Don’t expect large firms to follow Tesla’s Bitcoin move, JPMorgan says

Strategists at JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest investment banks in the United States, believe that Tesla’s $1.5 billion Bitcoin (BTC) purchase will not necessarily trigger a ton of similar investments.

A group of JPMorgan strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou reportedly argued that Bitcoin’s highly volatile nature could keep mainstream corporate treasurers away from Bitcoin. “The main issue with the idea that mainstream corporate treasurers will follow the example of Tesla is the volatility of Bitcoin,” the strategists wrote in a note to investors, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

According to JPMorgan, even a small portion of Bitcoin in corporate treasures’ portfolios would be associated with a high level of risk as such companies usually maintain their portfolio volatility at around 1%. Even if Bitcoin makes up 1% of total allocations, it “would cause a big increase in the volatility of the overall portfolio,” potentially driving the portfolio’s volatility up to 8% due to Bitcoin’s 80% annualized volatility, the strategists said.

Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors made the headlines on Feb. 8 by announcing a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase in a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The news fueled a parabolic spike in an already rallying crypto market, with Bitcoin subsequently hitting a new all-time high of above $48,000.

Following the huge move, a number of major crypto figures including Galaxy Digital founder Michael Novogratz expressed confidence that “every company in America” will follow Tesla’s decision to allocate a part of their balance sheets to Bitcoin. Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein also predicted that the world will soon see a lot of “other visionary leaders and disruptive companies actually realizing it has really moved from why to why not.”

Some crypto players also speculated that U.S. tech giant Apple could be the next institutional player to adopt the crypto asset.