Bullish sentiment toward crypto assets increases with 8 of 10 people seeing bitcoin bounce above $56,000 by year's end, says Voyager Digital

• Bitcoin is poised to rise above $56,000 by year's end, a wide majority of survey respondents told Voyager Digital.
• The cryptocurrency-asset broker also found that more people are bullish in bitcoin vs. the prior quarter.
• The uptick in bullish crypto sentiment comes in the face of increased regulatory scrutiny.

Crypto investors have grown more optimistic about the price outlook for bitcoin and other digital assets in the last quarter, even in the face of more regulatory scrutiny, a new survey from Voyager Digital shows.

According to the cryptocurrency-asset broker's third-quarter sentiment survey results sent to Insider, 8 out of 10 are bullish on bitcoin over the next three months. That's an uptick from the second quarter, when 7 out of 10 respondents held a bullish view on the market.

The latest survey also found 8 out of 10 see bitcoin topping $56,000 by the end of 2021, representing a 27% rise from Thursday's price at around $44,000.

"As our user base continues to grow and digital asset adoption increases, our survey results suggest that a greater number of investors see Bitcoin as a better store of value compared to more traditional asset classes such as stocks, real estate, and government bonds," Steve Ehrlich, Voyager's founder and CEO, said in the survey statement.

"This is significant when you consider that over a fifth (22%) of respondents have been investing in crypto for over two years," and that it's likely many of them will consider not having exposure to traditional asset classes again, he said.

The results also showed 40% expect bitcoin to trade above $71,000 at some point in the fourth quarter, topping the all-time high of $64,863 reached in April. The prior sentiment survey released in June said 38% had expected bitcoin to finish the third quarter between $56,000 and $70,000.

Among altcoins, 40% of investors surveyed by Voyager were bullish on Cardano's ada token followed by ethereum at 16%.

Scrutiny of the crypto market continued during the third quarter as US regulators sought more avenues to oversee the market. The Treasury Department and other agencies are quickly moving to target stablecoins for tighter regulation, The New York Times reported Thursday.

And Securities and Exchange Commissioner Gary Gensler likened stable coins to "poker chips" in an interview with the Washington Post this week.

He has also called on lawmakers to give the agency authority to legally monitor crypto exchanges. Last week, he said those exchanges need to "come in and talk" to the agency, just days after clashing with trading platform Coinbase over a lending product. Coinbase has since dropped its plans for Lend.

Meanwhile, big-money investors are shying away from bitcoin futures and pivoting to ethereum futures as expectations for bitcoin soften, according to JPMorgan analysts. They noted that in September, bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have traded below the price of an actual bitcoin.