Early Bitcoin adopters aren’t likely to stop being skeptical of institutional adoption anytime soon, says Bitcoin venture fund Ego Death Capital co-founder, Preston Pysh.

“Part of that culture that brought it to where it is, is looking at where this is all going and saying no, no, no, no, this is all moving in a bad direction,” Pysh told Natalie Brunell on the Coin Stories podcast on Friday.

Pysh said that institutions engaging in “institutional-like things,” such as Bitcoin (BTC) derivatives, have some Bitcoiners concerned about the long-term impact and whether Bitcoin can still serve as the safe-haven asset it once was.

“Am I being scammed, like all the other scams that preceded this wave?” is a question Pysh says some of the Bitcoin community are asking as institutional interest grows.

Bitcoiners who pushed it past $1 trillion worry about its direction

The comments come amid ongoing debate in the Bitcoin community over whether growing institutional interest is moving Bitcoin away from its original purpose.

“For people who have made Bitcoin what it is, getting it here, over a trillion dollars, involved individuals, for the most part, self-custodying Bitcoin, holding onto the keys for dear life through 70% and 80% downturns and still not selling them,” Pysh said, adding:

“The term we like to throw around is we’re Bitcoin psychopaths.”

It comes nearly a month after a heated debate on social media when crypto analyst Scott Melker, also known as The Wolf of All Streets, said that Bitcoin “is amazing” but has been taken over to some extent by the people it was created as a hedge against.

Meanwhile, Ryan McMillin, chief investment officer at Merkle Tree Capital, recently told Cointelegraph that old Bitcoin being sold to new institutions is a sign of its “integration with the financial system.” 

Institutions will use Bitcoin “very differently” than individuals: Pysh

Pysh explained that the Bitcoin ethos is being challenged, and he expects it to continue facing scrutiny as institutional interest expands.

“I think that it’s going to move in a direction where a lot of people use Bitcoin the way they wanna use Bitcoin, especially institutions, who are going to use it very differently to how individuals use it,” Pysh said.

Related: Bitcoin price charges to $116K as Fed’s Powell hints at interest-rate cut

“That’s a difficult pill for people to swallow,” he said.

“At large, part of the Bitcoin culture is to be pretty much skeptical of everything and to question everything,” he added.

According to a March 18 report by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon, 83% of institutional investors surveyed said they plan to increase crypto allocations in 2025.

Magazine: Bitcoin’s long-term security budget problem: Impending crisis or FUD?

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/bitcoiners-skepticism-over-institutions-isnt-going-away-preston-pysh/feed/ 0 54656 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/are-bitcoiners-underestimating-this/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/are-bitcoiners-underestimating-this/#respond Mon, 26 May 2025 17:28:55 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/are-bitcoiners-underestimating-this/

Since November 2024, nearly every Monday was Michael Saylor buys more Bitcoin day.

His company, Strategy, was the first major public firm to adopt Bitcoin as its main treasury reserve asset.

And now, others are catching this Bitcoin bug: Metaplanet, Twenty One, Nakamoto Holdings… the list keeps growing.

The bug’s spreading so fast that Jesse Myers, head of Bitcoin strategy at HK Asia Holdings, thinks Bitcoiners still don’t realize how much BTC these companies could end up holding.

Let’s break it down.

There’s about $1,000T worth of assets in the world. Bitcoin makes up just $2T of that – a teeny 0.2%.

Saylor thinks that half the world’s capital is searching for the best store of value. And since trust in fiat and bonds is declining, Bitcoin starts looking like a good option.

Even if a fraction of that capital moves into BTC, the price could explode. Saylor believes Bitcoin could hit a $280T market cap by 2045 – that’s $13M per coin.

“This guys hella high on hopium,” one might say. Maybe. After all, $280T is 14x the value of all US real estate. But… Saylor might actually be onto something.

There’s currently about $318T invested in bonds – loans to governments or companies that pay you back a bit of interest.

Big investors like pension funds are required to buy assets like these because they’re considered “safe.”

The issue: inflation is high, and even if bonds are paying interest, it doesn’t keep up with rising prices = investors are slowly losing money.

But big institutions can’t throw that money into Bitcoin because of rules and risk policies.

That’s where Bitcoin treasury companies come in.

Institutions may not be ready to hold BTC directly – but they can buy bonds or stock in companies doing it for them. And it works because these companies:

• Can access public capital markets,

• Can build custom products to match institutional needs;

• Have shareholders who want BTC exposure and are okay with taking risks to get it.

Basically, these companies act like bridges. They offer products that speak the language of TradFi – bonds, equities, yield – but with Bitcoin at the core.

That’s the real innovation here: packaging BTC exposure in a way that fits into legacy portfolios.

And if this model plays out, companies like Strategy aren’t gonna be weird exceptions – they could become the blueprint for a whole new asset class.

This could be a W for Bitcoin in several ways:

• It creates consistent, predictable demand from institutions looking for yield and store-of-value exposure;

• It reduces reliance on hype cycles or retail FOMO to drive BTC price growth;

• It formalizes Bitcoin’s role in capital markets, making it harder to dismiss as a fringe or speculative asset.

But there are risks, too.

If these companies start growing too fast, use leverage poorly, or manage risk badly, they could introduce the kind of systemic fragility that Bitcoin was supposed to help avoid.

And if too much BTC ends up concentrated in their hands, it raises questions about decentralization and control.

Still, markets don’t care about ideology. They care about incentives. And right now, the incentive to connect traditional money with Bitcoin is strong and growing.

So what does this mean for crypto investors?

Bitcoin isn’t just being bought anymore – it’s being integrated, and treasury companies are a big part of that process.

Whether we like it or not, they’re shaping how institutional money enters crypto – and they could be one of the biggest forces behind Bitcoin’s next chapter.