Mediaboss Marketing

Bitcoins rally to start 2023 has spurred calls of a new bull market, with the largest cryptocurrency gaining 80% to vastly outperform the stock marketwhere the S&P 500 is up a meager 7% by comparisonas a leading indicator of risk sentiment.

This time might be different.

Investors excited about Bitcoins rally to $30,000 might be in for a rough awakening when they realize that it didnt boost trading volumes at Coinbase , Dan Dolev, an analyst at Mizuho Securities, wrote in a Thursday note. Coinbases average daily volumes are less than $1 billion in April versus $1.6 billion in March, he added.

We believe large institutional players are buying Bitcoin in hopes that retail would follow. Yet, retail seems uninterested, Dolev said. This is not a broad-based crypto renaissance.

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue

Mizuho rates Coinbase stock at Underperform with a $30 price target. Shares in the broker were up more than 102% this year, opening Thursday at $69.89.

However, there are other, alternative signs that there is momentum behind smaller U.S. investors coming back to crypto.

For one, the recent growth in Bitcoin wallets is concentrated among the smallest holders. The number of wallets holding at least 0.01 Bitcoinabout $300has risen more than 3% since the start of 2023, according to crypto data group Messari. Growth gets smaller as wallets get bigger: The number of wallets holding at least one Bitcoin has grown around 1.5%, while wallets with more than 10 Bitcoin are up just 0.5%.

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue

There is also the so-called Coinbase Premium Gap, a metric tracked by data firm Crypto Quant that measures the difference between Bitcoin prices quoted on Coinbase and those on Binance, the worlds largest crypto exchange. Since Coinbase is most popular in the U.S. and Binance is an offshore behemoth, the gap indicates how crypto demand among Americans stacks up relative to the rest of the world.

After spending much of 2022 in discount territory, the Coinbase Premium has been positive for most of 2023 and was sitting around $25 on Wednesday.

Coinbase releases its first-quarter financial results, likely in Mayand where Bitcoin prices will be then, who knows?and hopefully will provide some guidance for the current quarter, which includes Bitcoins latest bullish jump.

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue

Until then, however, there is at least some reason for optimism.

Write to Jack Denton at jack.denton@barrons.com

See more here:

Coinbase Isn't Profiting From Bitcoin's Big Rally. Why This Time Is Different. - Barron's

This weekend, listen to a collection of articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

Written and narrated by Gabriel J.X. Dance

Winter Storm Uri had knocked out power plants across Texas, leaving tens of thousands of homes in icy darkness. Meanwhile, in the husk of a onetime aluminum smelting plant an hour outside of Austin, row upon row of computers were using enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes as they raced to earn Bitcoin, the worlds largest cryptocurrency.

The New York Times has identified 34 such large-scale operations, known as Bitcoin mines, in the United States, all putting immense pressure on the power grid and most finding novel ways to profit from doing so. Their operations can create costs including higher electricity bills and enormous carbon pollution for everyone around them, most of whom have nothing to do with Bitcoin.

Until June 2021, most Bitcoin mining was in China. Then it drove out Bitcoin operations, at least for a time, citing their power use among other reasons. The United States quickly became the industrys global leader.

Written and narrated by James Poniewozik

Im so sick of smiling, Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) says in the first episode of Netflixs Beef. You may have noticed that hes not alone in this. Blame it on the pandemic, the culture, the economy, but people are mad right now, on planes and on trains and like Danny and his car-crossed antagonist, Amy Lau (Ali Wong) in automobiles.

Beef, a dark comedy about a road-rage incident that careers disastrously off-road, has good timing, but thats not enough to make a great TV series. What makes this one of the most invigorating, surprising and insightful debuts of the past year is how personally and culturally specific its study of anger is. Every unhappy person in it is unhappy in a different and fascinating way.

Written by Nico Grant and Karen Weise | Narrated by Nico Grant

In March, two Google employees, whose jobs are to review the companys artificial intelligence products, tried to stop Google from introducing an A.I. chatbot. They believed it generated inaccurate and dangerous statements.

Ten months earlier, similar concerns were raised at Microsoft by ethicists and other employees. They wrote in several documents that the A.I. technology behind a planned chatbot could flood Facebook groups with disinformation, degrade critical thinking and erode the factual foundation of modern society.

The companies released their chatbots anyway. The aggressive moves by the normally risk-averse companies were driven by a race to control what could be the tech industrys next big thing generative A.I., the powerful new technology that fuels those chatbots.

Written and narrated by Erika Solomon

Russian and Danish naval vessels that disappear in the Baltic Sea, days before an underwater pipeline blast. A German charter yacht with traces of explosives, and a crew with forged passports. Blurry photographs of a mysterious object found near a single surviving pipeline strand.

These are the latest clues in the hunt to reveal who, last Sept. 26, blew up most of the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream pipelines, some 260 feet below the Baltic Sea, that were once the largest supplier of Europes natural gas. A flurry of new findings and competing narratives has sown distrust among Western allies and presented an opening for Russian diplomatic pressure that has raised the geopolitical stakes in Europes Baltic region.

Nowhere is the tension felt more strongly than among the 98 residents of Denmarks Christianso an island so tiny, you can walk across it in 10 minutes. Living just 12 nautical miles away from the blast site, everyone from the herring pickler to the inn chef sees skies and waters filled with foreboding.

Mornike Giwa Onaiwu was shocked when day care providers flagged some concerning behaviors in her daughter, Legacy. The toddler was not responding to her name. She avoided eye contact, didnt talk much and liked playing on her own.

But none of this seemed unusual to Dr. Onaiwu, a consultant and writer in Houston.

I didnt recognize anything was amiss, she said. My daughter was just like me.

Legacy was diagnosed with autism in 2011, just before she turned 3. Months later, at the age of 31, Dr. Onaiwu was diagnosed as well.

Autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social and communication difficulties as well as repetitive behaviors, has long been associated with boys. But over the past decade, as more doctors, teachers and parents have been on the lookout for early signs of the condition, the proportion of girls diagnosed with it has grown.

The Timess narrated articles are made by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack DIsidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Prez, Krish Seenivasan, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.

Read the original:

The Price of Bitcoin Mining and More: The Week in Reporter Reads - The New York Times

Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is steadfast and mundane, said Michael Safai, managing partner at financial services firm Dexterity Capital. But that's a good thing.

Bitcoins going to be the boring old grandpa right now in the room, Safai told CoinDesk TVs First Mover on Friday referring to why, during these uncertain economic times, bitcoins rally may be due to its simple, more familiar story.

Certainly a lot of the excitement in the crypto market is happening in ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, he noted.

While the upgrade allows users to withdraw the ETH theyve staked (as well as reducing fees and opening space on the blockchain for more transactions), Safai pointed out that a lot of things are happening with ether, including allegations from U.S. government officials who say it is a security and should be regulated as such.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is sidestepping the chaos of all the investigations, he said. For now, at least, it appears the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is comfortable with treating bitcoin as a commodity, unlike its view of ether.

With Ethereums upgrade, the rules of the game have just changed, Safai said. It may also be the reason there is excitement in the markets from users.

Were seeing more activity on the options side and I expect that to continue, he said.

See original here:

Bitcoin Is the 'Boring, Old Grandpa' Right Now Compared to Ether: Dexterity Capital Manager Partner - CoinDesk

Source: MMollaretti/Adobe

Argentinas financial markets regulator has approved the Latin America regions first Bitcoin (BTC) futures contract offering.

In an official notice from the Comisin Nacional de Valores (National Securities Commission or CNV), the regulator explained that it had approved the trading of futures contracts on the Matba Rofex Bitcoin Index.

The CNV specified that negotiation and settlement would be carried out in Argentine pesos.

Only institutional or professional investors will be allowed to access the offering, the CNV explained.

The regulator wrote:

The measure [...] aims to adapt to the regulatory challenges imposed by new technologies for the provision of financial products.

But it also noted:

[The measure also aims] to encourage the development of new, innovative products [] in the capital market. This way, qualified investors will be able to gain exposure to Bitcoin price variations in a safe and transparent manner. And they will be able to do so through derivative products traded within regulated market infrastructures.

The CNV has insisted that Matba Rofex must provide potential investors with warnings and disclaimers that detail the risks associated with Bitcoin-related investments.

And the CNV claimed that its initiative was an achievement masterminded by its Innovation Hub.

The hub was launched by the CNV in 2022.

The regulator claimed at the time that the hub would provide a space for public-private collaboration.

It also said it would promote exchange between regulated companies and firms working in the technology and capital market financial product sectors.

Crypto adoption is on the rise in Argentina.

Earlier this year, the nations finance ministry revealed details of a draft law that would essentially force citizens to declare their crypto or pay tax-related fines on their holdings.

And in January, firms claimed that there had been a sharp rise in citizens choosing to get paid in crypto rather than fiat.

Argentinas inflation has soared above the 100% mark this year.

Here is the original post:

Argentina Approves First LATAM BTC Futures Offering Are ... - Cryptonews

The crypto markets had a rough 2022, and Bitcoin (BTC -2.82%) wasn't spared -- the cryptocurrency fell nearly 65% last year. But 2023 has become a comeback story, with Bitcoin up 83% since January.

Bitcoin mega-supporter and MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor recently revealed that his company bought 6,455 Bitcoin in late March, a transaction worth $150 million.

Should investors follow Saylor's lead? One shouldn't base their investment decisions on someone else's, but there are some excellent reasons to consider adding Bitcoin to your portfolio today. Here is what you need to know.

Although investors should make their own decisions, there's no denying the influence that well-known investors such as Warren Buffett can have on a stock's sentiment. Saylor is arguably the Buffett equivalent to Bitcoin investors, and his latest $150 million investment is a vote of confidence if anything.

MicroStrategy now owns 138,955 total Bitcoin worth almost $4.2 billion. The company's average Bitcoin cost is $29,817, just a bit below where it trades today. In other words, you could argue that Saylor sees value in Bitcoin at its current price; a $4 billion investment would imply an expectation that the asset's value will increase over time.

However, one shouldn't automatically mirror Saylor's sentiment on Bitcoin, just as one shouldn't blindly buy Coca-Cola stock just because Buffett owns it. Instead, look at it as a prompt to revisit your investment thesis.

The overarching theme for Bitcoin is that it's a store of value, similar to gold or silver. Ideally, Bitcoin can protect investors from two critical problems of the fiat-based financial system. First, Bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million coins, a hedge against inflation that continually devalues fiat currency as more is created. Second, it's decentralized, independent of central control like the U.S. financial system, which is dominated by the Federal Reserve.

Additionally, banks use a fractional reserve system, where they leverage their deposits to lend more money than they have. That's fine until too many people try to pull their money out of the banks at once. Bitcoin's scarcity and independence from any person or party controlling it have driven demand and fantastic investment returns. Bitcoin has easily outpaced the S&P 500despite the coin's dramatic decline in 2022.

Data source: YCharts Bitcoin Price

Some might ask whether Bitcoin's volatility disqualifies it as a store of value, but Bitcoin doesn't seem any more volatile than silver and gold. You can see below that gold and silver have experienced similar declines from their highs, a reminder that asset prices fluctuate.

Data source: YCharts Gold Price in U.S. Dollars

Yes, Bitcoin has been more volatile than gold, but it's a less-known commodity than a precious metal that has been sought after and valued for thousands of years. Perhaps Bitcoin will become less volatile as it ages -- it's a fair question, at the least.

For now, markets seem to value Bitcoin as a riskier asset, which declines when investors flee to safety. Gold is near its all-time high, while Bitcoin is far from it. Bitcoin's early 2023 comeback could signal that the crypto winter, as some call it, is nearing its end.

Investors will only know for sure in hindsight, but it appears Bitcoin's long-term appeal is still intact, especially after the near-miss of another crisis in the modern banking system. Bitcoin will likely remain a volatile asset, but it could have more up days than down if the market's sentiment toward riskier assets turns positive.

Justin Pope has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2024 $47.50 calls on Coca-Cola. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

View original post here:

Michael Saylor Buys Another $150 Million in Bitcoin: Is the Crypto a ... - The Motley Fool