After starting the year on a volatile note, the crypto market is making attempts to regain the over $2 trillion market capitalization. Notably, at some point, the market wiped out about $683 billion from its capitalization in about three weeks.
By press time, the total crypto market cap had declined by over 15% to stand at $1.89 trillion on a year-to-date basis. The slump was led by Bitcoin, which corrected to below the crucial $40,000 mark.
However, the asset is on a recovery path, trading at $42,600 by press time with slight gains of about 0.5% in the last 24 hours.
In general, the crypto market correlated with the equities market amid soaring inflation and expected interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
Watch the full interview: Private crypto markets are booming, says FTX U.S. president Harrison