“With the first day of ETF trading behind us, it already feels like the crypto markets have moved on to looking toward the next narrative,” Chris Newhouse, DeFi analyst at Cumberland Labs observed, suggesting that this was simply a fad. SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci argued, however, that the cryptocurrency’s slump had more to do with the large-scale sales of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shares. According to Scaramucci, shareholders opted to move on to alternative ETFs with lower fees.

Data from Bloomberg showed that around $720 million was invested in the 10 Bitcoin ETFs on the day that they began trading. Almost $240 million flowed through the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, followed by the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund and the iShares Bitcoin Trust.

The post Bitcoin Falls Below $42,000 as ETF Optimism Fades appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Under Saylor’s guidance, Microstrategy started accumulating large amounts of Bitcoin in 2021. While the company had some rough times due to this strategy, which led to Saylor giving up his CEO role, it looks like it is finally paying off.

After dropping under 20K early in the year, Bitcoin enjoyed a steady rise in recent months. It surpassed the 30K mark in October and reached $37,885 per coin last month, its highest since April 2022.

As a result, Microstrategy’s stock has been on an upward trajectory and closed at $524.20 per share on Friday. The last time the company’s shares were above $500 was back in December 2021 before reaching a low of $141.57 in late 2022.

Microstrategy is believed to have 158,400 Bitcoins in its portfolio, with its holdings being valued at around $5.6 billion. The business intelligence company purchased its coins for an average price of $29,803, meaning its investment resulted in close to $1 billion in profit at the moment.

The post Microstrategy Stock Reaches Two-Year-High Thanks to Surging Bitcoin Prices appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Pegged to the U.S. dollar, this currency is defined as a stablecoin as it is designed to be protected from the volatilities that cryptocurrencies tend to experience, thereby making it easier to use for digital payments and as a store of value.

Backed by U.S. dollar deposits and short-term U.S Treasuries, PayPal USD is set to be issued by Paxos Trust Co, the company revealed. PayPal added that this currency will be gradually rolled out in the United States.

Last month, a U.S. congressional committee came close to passing a bill to establish a legal framework to govern stablecoins however this motion ultimately fell apart.

This isn’t the first occasion that a major player in payments has pushed the usage of digital currencies. In 2021, Visa announced that it would allow the usage of the cryptocurrency USD Coin for transactions on its payment network.

The post PayPal Launches Stablecoin in Crypto Push appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

GameStop has been struggling to keep its head above water in recent years after failing to adapt to changes in customers’ preferences for online marketplaces. The company believed a venture into the crypto realm would help them return to relevance, but the strategy didn’t bring the expected success.

The idea of GameStop Wallet, which was launched back in May, was to enable users to store, send, receive, and use crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company also launched an NFT marketplace a few months later, hoping to encourage wider adoption of the wallet.

GameStop didn’t provide much detail about its decision to pull the plug on GameStop Wallet. The announcement was made via a brief message posted on the official website that contained some basic guidelines for wallet owners.

“Due to the regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space, GameStop has decided to remove its iOS and Chrome Extension wallets from the market on November 1, 2023,” the company stated. “We advise that all customers ensure that they have access to their Secret Passphrase by October 1, 2023. Any customer with access to their Secret Passphrase has the ability to recover their account in any compatible wallet.”

The post GameStop is Shutting Down Its Crypto Wallet appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

In its lawsuit filing in early June, SEC charged Coinbase with “operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.” It also argued that the crypto exchange failed to “register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told the Financial Times that they could have avoided going to court if they had accepted the recommendation from SEC to trade only in Bitcoin.

“They came back to us, and they said . . . we believe every asset other than bitcoin is a security,” Armstrong told the media outlet. “ … We really didn’t have a choice at that point, delisting every asset other than bitcoin, which by the way is not what the law says, would have essentially meant the end of the crypto industry in the US.”

When Reuters reached out to Coinbase for further comments, the company’s spokesperson clarified that SEC didn’t make a formal request to delist all tokens besides Bitcoin. Instead, it was more of a recommendation and stance brought forward by individual SEC staffers.

The post SEC Asked Coinbase to Delist All Cryptocurrencies Except Bitcoin Before the Lawsuit appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

In an email update shared with investors, ARK announced it had sold 478,356 Coinbase shares. Considering that the COIN stock traded at around $105 per share on Friday, the investment fund raked in more than $50 million. This follows a previous sale of Coinbase shares that were worth approximately $12 million.

ARK still owns a substantial amount of Coinbase shares even after the two sales. It is one of the largest shareholders in the US-based crypto exchange, having more than 10 million Coinbase shares in its portfolio.

SEC sued Ripple Labs back in 2020, arguing that the crypto-focused software company offering XRP tokens on public exchanges constitutes a sale of unregistered securities. However, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres ruled in favor of Ripple Labs, saying the company didn’t violate any federal laws.

The outcome of the lawsuit had a positive effect on the crypto industry, with all major cryptocurrencies seeing a jump in value. The shares of publicly-trade crypto firms like Coinbase also benefited.

The post Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Cashes in on Coinbase Stock Surge appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, recently announced its decision to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would be focused on Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related stocks. Following in BlackRock’s footsteps is Deutsche Bank, which revealed its intention to operate a crypto custody business to hold digital assets for its clients.

Such movements have boosted Bitcoin’s value, with the world’s most valuable digital currency rising to $31,389 on Friday. This comes after Bitcoin reached the $30,000 mark for the first time since April.

Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities are also looking to get a foothold in the crypto market, partnering to launch a new cryptocurrency exchange.

The Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month filed lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, two of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, after they allowed digital currencies onto their platforms that were not yet registered with the SEC. Despite this pressure, cryptocurrencies have continued to rise on the back of heightened support from traditional banking institutions. Total market capitalization for crypto assets reached $1.2 trillion on Friday; a 14% rise from the previous week.

The post Banking Majors Prop Up Cryptocurrency Amid Rising Lawsuits appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Several smaller digital currencies were hit exceptionally hard by selloffs, with Cardano’s ADA plummeting by 25% on Saturday. Avalanche’s AVAX, Polygon’s MATIC, and Solana’s SOL followed with double-digit losses of their own.

Of the major cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin shed 3% on Saturday while Ether, the second-ranked crypto on the market, fell by more than 6% to its lowest level since March.

While weekends are typically known as a turbulent time for cryptocurrencies, this was a particularly concerning time after the SEC launched lawsuits earlier in the week against Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global Inc. In addition, it flagged several altcoins as unregistered securities, including ADA, MATIC, and SOL.

In addition to the recent SEC-induced industry concerns, investor anxiety was also driven by a decision coming from Robinhood Markets Inc. on Friday to drop several altcoins from its platform. Noelle Acheson, former head of market insights at Genesis Global Trading Inc., commented that price drops could have also been caused by selloffs aimed at driving prices downward.

The post Weekend Crypto Selloff Sparks Investor Anxiety appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Mastercard has already teamed up with a number of industry giants, including the world’s leading crypto exchange Binance as well as other crypto exchanges like Nexo and Gemini. As part of the collaboration, Mastercard and these crypto first offer special crypto payment cards in a number of countries.

For example, Binance Card is a Mastercard-provided prepaid payment card that links with user Binance accounts. The clients are able to make payments in traditional currencies from their cryptocurrency holdings on the platform.

“We have dozens of partners around the world who offer crypto card programs, and they continue to expand,” Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s head of crypto and blockchain, told Reuters. “Providing access to crypto in a safe way is also part of our value proposition, and we’re continuing to do that.”

The crypto industry currently faces a challenging environment as U.S. regulators continue to aggressively pursue legal actions against crypto firms that don’t comply with the existing regulations. Binance is currently facing a suit by U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while SEC is taking action against the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase.

The post Mastercard Looking to Expand Its Involvement in Crypto Industry appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, Bitcoin will reach a price of $100,000 by the end of 2024.

“While sources of uncertainty remain, we think the pathway to the $100,000 level is becoming clearer,” Kendrick wrote in this week’s note via Reuters.

Kendrick based his prediction on crypto mining’s increase in profitability, the recent banking crisis in the United States, and the fact that the Federal Reserve will likely end its aggressive policy of hiking interest rates in the near future. He also points out that European Union’s steps toward regulating the cryptocurrency market will also benefit Bitcoin.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that a huge rise has been predicted for Bitcoin. After a crypto boom during the pandemic, a number of analysts believed Bitcoin would easily surpass the $100,000 mark in 2022, but the cryptocurrency actually took a huge hit.

 Bitcoin reached $30,000 at one point last week for the first time in more than 10 months. It has since come down and is currently trading at around $27,000.

The post Standard Chartered Predicts Bitcoin Will Be Worth $100,000 By the End of 2024 appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

“With the first day of ETF trading behind us, it already feels like the crypto markets have moved on to looking toward the next narrative,” Chris Newhouse, DeFi analyst at Cumberland Labs observed, suggesting that this was simply a fad. SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci argued, however, that the cryptocurrency’s slump had more to do with the large-scale sales of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust shares. According to Scaramucci, shareholders opted to move on to alternative ETFs with lower fees.

Data from Bloomberg showed that around $720 million was invested in the 10 Bitcoin ETFs on the day that they began trading. Almost $240 million flowed through the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, followed by the Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund and the iShares Bitcoin Trust.

The post Bitcoin Falls Below $42,000 as ETF Optimism Fades appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Under Saylor’s guidance, Microstrategy started accumulating large amounts of Bitcoin in 2021. While the company had some rough times due to this strategy, which led to Saylor giving up his CEO role, it looks like it is finally paying off.

After dropping under 20K early in the year, Bitcoin enjoyed a steady rise in recent months. It surpassed the 30K mark in October and reached $37,885 per coin last month, its highest since April 2022.

As a result, Microstrategy’s stock has been on an upward trajectory and closed at $524.20 per share on Friday. The last time the company’s shares were above $500 was back in December 2021 before reaching a low of $141.57 in late 2022.

Microstrategy is believed to have 158,400 Bitcoins in its portfolio, with its holdings being valued at around $5.6 billion. The business intelligence company purchased its coins for an average price of $29,803, meaning its investment resulted in close to $1 billion in profit at the moment.

The post Microstrategy Stock Reaches Two-Year-High Thanks to Surging Bitcoin Prices appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Pegged to the U.S. dollar, this currency is defined as a stablecoin as it is designed to be protected from the volatilities that cryptocurrencies tend to experience, thereby making it easier to use for digital payments and as a store of value.

Backed by U.S. dollar deposits and short-term U.S Treasuries, PayPal USD is set to be issued by Paxos Trust Co, the company revealed. PayPal added that this currency will be gradually rolled out in the United States.

Last month, a U.S. congressional committee came close to passing a bill to establish a legal framework to govern stablecoins however this motion ultimately fell apart.

This isn’t the first occasion that a major player in payments has pushed the usage of digital currencies. In 2021, Visa announced that it would allow the usage of the cryptocurrency USD Coin for transactions on its payment network.

The post PayPal Launches Stablecoin in Crypto Push appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

GameStop has been struggling to keep its head above water in recent years after failing to adapt to changes in customers’ preferences for online marketplaces. The company believed a venture into the crypto realm would help them return to relevance, but the strategy didn’t bring the expected success.

The idea of GameStop Wallet, which was launched back in May, was to enable users to store, send, receive, and use crypto and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company also launched an NFT marketplace a few months later, hoping to encourage wider adoption of the wallet.

GameStop didn’t provide much detail about its decision to pull the plug on GameStop Wallet. The announcement was made via a brief message posted on the official website that contained some basic guidelines for wallet owners.

“Due to the regulatory uncertainty of the crypto space, GameStop has decided to remove its iOS and Chrome Extension wallets from the market on November 1, 2023,” the company stated. “We advise that all customers ensure that they have access to their Secret Passphrase by October 1, 2023. Any customer with access to their Secret Passphrase has the ability to recover their account in any compatible wallet.”

The post GameStop is Shutting Down Its Crypto Wallet appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

In its lawsuit filing in early June, SEC charged Coinbase with “operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.” It also argued that the crypto exchange failed to “register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told the Financial Times that they could have avoided going to court if they had accepted the recommendation from SEC to trade only in Bitcoin.

“They came back to us, and they said . . . we believe every asset other than bitcoin is a security,” Armstrong told the media outlet. “ … We really didn’t have a choice at that point, delisting every asset other than bitcoin, which by the way is not what the law says, would have essentially meant the end of the crypto industry in the US.”

When Reuters reached out to Coinbase for further comments, the company’s spokesperson clarified that SEC didn’t make a formal request to delist all tokens besides Bitcoin. Instead, it was more of a recommendation and stance brought forward by individual SEC staffers.

The post SEC Asked Coinbase to Delist All Cryptocurrencies Except Bitcoin Before the Lawsuit appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

In an email update shared with investors, ARK announced it had sold 478,356 Coinbase shares. Considering that the COIN stock traded at around $105 per share on Friday, the investment fund raked in more than $50 million. This follows a previous sale of Coinbase shares that were worth approximately $12 million.

ARK still owns a substantial amount of Coinbase shares even after the two sales. It is one of the largest shareholders in the US-based crypto exchange, having more than 10 million Coinbase shares in its portfolio.

SEC sued Ripple Labs back in 2020, arguing that the crypto-focused software company offering XRP tokens on public exchanges constitutes a sale of unregistered securities. However, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres ruled in favor of Ripple Labs, saying the company didn’t violate any federal laws.

The outcome of the lawsuit had a positive effect on the crypto industry, with all major cryptocurrencies seeing a jump in value. The shares of publicly-trade crypto firms like Coinbase also benefited.

The post Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest Cashes in on Coinbase Stock Surge appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, recently announced its decision to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would be focused on Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related stocks. Following in BlackRock’s footsteps is Deutsche Bank, which revealed its intention to operate a crypto custody business to hold digital assets for its clients.

Such movements have boosted Bitcoin’s value, with the world’s most valuable digital currency rising to $31,389 on Friday. This comes after Bitcoin reached the $30,000 mark for the first time since April.

Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, and Citadel Securities are also looking to get a foothold in the crypto market, partnering to launch a new cryptocurrency exchange.

The Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month filed lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase, two of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, after they allowed digital currencies onto their platforms that were not yet registered with the SEC. Despite this pressure, cryptocurrencies have continued to rise on the back of heightened support from traditional banking institutions. Total market capitalization for crypto assets reached $1.2 trillion on Friday; a 14% rise from the previous week.

The post Banking Majors Prop Up Cryptocurrency Amid Rising Lawsuits appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Several smaller digital currencies were hit exceptionally hard by selloffs, with Cardano’s ADA plummeting by 25% on Saturday. Avalanche’s AVAX, Polygon’s MATIC, and Solana’s SOL followed with double-digit losses of their own.

Of the major cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin shed 3% on Saturday while Ether, the second-ranked crypto on the market, fell by more than 6% to its lowest level since March.

While weekends are typically known as a turbulent time for cryptocurrencies, this was a particularly concerning time after the SEC launched lawsuits earlier in the week against Binance Holdings Ltd. and Coinbase Global Inc. In addition, it flagged several altcoins as unregistered securities, including ADA, MATIC, and SOL.

In addition to the recent SEC-induced industry concerns, investor anxiety was also driven by a decision coming from Robinhood Markets Inc. on Friday to drop several altcoins from its platform. Noelle Acheson, former head of market insights at Genesis Global Trading Inc., commented that price drops could have also been caused by selloffs aimed at driving prices downward.

The post Weekend Crypto Selloff Sparks Investor Anxiety appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Mastercard has already teamed up with a number of industry giants, including the world’s leading crypto exchange Binance as well as other crypto exchanges like Nexo and Gemini. As part of the collaboration, Mastercard and these crypto first offer special crypto payment cards in a number of countries.

For example, Binance Card is a Mastercard-provided prepaid payment card that links with user Binance accounts. The clients are able to make payments in traditional currencies from their cryptocurrency holdings on the platform.

“We have dozens of partners around the world who offer crypto card programs, and they continue to expand,” Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s head of crypto and blockchain, told Reuters. “Providing access to crypto in a safe way is also part of our value proposition, and we’re continuing to do that.”

The crypto industry currently faces a challenging environment as U.S. regulators continue to aggressively pursue legal actions against crypto firms that don’t comply with the existing regulations. Binance is currently facing a suit by U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while SEC is taking action against the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase.

The post Mastercard Looking to Expand Its Involvement in Crypto Industry appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to Geoff Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, Bitcoin will reach a price of $100,000 by the end of 2024.

“While sources of uncertainty remain, we think the pathway to the $100,000 level is becoming clearer,” Kendrick wrote in this week’s note via Reuters.

Kendrick based his prediction on crypto mining’s increase in profitability, the recent banking crisis in the United States, and the fact that the Federal Reserve will likely end its aggressive policy of hiking interest rates in the near future. He also points out that European Union’s steps toward regulating the cryptocurrency market will also benefit Bitcoin.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that a huge rise has been predicted for Bitcoin. After a crypto boom during the pandemic, a number of analysts believed Bitcoin would easily surpass the $100,000 mark in 2022, but the cryptocurrency actually took a huge hit.

 Bitcoin reached $30,000 at one point last week for the first time in more than 10 months. It has since come down and is currently trading at around $27,000.

The post Standard Chartered Predicts Bitcoin Will Be Worth $100,000 By the End of 2024 appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.