With Bitcoin’s latest bloodbath, tech entrepreneurs see buying opportunity

Wednesday morning’s dive in Bitcoin was brutal for even the digital asset’s most loyal HODLers.

During the 11 o’clock hour (Eastern Time), Bitcoin plunged from $6,063.69 to $5,650.01 over the course of just 30 minutes. It then continued to fall in anticipation of the Bitcoin Cash hard fork scheduled for Thursday.

The cryptocurrency hadn’t moved most of the year and crypto pioneers like Crystal Rose Pierce were starting to share excitement for Bitcoin’s stability. On Monday in San Francisco, following the EOS Global Hackathon, she told an audience of developers at their CryptoMondays meetup, “If we wrap up this year and Bitcoin hasn’t changed, or is marginally changing, that means we’ve gone one entire year at the same price. That’s a really huge nod to stability,” adding, “I think the market is stable and that’s a positive.”

Whether it was Bitcoin Cash SV creator Craig Wright tweeting his threats to send Bitcoin to $1,000, Tether activity on Bitfinex, or just plain old FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) around the cash fork, one thing is for sure: there are large players that see this as a key buying opportunity.

Charles Michael Yim, co-founder and CEO of Black Sparrow, an OTC company, confirmed the buying activity. “I’m involved in a $1.2 billion buy order via OTC for Bitcoin right now firsthand, so yes agreed, large buyers/investment firms are still engaged even when price is dropping.”

“Evercoin has been seeing some of the largest transactions to date in BCH (Bitcoin Cash) in the run up to the fork, since having your own private keys ensures you will get coins on both sides of the fork. We expect post-fork for the buying to switch to the BTC (Bitcoin) side.” said Miko Matsumura, founder of Evercoin, a mobile wallet and exchange. “Bitcoin shed many weak hands in the drop from $20K to $10K. The drop from $10K to $5K includes relatively strong hands like Craig Wright—but getting him out of Bitcoin is probably a good thing for the ecosystem in the long run.”

Sharing thoughts on the cause of the crash, Adryenn Ashley, founder and CEO of Loly, an augmented reality blockchain dating app, said, “I suspect the crash began from Singapore Sovereign Wealth. Tracing back the transactions it looks like they were responsible. Politically, Hong Kong and Singapore are battling for the future of money. It’s fascinating to watch how these geopolitical moves play out on the global stage and how the naysayers predict yet again the demise of Bitcoin. It’s not dying. It’s not dead.”

The night before the selloff, Adam Draper, managing director of Boost VC, an early investor in Coinbase and 100 other crypto startups, stopped by the Crypto Underground in San Francisco to do an AMA with blockchain entrepreneurs. Looking ahead he said, “Bitcoin is the backbone of the global financial infrastructure. It’s really good for one thing: storing money outside the system. Everyone references it. We’ve already chosen a winner.”

Concurring, Jeremy Gardner, co-founder of Augur and Ausum Ventures, summed up general sentiment, “The crash doesn’t matter. The price doesn’t matter. What matters is the continuous upward momentum of this technology and industry. Crypto assets are more mature and evolved than they were at an $800 billion market cap, so who cares about the price?”