“Bitcoin is a solution 100 times better than any other asset”: president of OKX

Hong Fang, president of the OKX cryptocurrency exchange, gave a conference in which she highlighted the role of bitcoin (BTC) as a superior store of value.

This talk took place on October 19 at the cryptocurrency industry congress in Argentina called Tech Forum, which CriptoNoticias attended.

Fang started his intervention indicating that there are two key factors that he learned when studying markets, which made him see the relevance of bitcoin. First of all, “if we study the data and analyze things, put them in context, we will see reality for ourselves,” he says. “These will tell us the truth,” he adds.

Secondly, with regard to the market, he warns that when short-term prices are analyzed, they are just “noise”. “There are a lot of emotions at play, a lot of behaviors, a lot of psychology, a lot of irrationality that is reflected in the short-term market,” he says.

“But if we really zoom out and look at things on a three-, five-, 10-, or even 50-year time frame, we start to see the trend, we start to see what’s really happening,” he adds.

“The long-term market is actually trying to tell us something that we generally ignore, mainly because as human beings we are easily distracted by short-term signals.”

Hong Fang, president of OKX

With such considerations in mind, the main digital currency takes on total relevance. “Anytime you look at a time frame of more than three to five years, a long time frame, you see bitcoin outperforming everything drastically, not just 2x or 3x, but more than 10x or 100x sometimes.” , he emphasizes in the conference.

The appreciation of bitcoin in the long term above assets such as gold and the S&P 500 (SPX), an index that compiles the shares of the main 500 companies listed in the United States, can be seen in the following graph.

“What the market is trying to say with that is that, regardless of who we are (whether you are from Argentina, the United States, Dubai, Asia…, whatever your culture, religious background, language you speak), we all have a fundamental need: we want a secure way to store our value and transfer our value over time and space; and we want to do it without the need for a trusted intermediary,” he warns.

Fang highlights that that’s what bitcoin really offers. “It is a solution that is 10 times or 100 times better than anything else that exists right now,” he distinguishes. He attributes this not only to its price valuation over time, but also to other characteristics of its essence that promote its demand.

“It is natively digital, efficiently divisible and globally accessible. It can be verified on-chain and you can see it settle on the network in a matter of minutes. It is finite, free of inflation. No country, central bank or intermediary can control the global network. That is why many people are attracted to it, whether they are retail or institutional investors,” concludes the head of the exchange.

Governments and large institutions will buy bitcoin silently, according to Fang

These days, with the presence of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), it indicates that both companies, institutional investors and governments are becoming interested in this asset. However, this may be happening stealthily and silently.

“When it comes to institutional clients, corporations and governments that are thinking about investing in bitcoin, unlike retailers, they don’t usually talk about it until they feel they have accumulated enough,” he points out. “When they start talking about it, it is already a fait accompli,” he adds.

This may be because they will take the opportunity to buy at prices that may be low in relation to what they will be like when they start talking about bitcoin values.

Bitcoin is a store of value with greater potential than its competitors, according to Fang

For Fang, the growing market trend indicates that bitcoin It is still in a very early stage of what may develop over the next decade. In the only fifteen years that have passed since the origin of bitcoin, its capitalization already exceeds 1,300 trillion dollars (USD).

Although this figure is much larger than the USD 400 billion recorded when the following graph was made, it stands out that it is still small compared to the capitalization of other assets such as real estate, gold, stocks, bonds, money or art. This gives you the idea that the market has the potential to continue hoarding capital.

The businesswoman says:

“Bitcoin has much more to offer than any of its competitors because, again, it is a decentralized network with independent governance, and does not have the risk of being intervened by third parties. It is durable and very easily portable, unlike real estate, a large piece of art or a cruise ship, where some billionaires invest.”

Hong Fang, president of OKX and former director of Goldman Sachs bank

Apart from the transfer of global wealth to bitcoin, Fang also distinguishes that global payments are moving into the cryptoasset ecosystem. Regarding this, he indicates that, although there have always been different tribes within the community debating whether bitcoin is for a store of value or payments, the latter is not growing on a large scale.

“There are a lot of people excited about bitcoin being for payments, and I include myself in that group too. I’m really excited that bitcoin is finally for payments and things like Lightning, for example, could be a good candidate for that. However, in the last 12 years, we haven’t seen that really take off.

The specialist indicates that, since 2016, a large percentage of bitcoin transactions have moved to stablecoins. The latter have even been increasing above cryptocurrency trading, as the following graph shows.

With this, he suggests that The use of bitcoin seems to be, for the moment, more linked to a store of value than to payments. Therefore, beyond the wishes of enthusiasts, the specialist insists that it is crucial to analyze the data to identify market behavior.