Wedbush: Up to 5% of listed companies will follow Tesla in buying Bitcoin

Dan Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities, said that companies will soon begin to FOMO into Bitcoin , and proposed that the threshold for companies to enter the market will be 5% until the regulation is clear.

Tesla’s strategic embrace of Bitcoin (BTC) will have a huge impact on corporate adoption of the digital asset, according to Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities .

In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Ives said Tesla’s exposure to Bitcoin “represents more than just a passing fad” but is part of a long-term strategy that is driven by an investment thesis and a business thesis.

"I think Tesla is going to double down on Bitcoin," he said.

“There’s no doubt that @elonmusk and @Tesla are going to go deeper on #bitcoin as they approach it not just from an investment perspective, but from a trading perspective,” Wedbush’s Dan Ives said on $TSLA and #btc.

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 22, 2021

Ives was referring to Tesla’s recent decision to allocate $1.5 billion to Bitcoin and start accepting the digital asset as a form of payment. At the time of the interview, Tesla had made about $1 billion in paper gains on BTC transactions. “That’s more than they made on all their electric car sales in 2020,” he said.

Wedbush believes that within the next 12 to 18 months, 3% to 5% of public companies will go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, though their adoption will be limited to investment, Ives said. Without more regulatory clarity around BTC, the 5% threshold is unlikely to be broken.

Ives' comments on Tesla mirror his recent analysis of Bitcoin, in which he described the digital asset as part of a larger adoption story. Bitcoin mania "seems to us not as a fad, but as the beginning of a new era in the digital currency space," he said. (Cointelefraph)