Bitcoin Price Outlook and the Story Behind the Miami Bull: James Putra

• The Miami Bull was unveiled at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference this week by Mayor Francis Suarez.
• James Putra, a top exec at TradeStation, which commissioned the statue, told us the inside story of the 3,000-pound bull.
• The veteran trader also explained why $46,000 is the “magic number” for bitcoin’s price right now.

The more than 25,000 attendees of the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami were inspired to feel bullish this week amid the unveiling of a 3,000-pound bull statue with “laser eyes.”

Modeled after the iconic Charging Bull on Wall Street, the Miami Bull was commissioned by the Florida-based trading firm TradeStation, which launched its crypto-brokerage platform in 2019. 

“What we intended was for it to be the symbol of Miami fintech and crypto, and to help crown that place on the global stage,” James Putra, who oversees product strategy at TradeStation Crypto, told Insider in an interview. 

Over the past two years, Miami has sought to become the city for the “future of finance.” Mayor Francis Suarez has vowed to take a portion of his paycheck in bitcoin. The city launched MiamiCoin (MIA) as a way to earn additional municipal revenue. Venture capital funding for Miami-area crypto startups skyrocketed to $745 million in 2021 from just $6 million the year before, according to Bloomberg, citing Pitchbook data. 

But Miami still has a lot of catching up to do. Among the pending items is an iconic monument that defines the city’s crypto ambitions. Unlike the financial center New York City and tech hub San Francisco, which are adorned with the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge, Miami did not “have something that captured the essence of its growing crypto and fintech community,” Putra said. 

That was enough to send him and his colleagues to work about eight months ago. For the design of the statue, they hired a group of strategists and artists, including the award-winning Furio Tedeschi, who is known for his work for the “Transformers” series. 

Dania Zapata/BFA

“We ended up with this monstrous, massive 3,000-pound bull,” he said. “The community has just absorbed this thing and they are running with it.”

Putra declined to share how much the firm spent on the bull but added that it was “well worth it” to give back to the community despite the “shocking” bills they received. 

For now, the statue is going to live outside the trading labs of Miami Dade College where TradeStation has helped launch a student-managed investment fund for cryptocurrency with $50,000  in seed funding, he added. 

Bitcoin price outlook — $46,000 is the ‘magic number’

The Miami Bull is by no means the only thing that has generated buzz at the largest annual gathering for bitcoin enthusiasts. 

In a keynote speech, tech billionaire Peter Thiel took a swipe at Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, calling them members of a “finance gerontocracy” that opposes the “revolutionary youth movement” behind bitcoin.

Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, also blamed the powerful finance figures for bitcoin’s failure to reach $100,000. 

While blaming Buffett — whom Thiel called a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha” — is one way to explain bitcoin’s struggle to get back up to its all-time high of nearly $69,000, there are other reasons for the stagnant price action of the largest cryptocurrency, which was changing hands at about $43,000 as of Friday afternoon in New York. 

Putra, a 15-year fintech veteran and trader, said the crypto market may look and feel bearish right now but it is not “a collapse in the

bear market

.”

“It is a market that is moving sideways. It’s having a difficulty getting into a trending direction on the upside, but it’s also having a very difficult time getting into a trending direction downwards,” he explained. “So the best assessment is sideways and choppy until we have a meaningful catalyst one way or the other.”

In the meantime, he said the “magic number that everybody is watching” for bitcoin is $46,000. 

“It’s connected with the open of the year. It is also a number where there is an inflection point for traders,” he said. “So above $46,000, the market becomes bullish. Below $46,000, the market is very bearish.”

He has observed that the majority of individual traders and institutions in the bitcoin derivatives market are positioned cautiously below $46,000, reflecting their expectations that bitcoin is unlikely to break above $46,000 in the next two months. 

If bitcoin does surge above $46,000, the next stop would be to test the token’s previous all-time high of nearly $69,000. To maintain an upward price trajectory, the digital currency would have to close above the prior all-time high “in a meaningful way” instead of having “parabolic” bounces at those price levels, according to Putra. 

“I would not like to see this parabolic breakthrough,” he added. “I like to see a steady incline above the price where we take it out in a slow and steady move up because that means it’s going to be so much harder to come back down.”

On the other hand, if bitcoin stays below $46,000, then traders should watch out for the $30,000 price level.

“If you go below $30,000, then there’s a major fall, I think you are looking at somewhere in the teens, ” he said. “But I think it’s unlikely. If you look at the options positioning, there are a large number of people that are waiting to buy at $30,000.”