A third of Americans to buy Bitcoin by end of 2022, says Ric Edelman

Bitcoin bull and founder of Edelman Financial Engines Ric Edelman has made some promising predictions about the future of the seminal cryptocurrency.

In an interview on CNBC program ETF Edge on Jan. 10, Edelman said:

“We’re already at a quarter of that number with 24% of Americans owning Bitcoin. It won’t be that much of a stretch for it to get to one-third. Bitcoin is becoming more and more mainstream. People are hearing about it everywhere–it isn’t going away.”

While 2022 got off to a rocky start, In his view, governments corporations, foundations, pension funds are investing in BTC: “there is major institutional involvement.”

As the author of soon-to-be-released “The Truth about Crypto,” Edelman is a long-standing crypto proponent. In 2019, he described Bitcoin as the first “genuinely new asset class” in 150 years, and back in December 2018, he recommended that investors load up on the orange coin.

In a follow-up interview with CNBC yesterday, he lamented that while he has predicted a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the past seven years, he’s convinced that by 2023, there will be spot ETF approval.

Similar to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce’s thoughts on the matter, Edelman articulates that the SEC is running out of excuses to say no:

“A lot of the concerns the SEC has have been resolved by the industry through their own maturity, innovation and development. I am confident that we will see the SEC say yes because there is no legitimate reason for them not to.”

Matthew Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management agreed with him in the second interview.

Related: Crypto mainstream adoption: Is it here already? Experts answer, Part 1

Hougan stated that there would be even more investor protections and a better product thanks to the “cumulative weight of the evidence that will force them to move forward with approval.” Consumer protection provided by an SEC-run ETF is the cherry on top of a slick product.

ETF speculation aside, Edelman is clairvoyant about the banality of Nakomoto's invention in the future. He summed it up succinctly; Bitcoin is “going to be as common in the next couple of years as any other portion of a portfolio.”