PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s second largest accounting firm, believes that a new wave of institutional investments will lead to the adoption of cryptocurrency in the next 12 months. Speaking on Bloomberg Television in Australia, PwC Managing Director Henri Arslanian said that he believes that the crypto ‘ ecosystem’ has a big year ahead.
On the DayBreak Australia program Arslanian said “I think there is a lot of exciting things that the crypto ecosystem is looking forward in 2019.”
“One of them, I think, is really the entry of institutional players. I think in 2018 we saw a lot of the big banks enter the space and in 2019 I expect many more to enter the space as well, in different ways. Some of them may decide to launch their own solutions, like Fidelity did here in the US by setting up a new company. Others may try to partner with some of the other crypto firms… And others may try to invest in crypto companies a bit like Goldman did with BitGo and Circle. This is very good because it will bring the kind of level of institutional expertise and experience to the sector which is something the crypto industry needs.”
Arslanian told the program that he believes that regulatory certainty will be the main driver of increasing institutional involvement.
“I think a lot of elements are changing at a global level, one of them is the regulatory clarity… If you look at 2018, a number of jurisdictions provided more regulatory clarity than we had before. The surprise could be some of the more traditional, or less nimble countries, for example now France is pushing ahead with some legislation on ICOs, even here in the US with all the news going on right now there’s some bipartisan initiatives to try to make the US more competitive when it comes to cryptoassets.”
If you think the crypt ‘crash’ in 2018 was bad, think again, PwC says. Henri Arslanian thinks that the crypto sector is better without the hype ‘about going to the moon’ and Lamborghinis.
He says “In other industries there are booms and busts, I think some of the positive news of the crypto fall was it actually cleared a lot of noise in the crypto sector. Like in the dot com boom you’ll have some companies that’ll survive this boom and those may change their role in ways we can’t even imagine today, but in the short term there are definitely a lot of crypto companies that are hurt.”
KwC’s China and Hong Kong Fintech and Crypto Leader say that they will closely watch the rise of security tokens and stable coins in 2019.
“Stable coins in particular allow, for example, crypto traders to stay in the crypto space but with an asset that is definitely less volatile and also can be used on a day-to-day basis for people who want to use crypto without the volatility that we’ve seen in recent months. The other one is security tokens which I expect a lot in 2019, which are basically security tokens that are backed by real-life assets, for example, real estate. It allows not only to bring liquidity in a space, where especially for larger real estate projects there’s not that much liquidity, but also it allows us to streamline a lot of the corporate action and dividends and that is actually very exciting.”
The comments of the top PwC executive come after another auditor from the ‘Big Four,’ KPMG, who said that ‘crypto cannot be ignored.’
In a note to high-profile clients, KPMG said “More participation from the broader financial services ecosystem will help drive trust and scale for the tokenized economy and help the crypto market grow and mature.”
