Institutional investors sit on trillions as QE infects economies. Why do they want bitcoin?

The tide has turned. Analysts at investment banks now put Bitcoin not only on a par with every other asset class but actually suggest that cryptoassets have superseded gold, equities and treasuries.
The most recent of these is JP Morgan. America’s richest bank and the world’s fourth-wealthiest — China takes the top three spots — has completed a stunning volte face on crypto. It now extends not only to providing banking services to exchanges Coinbase and Gemini, but also to a begrudging acceptance that Bitcoin “is likely to survive” beyond the coronavirus pandemic and massive stimulus measures by central banks.
In an 11 June client note to xed-income investors obtained by CoinDesk, the bank’s bond analysts found that while Bitcoin “saw among the most severe drops in liquidity around the peak of the crisis in March, that disruption was cured much faster than other asset classes”.
Researchers found that in the wake of the worst stock market crash since 1987’s Black Monday, liquidity in the cryptoasset market bounced back more quickly and was more resilient than in traditional investable nancial instruments.
“At this point, Bitcoin market depth is above its one-year trailing average, while liquidity has yet to recover,” the analysts wrote.
Seeing incontrovertible data like this must be galling to the banks that once dismissed Bitcoin as irrelevant, or a bubble, or, like Warren Buffett, maligned the entire asset class as “rat poison squared”. Read more in my recent article