The Block: Big institutions are only interested in bitcoin, says NYDIG CEO

A crypto rally has been in full swing, but the biggest investors looking at the market are only interested in bitcoin, according to one industry CEO.

In the latest episode of The Scoop, NYDIG chief executive Robert Gutmann said that most of the serious investors he's speaking with are only interested in the largest crypto by market capitalization.

"100 out of 100 of the last conversations I’ve had with investors seriously looking to allocate, let's say over 50 million dollars, 100% of those conversations have been about Bitcoin and 0% of them have been about any other crypto asset," he said.

In Gutmann's view, the interest in bitcoin is tied to the macro backdrop of the previous year, when central banks globally took an aggressive monetary policy approach to address the Covid-19 crisis. That's revealed some of the unique characteristics of bitcoin as an alternative reserve asset for firms.

"The idea of an open source money–that’s a really powerful idea and solves, in our opinion, a fundamental societal challenge," he said. Guttman's firm NYDIG offers custodial and trading services to an array of financial firms, including insurance giant Mass Mutual.

Indeed, Gutmann's perspective is echoed by bitcoin investor Dan Morehead who said this rally is much more focused on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

"There has been a massive shift from highly speculative, mainly non-functioning tokens having roughly half of the total market cap in 2017 – to today when the market cap is mainly in the two proven, functioning chains: bitcoin and ethereum," Morehead wrote. "Those two chains have 86% of the value. The other 5,000 chains have 14%."