Kraken, the end of the bear market for crypto?

The Kraken crypto exchange is one of many trading platforms competing for market slices in the cryptocurrency world. 

The recent events at FTX that resulted in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, have undermined the credibility of an industry in the eyes of many. 

The events of Three Arrows Capital, Luna or Celsius were not enough, and so FTX put its own spin on it by accomplishing the unthinkable, the biggest scam in the crypto world. 

With its conduct, Sam Bankman-Fried‘s company undermined the foundations of the market and brought down other platforms in addition to providing a flurry of volatility often toward the red for all cryptocurrencies. 

Despite this less than reassuring picture, Jesse Powell has his solution. 

Kraken CEO reassures the crypto market

The founder of the Kraken platform, believes that rekindling enthusiasm will be the concentration of expectations and especially capital around Bitcoin’s next halving.

In the Bankless podcast, Powell explained that the FTX and Alameda Research affair has done a lot of harm to the digital currency sector as is easily seen in the eyes of even the least experienced, but a solution is there. 

The market can break out of the bearish market maelstrom and mend the tattered reputation with Bitcoin’s next halving. 

“It’s just a huge success to lose $10 billion of capital from this industry. To have just stolen that, he could have done great things and moved this industry forward. So it’s going to take some time to recover.”

This was the comment on the events surrounding SBF of which Kraken was not affected unlike other platforms. 

According to Jesse Powell, the next halving, which will take place indicatively in the first half of 2024, will be the sector’s bullish flywheel. 

“Obviously, prices are also depressed from all of this, so I think we are heading into an even deeper bear market winter. It could be a long time, we won’t get another Bitcoin halving until March 2024. That’s about to take a while, and I think it’s kind of the next kind of big event that could bounce us out of a bear market.”

The halving is very simplistically the cutting in half of what miners are paid for mining Bitcoin and thus reducing the available amount of new supply despite the fact that demand sees no end.

The next halving will save the market

Over time this event has always led to a new bull market, and the founder of the exchange believes it will not fail the task this time either.

Bitcoin leads the way for other cryptocurrencies and altcoins as the most capitalized crypto, and in the public eye such a positive event for BTC brings with it a breath of optimism for all other digital currencies.

During the last halving that took place in May 2020, the hype was extremely high and the following year Bitcoin hit its all-time high with $69,000. 

The same happened in 2016 when the following year BTC touched the all-time high at the time.

“I think there will continue to be bad actors that we need to get out. There will continue to be jabs against the industry and misleading information out there. Ultimately I think we need to remember why cryptocurrencies are here in the first place, and that is to provide Bitcoin and the freedom financial practically all over the world.”

The position expressed in the podcast is not entirely optimistic, Powell is well aware that we will always have great projects but some less so and that the market will be periodically hurt by failures but if the industry can hold its own it will mature and be increasingly recognized by investors around the world.