Retail investor sentiment remains crucial for Bitcoin, Swan Bitcoin CEO emphasizes
According to Swan Bitcoin's CEO Cory Klippsten, monitoring retail investor attitudes toward Bitcoin remains critical, given that ownership distribution is far from being centralized and major institutions like BlackRock don't directly hold the cryptocurrency.
Even with increasing institutional involvement in the cryptocurrency space, retail investor sentiment maintains the same level of importance it held during the era when Wall Street remained largely uninvolved, Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten argues.
"It still does. You have to remember it's not like BlackRock owns the Bitcoin and Fidelity owns the Bitcoin. It's a bunch of retail accounts mostly that actually buy that," Klippsten said during an interview with Cointelegraph published to YouTube on Tuesday.
"You know they're buying it in a wrapper. But they still have to take real supply and custody it. And it comes out of the supply. So, you know, it's still it is real demand in ETFs," Klippsten said, adding:
"There are some paper products and futures and things like that that are weird and take a little while to kind of work through the system. There is something to the idea that there is more supply in certain ways. But at the end of the day, if you want real on-chain Bitcoin, the fact that you can get it is what makes Bitcoin unique."
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds based in the United States have recorded a total of $2.90 billion in net outflows starting May 15, based on Farside data, during which time Bitcoin has dropped roughly 9.5% throughout the identical timeframe. At the time of publication, Bitcoin is trading at $73,630, according to CoinMarketCap.
In the meantime, attitudes surrounding the cryptocurrency market have experienced significant fluctuations throughout 2026. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, a tool that gauges overall sentiment across the crypto market, registered an "Extreme Fear" score of 23 on Friday, indicating that market participants are adopting a more careful stance toward cryptocurrency investments.
Bitcoin price outlook for 2026: slim chances
According to Klippsten, his expectations for Bitcoin achieving a fresh all-time high during 2026 are currently appearing unlikely.
He said he thought there was around a 50% chance we'd see a new all-time high this year when Bitcoin was still trading around $95,000 earlier this year, but given it has declined around 23% since then, his odds have gone down.
"I thought there was probably like a 50% chance that we'd see a new all-time high this year. And I'd say, given that we're still in the 70s and, you know, and that we went all the way down to 60, I'd probably handicap that down to like 20 or 25% chance that we get a new [high]" he said.