In 2013, Dan Morehead, founder and managing director of Pantera, then asked for a global macro hedge fund, the investors, in Bitcoin, a digital, with little understood, digital asset that was introduced in 2009 in Bitcoin.
“Bitcoins are now dealing with $ 65 per BTC – exactly half the price you acted at our first meeting on May 28th. I think wrote in a letter To the investors in July 2013. “I will buy 30,000 bitcoins with personal money this weekend. The fund can have this purchase or not, as others wish. I just want to get involved,” he added. Pantera then started his Pantera Bitcoin Fund and gave the company to concentrate on crypto.
“(Many) people thought I was crazy,” Morehead, a former dealer at Goldman Sachs and Tiger Management, recalled in an interview with Marketwatch.
Bitcoin BTCUSD by 2025 was traded on Friday with around 115,000 US dollars, and the crypto industry has developed from a niche experiment into an ecosystem that is increasingly integrated into the traditional financial markets, a change that was reinforced as President Donald Trump and an agenda is considered friendly to the sector.
In the meantime, Pantera has become one of the largest asset managers and risk companies in crypto. The company now manages assets of $ 5.2 billion and supports over 200 crypto companies, including Exchange Coinbase Coin, Stablecoin Emittent Circle CRCL, blockchain-based payment company Ripple and others.
Became more important as Morehead, his growing influence on crypto was repeated by a handful of his classmates in Princeton, which would also act as important players in the industry. This includes Gavin Andresen, once the senior developer of the Bitcoin network, Michael Novogratz, founder of the crypto investment company Galaxy Investment Partners, Pete Briger, Chairman of the Fortress Investment Group, the member of Michael Saylor’s strategy by Michael Saylors Strategy Mstr and Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum of Blockchain software company Consensys.
Overall, the Senate’s financial committee examined whether Morehead violated the federal law to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars by moving to Puerto Rico, which offers the residents a special tax relief as soon as An article in February From the New York Times. In an explanation, Morehead then said: “I think I acted appropriately in relation to my taxes” and rejected it to comment on for this article.
During an interview with Marketwatch on Thursday at the Nasdaq Market Sitsite, where Panteras Portfolio Company Figure Technology Figr went to the public On the same day, Morehead said that he expected Bitcoin to double in a year, smaller crypto to surpass it in the next few years, and outlined his broader forecasts for the future of crypto.
There is still a growing debate about Bitcoin’s four -year cycle. Morehead’s answer is yes.
In the past, analysts have divided Bitcoin’s price movements into four phases – breakout, hype, correction and accumulation, based on the half plan of the financial value. Halvings are an event that occurs every four years Cut the rewards that miners receive To check the transactions on the blockchain in half and to limit the new Bitcoin offer.
While the first half in Bitcoin’s history contributed to sparking rallies by increasing the scarcity, some argue that the The influence of the halvings has decreased Since other factors now shape Bitcoin’s price. Nevertheless, Morehead said that examination of the cycle is important to measure the next step of the crypto.
To support his reasoning, Morehead quoted A call he made in November 2022 That the crypto would reach 117,482 US dollars on August 11, 2025, based on its analysis of Bitcoin’s performance according to the previous half. According to Dow Jones market data, Bitcoin rose via this level according to Morehead’s target date and then gathered on August 14 to $ 124,495.51 before they were withdrawn.
Now Morehead said that he is expecting Bitcoin to double in one year and acting over $ 230,000 and finally increasing to $ 1 million.
Nevertheless, this cycle can differ from those in the past, said Morehead. A remarkable distinction is that President Trump drives a number of guidelines that are considered friendly to the crypto industry. He signed the brilliant act In July, the first federal law, the stable coins or a kind of crypto, the value of which is associated with a different asset, often the US dollar. In the same month the President of the President of Digital Assets published a report With regulatory recommendations for the industry, the signals that digital assets have become a political priority.
Against this background, Morehead expected that he will survive old coins or other crypto as Bitcoin in the next three years. Altcoins could benefit more from the policy of Trump administration, since they suffered from the regulatory uncertainties during the former administration, as Gary Gensler, former chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, most of them, argued, Morehead. Gensler then said that Bitcoin was the only crypto He would publicly call goods.
Morehead added that Bitcoin for the so -called whales, which typically refer to those who keep thousands of Bitcoin, is becoming increasingly difficult to move the market.
From 2013 to 2015, Pantera collected 2% of Bitcoin’s total supply. However, the company has gradually cut its position since then. Pantera now holds Bitcoin of around 1 billion US dollar, said Morehead. “We sold them to invest in new companies and we have a Pantera Bitcoin fund that has investors and they have made profits for over 12 years,” he added.
Morehead, who said he was the first of asset backed securities traders at Goldman Sachs in the 1980s, said that he expected “all things of the value” to be exhibited on a blockchain. Nevertheless, he admitted that it would take some time, whereby the tokenization of some assets arrived earlier than the others. Tickenization refers to a process of creating digital representations of real assets on a blockchain.
For example, mortgages and the US streaserysbx: TMUBMUSD10Y could be token more easily, while token real estate would require more efforts, noted.
When it comes to stocks, the technical challenge is not a problem, but “the regulatory thing is to slow it down,” he said.
The SEC would require more regulatory clarity before more companies and funds in the blockchain are more direct, such as Morehead’s stocks exhibit directly on the blockchain. While several companies, including Robinhood Hood, have launched so-called stocks of stocks, they are crypto representations of a company’s shares, but do not give any shareholders.
Pantera currently has no plans to token one of its means due to the regulatory uncertainty.
“You know that we are already in a strongly certified industry. “So we just avoided that, but I could see in the long run, and I think, probably in 10 years, funds like ours will normally be token,” he added.
While it is difficult to predict a precise timeline if most, if not all stocks were issued on a blockchain, “you will see a whole range of shares with the blockchain within a few years what would open to everyone with a smartphone,” said Morehead.
In this sense, the official outlook appears more and more cheaper. SEC chairman Paul Atkins last month announced a new crypto agenda Goal to “Moderniz (ING) the securities rules and regulations so that America’s financial markets can be postponed to chain”.
Pantera is also an important supporter of several listed companies that have adopted a crypto treasury strategy one of the hottest trends this year. It is a strategy in which a company is relevant to whether its original business is relevant or not. Throws money on, buys crypto and adds the coins to the balance sheets.
The Pantera portfolio companies in this category include Bitmine Immersion Technologies BMNR, a Bitcoin mining company that adopted an Ether Ethus -Mining Strategy and has appointed the veteran Wall Street Analyst Tom Lee as chairman.
When over 100 companies have entered the game this year, the premiums of their share price have narrowed or even negative in the past few weeks.
The narrowing of the premium is expected, said Morehead. Such a premium is a barometer of excessive demand for public assets in the blockchain arena and would inevitably be lost in the long run, he noticed. At the same time, the premium is also pro-cyclical with the price of the underlying asset, said Morehead. “When the price for Bitcoin or the price for Solana gathers, the bonuses rise a little. And when they go out, as in the past few weeks, the premiums are falling,” he added.
After all, Morehead expected only a small number of companies with crypto finance strategies to survive. After consolidation, two or three of these companies can remain for any large crypto, regardless of whether it is Bitcoin, Ether or Solana. “But not 100,” said Morehead.
Investors should “really focus on those with the best management teams who can access coins at the best prices,” he said.
