Biweekly Headlines 2024 Feb W3 – W4
“Nothing punishes providing value like a Fiat economy.” – Jimmy Song
Biweekly News Roundup
1. Cryptocurrency Price Movements and Records
● BTC’s price fluctuations and recent surge: BTC once jumped 35% to over $53,000 since Jan. 23 but recently traded back and forth between $50,500 and $52,500.
● Layer-1 blockchain Sui overtaking others in terms of TVL: Layer-1 blockchain Sui has experienced a sharp increase in inflows this month, a spike that has seen it overtake Cardano, Near and Aptos in terms of TVL.
● BNB’s climb in price post-FTX crash: BNB climbed over $380 for the first time since Nov. 2022, the highest since FTX crash amid airdrop frenzy.
● UNI’s jump due to governance overhaul: UNI jumps 60% on proposal to reward token holders in major governance overhaul.
● STRK, AI-related tokens, AGIX, FIL, GRT, and WLD price movements: STRK claimed to hit 420M in a day as on-chain metrics soar. AI-related tokens surged after chipmaker Nvidia beat its already lofty fourth-quarter earnings expectations. AGIX surged 97% and FIL and GRT rallied more than 40% over the past seven days. WLD gained over 150% to new ATH on OpenAI’s Sora launch.
● Overall market cap of AI tokens: The overall market cap of AI tokens has surpassed $17B.
2. Bitcoin-Specific Developments
● BTC’s historical rally trends and predictions for the future: Bitcoin tends to rally over 30% in eight weeks leading up to the reward halving. It seems that prices may revisit and potentially surpass the record high of $69,000 before Bitcoin Blockchain’s fourth mining reward halving due on April 19.
● Fidelity’s prediction on BTC’s market capitalization: Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro made a bold prediction regarding BTC’s market capitalization, suggesting it could potentially hit $6 trillion, equivalent to a quarter of the “monetary gold” market.
● MicroStrategy’s BTC holdings and profits: When bitcoin’s price rose to just shy of $53K, MicroStrategy has seen its holdings climb above $10B, amassing a profit of more than $4B.
● Coinbase’s financial performance: Coinbase’s net income of $273M marks the firm’s first profitable quarter since Q4 2021.
3. Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and Investment Trends
● Approval and impact of spot bitcoin ETFs: The approval of the spot bitcoin ETFs constituted a landmark event for the $1.7T digital asset industry. Leading gold ETFs have seen outflows of $2.39B so far in 2024 as Bitcoin ETFs hit record volumes.
● U.S. exchange share in global market and ETF performance: The share of the U.S.-based exchanges in the global 2% market depth has increased to 48% from 14.3% since spot ETF expectations gripped the market in October.
● Crypto ETF inflows, with a focus on bitcoin and ether: Overall, a record $2.5B flowed into crypto exchange-traded products last week, with bitcoin funds responsible for 99% of all the inflows, with ether ETH products experiencing the second-largest inflow of $21M.
● Predictions for ether ETF approval and ETH price movements: Bernstein says there is about a 50% chance of ether spot ETF approval by May and near-certain probability of approval in the next 12 months. Ether hits $3K for the first time in nearly 2 years amid rising ETH ETF excitement. ETH may have found a path to a record high of $5,200 after breaking out an “ascending triangle” price pattern, according to technical analysis by Kraken OTC.
4. Government and Regulatory Developments
● Japan’s bill on crypto assets for investment funds: Japan’s cabinet approved a bill that adds crypto to the list of assets the nation’s investment funds and venture capital firms can acquire.
● German Bundestag’s Bitcoin event and pro-Bitcoin bill, aiming to make BTC legal tender in the country
● Virginia’s establishment of a Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Commission, proposing an annual budget of $17,192 for it
● Swiss PostFinance’s crypto custody services on February 21
5. Adoption and Integration in Various Sectors
● Trump’s growing acceptance of Bitcoin
● Paris Saint-Germain’s blockchain involvement
Feb. 24, 2024