Canadian brokerage firm RBC Capital Markets (Royal Bank of Canada) believes that Apple should launch its own cryptocurrency exchange. Since the Apple wallet is getting a lot of users from all over the world because of the cashless transaction, they proposed that the company could get US$40 billion if they enter the cryptocurrency industry.
RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves received information about Apple’s stock raise on February 8 stating the company’s share price went up from US$154 to US$171. This was during Monday’s afternoon trading, where Apple stock was off 0.6% to US$135.99.
There are rumours that Apple is near to closing a deal with Hyundai to build its own signature Apple Car. Steves believes that a car would be a good option for investment as well but the potential that Apple has if they decide to dive in the market of cryptocurrency can be a big thing.
Moreover, Steves estimates that payments firm Business Square (SQ) generates around $1.6 billion in bitcoin-related revenue per quarter. Therefore, Apple has a base of US$1.5 billion and assuming that the number of people who would transact is 200 million, then this would be already 6 times larger than Square.
If Apple decides to enter the crypto-exchange sector, they would automatically be a big player in the digital assets market. The tech giant has the potential to utilize a system that uses Bitcoin wallet to lessen the cost of converting their fiat money into crypto assets.
Furthermore, if Apple becomes a big player in the cryptocurrency scene, then this may also decrease the possibility of banning Bitcoin in the United States.
‘If Apple went down this path, the USA would likely acquire the most crypto assets from a global perspective. Once the United States gets its hands on the crypto assets, it will already make a good sense of why RBC will not ban it,’ Steves said.
In addition, Tesla revealed that they bought US$1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Steves claims that a similar purchase for Apple could kickstart the creation of their own cryptocurrency exchange and push customers to use it.
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