Ava Labs President John Wu: Money will soon flow from stablecoins into Bitcoin

Ava Labs President John Wu believes the crypto market could see fresh upside pressure even if central bank interest rates go higher and stay elevated over coming months.

He also says a lot of the money “hidden” in stablecoins as crypto prices crashed will soon be deployed back into the market.

Are you looking for fast-news, hot-tips and market analysis?

Sign-up for the Invezz newsletter, today.

Crypto and stocks are highly correlated, but…

According to the Ava Labs executive, the macro environment for the broader stock market will likely impact crypto markets too, given the current high correlation between stocks and crypto. For instance, Bitcoin (BTC/USD) and Ethereum (ETH/USD) have a 0.75 correlation with Nasdaq.

“So what the market is saying is that all high risk assets are correlated,” he told Bloomberg in an interview.

Wu also believes US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will raise interest rates further, but his outlook for cryptocurrencies amid the ongoing crypto winter remains bullish.

“I agree it will go higher for a while,” he said referring to the Fed rate hike, “[but] I think what the market needs to understand is that there will be alpha in the crypto assets space and there’s very good reasons for that.”

‘Fundamentals are absolutely increasing’

Wu also talked about the Merge, the upgrade that activates the Ethereum consensus mechanism change from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. He thinks this is a potentially “huge catalyst” for the market, noting a decoupling would be in the offing.

On what could happen over coming weeks and months, Wu says a lot of money currently in stablecoins will soon be back into cryptocurrencies as investors eye more alpha.

“The fundamentals are absolutely increasing and improving the technicals – I mean there is, if you think about it, the crypto market caps have gone down but the stablecoins have not. And that tells you a lot of people are just hiding and they’re ready to deploy.”