U.S. bitcoin exchange Coinbase will cut its staff by about 18% due to the onset of crypto winter. Co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong called it a “difficult decision. Armstrong noted that the company has more than quadrupled its staff in the past 18 months. Too rapid a growth has led to problems coordinating and integrating new team members, making the team less effective. Affected employees will be notified by personal messages. They will immediately be denied access to confidential customer information. Employees who leave Coinbase will be compensated at 14 weeks’ salary with bonuses for more than one year of service. Coinbase will also pay a four-month health insurance policy and provide assistance with future employment, including at portfolio companies in the venture capital division. According to CNBC, Coinbase has about 5,000 full-time employees. The layoffs will affect about 1,100 of them.
Tag - Bitcoin
CEO and founder of cryptocurrency bank Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz is convinced that the two largest cryptocurrencies by capitalization are already close to the “bottom”, in contrast to the assets of the traditional U.S. financial market. S&P 500 index – down 22% from its peak in early January. Bitcoin and Ethereum prices are down 67.6% and 74.9% from their all-time highs, respectively. In early May, Novogratz foresaw bitcoin and Ethereum prices falling below the $30,000 and $2,000 levels, respectively.
MicroStrategy, Bitcoin
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said that the analytics software provider anticipated market volatility when choosing its bitcoin investment strategy. He assured that the company is ready to store the cryptocurrency further.
MicroStrategy initially allocated its assets in such a way as to continue to hodl in “unfavorable conditions” in the market. The company holds 129,218 BTC. Amid the collapse in the price of the first cryptocurrency, MicroStrategy’s loss from bitcoin holdings exceeded $1 billion. Saylor has consistently stressed that the company will continue to follow its strategy of buying and holding bitcoin. He is convinced that this policy will provide the software vendor with a “bright future” for years to come.
The head of MicroStrategy previously said that the price of bitcoin would have to fall below $3562 for the company to lack the digital assets to secure loans.
Bitcoin plunge
June 13 trading session on stock exchanges in the U.S. opened with a significant drop in shares of cryptocurrency-oriented companies. Over the past 24 hours, bitcoin has lost 13.3%, according to CoinGecko. The price of digital gold dipped below $24,000, with the asset trading near $23,740 as of this writing. At the open, shares of analytics software provider MicroStrategy were down 25.24%, Coinbase down 13.5%, and Silvergate Capital down 14%. According to Bitcoin Treasuries, MicroStrategy’s 129,218 BTC is now worth just over $3 billion. Earlier, the head of the company Michael Saylor reiterated his commitment to the first cryptocurrency.
Marathon Digital shares were down 12.33%;
Riot Blockchain, down 10.46%;
Core Scientific, down 12.45%;
Bitfarms, down 9.43%;
Bit Digital, up 8.8%;
Argo Blockchain, up 16.64%;
Hut 8 Mining and Hive Blockchain lost 10% and 9.6%, respectively.
Futures on the Nasdaq 100 fell 2.54% and the S&P 500 fell 2.5%.
When PayPal announced in 2020 that it would expand its offering to include Bitcoin, the sensation was perfect. So far, however, only customers in the USA and Great Britain can trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash and store them in a wallet.
The biggest drawback so far was that no transfers to and from external wallets were possible. However, this is to change in the coming weeks, at least for US customers, as the company announced yesterday.
This means that the wallets will become fully-fledged solutions, apart from the fact that the owners do not control the private keys to their cryptos. Users will have the ability to send and receive bitcoin freely. In addition, they will be able to transfer cryptocurrencies internally to other PayPal accounts free of charge.
The new feature has been available to selected customers and is expected to reach all US customers in the coming weeks, provided they have gone through a KYC process and identified themselves.
While the group’s offering certainly doesn’t match the ethos of many Bitcoiners, it does go a long way towards bringing Bitcoin to the centre of society. PayPal is still limited to the US market and the UK, but it should be clear that sooner or later the group will take it to the global market. At the end of 2020, PayPal counted 377 million people worldwide among its customers.
The fact that PayPal is now opening up its wallets is a thoroughly positive step that should be welcomed. Those who cannot identify with the fact that KYC is now part of the good standard and that all parties are increasingly identifiable will probably have a hard time in the future anyway. After all, the rigorous regulation of the market in the course of anti-money laundering laws has recently been decided.
Bitcoin has made a slow start to the new year as crypto traders rest up for the Christmas break. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has fallen about 8% in the past week as demand from buyers has dropped dramatically.
The current bitcoin price is around $46,000. This places the coin at the lower end of a two-week price range between $45,000 as well as $52,000. The price range previously led to higher bids for bitcoin.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the Bitcoin daily chart is rising from an oversold level reached on December 10. This is an indication that selling pressure is easing, especially since signals of downtrend exhaustion appeared on the daily chart for the first time since July 2021.
Bitcoin needs to rise above the moving average of the last 200 days to reach further upside targets. This average is currently at $47,962. The next resistance level is seen at $52,000, which could limit short-term gains.
The prices of cryptocurrencies collapsed hard across the board. In some cases, the prices slumped by 20 or more percent, so that Bitcoin as the market leader was traded for a short time at less than 40,000 euros – on Friday, BTC was still traded at more than 50,000 euros. In the meantime, the BTC price has recovered somewhat – buyers: inside took advantage of the dip and pushed the price back to more than 42,000 euros.
The rest of the crypto market is also deep in the red. Ethereum, which this week was preparing to break its own all-time high of more than €4,200, has plummeted hard – down to less than €3,500. Many other crypto assets – from SOL (Solana) to XRP and ADA (Cardano) to DOGE (Dogecoin or LTC (Litecoin) – are down 20 percentage points or more.
Coinbase is launching a program for direct deposit of paychecks into cryptocurrencies. PayPal and Robinhood already offer this service in the US.
Coinbase will soon allow U.S. companies to deposit their employees’ paychecks directly into accounts at the crypto exchange. In a blog post Monday, Coinbase Senior Director of Product Prakash Hariramani announced the option. This will allow employees to use their paychecks to purchase cryptocurrencies without transaction fees. For their part, companies can set up direct deposits through a supported payroll company in the Coinbase app or through a company’s human resources department.
China bans Bitcoin. At the beginning of the week, Bitcoin in terms of market size is at 43,800 dollars, initially well above the psychological mark of 40,000 dollars. In the slipstream of the Bitcoin recovery, the second most important currency Ether can climb again to a level well above 3,000 dollars. Bargain hunters used the latest price shock on Friday to get back in.
The Chinese central bank (Peoples Bank of China) had declared all activities around Bitcoin and Co illegal on Friday afternoon. Also for foreign exchanges, which are in connection with cryptocurrencies, the offering of corresponding services was prohibited. Accordingly, violations of the rules are to be punished rigorously.
Even if the pronounced ban had triggered price losses on the crypto markets in the meantime, China’s tough stance does not come as too much of a surprise for investors. Already in the spring, it had been announced that it wanted to take stronger action against the entire industry. Bad news from the Middle Kingdom thus has the potential to cause selling pressure in the short term, but obviously not to throw Bitcoin and Co. off track.
Billionaire Ray Dalio considers a Bitcoin ban is hugely potential from America in an identical manner as Gold straight back in 1934 to “shield the fiscal strategy.”
Whoever fund director and Billionaire Ray Dalio shared his notions regarding the long run Bitcoin and said crypto prohibition in America comes with a fantastic likelihood. Dalio summarized the fundamental banks want to know more about managing the requirement and distribution of these own countries, and inserted banks pick whether their attention to own a monopoly on banks at a nation and when matters just like crypto can proceed awful.
Even the crypto current market uses a fantastic bull streak under this systemic drive for crypto and expense businesses, supervisors, and firms such as VanEck, Goldman Sachs, and Fidelity most registered for ETFs together with all the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That directed the fundamental banking institutions to rethink the effect of electronic resources. Additionally, central financial institutions started out adapting to the development of new systems at the fintech distance and a few analyzing the prospect of devoting a CBDC, but that is maybe not true together with different associations using a competitive approach crypto-like India’s principal banking.
Dalio remarked that India’s existing position is aggressive in the direction of crypto. Simultaneously, the county transferred forward with all the programs to prohibit digital belongings preventing crypto holding and trading and blocking the Web Protocol as stated by an anonymous resource by your Indian origins. India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman clarified there is a tiny window of chances to get BTC. However, it looks like a window usually means the US government will experiment with BTC while implementing blockchain technological innovation on different businesses.
A planned financial product from Goldman Sachs can allow the significant bank to invest indirectly in Bitcoin. The financial institution filed the corresponding application with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 19.
The financial product is a so-called “linked note.” Such notes are linked to other financial products – in this case, an ETF. Interestingly, the Goldman Sachs note is related to the ARK Innovation ETF, of all things, a fund that is intertwined with the Bitcoin economy.
The Ark Innovation ETF (trading symbol: ARKK) has been around since 2013. The actively managed exchange-traded fund’s stated goal is to invest in technologies and companies with disruptive potential. The ETF is interested, for example, in the energy sector, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and precisely also FinTechs and cryptocurrencies. Goldman Sachs’ SEC filing states:
“The ETF may have exposure to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin indirectly through an investment in a Grantor Trust. The ETF’s exposure to cryptocurrencies may change over time, and, accordingly, such exposure may not always be represented in the ETF’s portfolio.”
The cost of buying one Bitcoin in Turkey on peer-to-peer crypto markets is over $100,000.
According to LocalBitcoins.com data, the minimum ask price for Bitcoin has reached 509,840 Turkish Lira (~$64,000). Meanwhile, some offline exchanges charge up to $100,000 in lira for the flagship cryptocurrency – almost double the global ask price.
The astronomical price levels come after a major drop in the value of the Turkish lira. The currency plunged as much as 14 percent Monday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the country’s central bank governor, who is credited with pulling the lira out of its downward slide earlier this year.
Naci Agbal, who replaced Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak as central bank governor, was a proponent of higher interest rates. His brief tenure drew applause from local and foreign investors for pushing Turkey toward a more orthodox monetary policy.
Max Lin, an emerging markets currency strategist at NatWest Markets, told The Wall Street Journal that Agbal’s ouster is a sign that President Erdogan does not want to raise interest rates to curb Turkey’s explosive inflation. The lira is now in danger of plummeting further because of its current competitiveness, he said.
As of today, it is possible to pay with Bitcoin in the US online store of the US car manufacturer Tesla. “You can now buy Tesla with Bitcoin,” writes company founder Elon Musk on Twitter.
Tesla does not work with third-party providers for BTC payments, who exchange Bitcoin for US dollars in the background and then transfer them to Tesla, but accepts the BTC directly. According to Musk, Tesla would work exclusively with internal open-source software and also operate a Bitcoin node itself.
The company announced this promise back in February 2021. At the same time, 1.5 billion dollars were invested in digital currency. The value of Bitcoin had risen sharply in recent months – at the beginning of January, it climbed temporarily to over 40,000 dollars. In mid-March, it even cracked a record value of over 60,000 dollars.
Meitu, a China-based software development company, has invested another £35.8 million in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). A report revealed this news on March 18, noting that this purchase has increased its crypto holdings to £64.45 million. According to reports, the company bought 386.08 BTC for £15.5 million and 16,000 ETH for around £23.3 million.
This is the company’s second crypto purchase this month. On March 5, Meitu, listed in China and Hong Kong, made its first investment in the crypto space, buying 15,000 ETH for £15.11 million. On the same day, the company bought 378 BTC for £12.83 million. As such, Meitu now owns approximately 31,000 ETH and 764.08 BTC.
According to Meitu, cryptocurrencies are still in the early stages of their growth. However, blockchain has already shown its potential to become a disruptive tool in the current financial and technology sectors.
Analysts at Bank of America have converted Bitcoin’s carbon footprint to cars. But they also have other arguments against cryptocurrency.
Unclean investment: The US electric car manufacturer Tesla recently purchased a large amount of Bitcoin. The action is controversial from a climate protection perspective because of the high computing power required for cryptocurrency. Bank of America has related Bitcoin investments to internal combustion vehicles.
Investors concerned about environmental aspects of their investments should “pay attention to Bitcoin’s enormous environmental costs,” according to a Bank of America report titled “Bitcoin’s dirty little secrets.” As the authors calculated, buying $1 billion worth of Bitcoin releases as much carbon dioxide as 1.2 million internal combustion engine vehicles in a year.
Ethereum, currently in second place in the ranking of the most important cryptocurrencies, can overtake Bitcoin in a period of about ten years. Crypto analyst Ryan Watkins is convinced of this. He bases his steep thesis on various indications of varying importance.
The entire argument is based on the ongoing progress of the Ethereum network. As is known, the project is working on version 2.0 of its blockchain. It is supposed to fix various problems.
The move from the consensus proof-of-work model to proof-of-stake, he said, reduces energy consumption, speeds up operations, and leads to value-preserving scarcity by burning Ether as part of transaction processing. Moreover, the protocol upgrade would ultimately make the network even more secure than Bitcoin.
Watkins sees a massive value driver in the service portfolio around the defi sector, which Bitcoin does not have to offer at all. Applications of the decentralized financial sector (Dapps), especially the rapidly growing NFT sector, increase the Ethereum network’s importance in modern everyday life.
Dapps, in particular, is forcing Ethereum to work on performance. In small steps, the network is moving in the right direction. For example, Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 is set to be implemented in July. This aims to make the Ethereum network cheaper and faster by restructuring transaction fees.
Instead of transaction fees set by miners on their own responsibility, the so-called gas fees, there will be an algorithmically determined base fee in the future, i.e., a base fee that does not have to be re-auctioned for each transaction. The base fee will be burned in the course of the transaction, i.e., destroyed by the protocol.
No one benefits from these payments, which will always remain fixed to Ether under the new regime, stabilizing the currency’s value. This pleases everyone involved, except the miners. They are losing massive amounts of revenue and now want to fight back with a so-called 51 percent attack.
Digital currency investment firm Grayscale has announced the launch of five new digital asset trusts. Grayscale launched a series of new digital asset trusts to the market, reportedly offering investors more diversification options. The U.S.-based cryptocurrency asset manager previously offered nine investment products, and the latest additions will bring the total number to 14. The new digital currency investment trusts are slightly different from other Grayscale products, as they include alternative digital assets such as Filecoin, Decentraland, Livepeer, and Basic Attention Token.
All five trusts are currently open for subscription daily to retail and institutional investors who meet the eligibility criteria. The company’s CEO, Michael Sonnenshein, cited increasing investor demand for diversification as the reason for launching the new trusts.
“Investor demand has never been higher, and we see new entrants every day in what has certainly become a real asset class,” he said.
Sonnenshein explained that investors were looking to invest in trusts other than the renowned Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). According to Bank of America, the trust debuted in 2013 and has become the most prominent public holder of bitcoins. This allows investors to take exposures to bitcoin without having to hold the actual asset. This way, they don’t have to worry about security or custody issues.
Visa CEO Alfred Kelly believes crypto-assets could be widely used in the next five years. He seemed to hold cryptocurrencies in high regard when he made the remarks that seemingly contradict his stance on the same issue in January.
The Visa executive spoke vaguely about cryptocurrencies earlier this year when the multinational financial services company announced its quarterly results. For more than three years, Kelly has not reported any upcoming or planned projects involving digital assets at the helm of the company.
Now he acknowledges that cryptocurrencies could turn out to be established or be a short-lived craze.
“The thing about our business that I really like is […] we don’t pick winners and losers. You know, as you and I sit here today talking, I don’t know to what extent cryptocurrencies are going to take off. Are we going to say five years from now that it was a fad and not a big deal? Or will they become extremely mainstream?”
Investment bank Morgan Stanley will offer its wealthy clients access to Bitcoin funds. This makes it the first leading bank in the US to take such a step. Morgan Stanley currently manages over $4 trillion for its clients, and its move into bitcoin (BTC) could be huge for the crypto market.
Sources closely familiar with the matter told CNBC that Morgan Stanley told its financial advisors in an internal memo yesterday to grant access to three funds and allow clients bitcoin assets.
According to Morgan Stanley, the move to offer bitcoin funds results from increasing demand from its clients. The bitcoin rally over the past year has caught the attention of Wall Street. Several wealthy investors are demanding exposure to cryptocurrency.
There would be certain restrictions regarding bitcoin funds. Morgan Stanley would only allow wealthy clients to access the funds. To qualify, an investor must have at least $2 million in assets, while the minimum requirement for investment firms is at least $5 million. In both cases, accounts must be at least six months old.
MicroStrategy bought 262 BTC worth about $15 million. The digital asset held by the analytics software provider reached 91,326 BTC.
The average purchase price was $57,146 per coin, including fees and other expenses.
The company’s total investment in digital gold was more than $2.2 billion. At the time of writing, the value of assets exceeded $5.1 billion (according to CoinGecko).
In August 2020, MicroStrategy was the first public company to convert a portion of its $250 million equity into a leading cryptocurrency.