« Back

Bitcoin likely to hit new all-time high in 2024, Marathon Digital CEO says

January 10, 2024

Join Marathon Digital CEO, Fred Thiel, as he discusses the potential for Bitcoin to reach new all-time highs in 2024, driven by the introduction of a Bitcoin ETF and the upcoming halving event. Discover key insights into the crypto market's future and what it means for investors.

Timestamps are autogenerated. May contain typos.

00:00

and the big hope around the ETF what's really underpinned the big rally in Bitcoin we saw last year and into this year is this idea that an ETF could bring in a new wave of investors big institutional investors as well and it's a similar narrative we heard when bit Bitcoin Futures hit the market a few years ago uh but why is this we didn't really see that materialized in a big way with Futures is this any different well the problem with the Futures is it resets every month and so with when you look at the fee structure and the

00:27

rollover effectively your pay a very high fee for exposure to bitcoin with the spot ETF you have a number of advantages uh one is very low fees compared to um gbtc for example the 2% fee they charge today will now go down substantially if they have to compete with other funds that are charging 20 basis points 40 basis points uh compared to the 200 basis points they're charging an interesting subtle that most people don't get is gbtc has to sell about $200 million for the Bitcoin a year to cover their fee which now they would not have

01:04

to do so there'll be a little bit less Supply in the marketplace which would have helped the price but essentially the ETF really provides access to institutional investors retirement accounts you know the many trillions of dollars that are locked up uh potentially a small little allocation to bitcoin will happen because there's only a finite number of Bitcoin most Bitcoin is locked up in long-term holders there's very little liquidity in the Bitcoin Market really only about 2 million Bitcoin a day are traded so we

01:33

believe the ETF will only be positive and Fred just moving uh topic to another big uh event for the industry and that is the harving the Bitcoin harving slated for around April time uh this is when the the the rewards to miners are reduced you're one of the biggest miners in the world what does this mean for your business it's really all about becoming much more efficient so uh our strategy over the past few years has been to energize as much capacity as we can to grow we did that through an asset light model where we work with third

02:02

parties now we've shifted more into an optimized business model which is about continuing to grow but optimizing our cost structure so we recently did an acquisition which will be closing here hopefully uh end of this week early next week where we're essentially vertically integrating lowering our cost structure substantially and we'll continue to do that over the future here leading into the having consolidating the industry and lowering our cost structure and is this going to allow you to be profitable

02:27

this year then yes I mean it goal is always to be at least gross margin profitable um because we're a public company you always have certain expenses that can sometimes make it harder to be net profit net income profitable but certainly from an adjusted with basis here and with these Acquisitions have you been able to lower the price effectively that Bitcoin needs to be at for your business to be profitable yeah so if you look at this latest acquisition the Bitcoin we mine at that site our cost structure will drop by

02:58

upwards of 20 to 30% % actually because of that and so we we've got the ETF we've got the harving what does this all mean for bitcoin's Price we've seen a huge rally last year is all of this already priced in well I think definitely part of the ETF is priced in so you know buy the rumor sell the news but I think um Bitcoin will either follow its historical cycle which would have it increase in price achieve the prior all-time high sometime towards the end of this year and then new all-time highs uh towards the end of next year

03:32

that's if it follows historical patterns uh Global liquidity also contributes to bitcoin price we're seeing the FED will be easing other central banks will be easing Global liquidity will increase likely at the back half of this year that will also help the narrative around Bitcoin so so your view is that Bitcoin will hit a new all-time high this year have you got any price calls at the moment um I mean we estimate it just internally that will definitely hit uh the all-time high levels by the end of

03:58

this year the prior alltime High and then we'll see into next year what happens beyond that