Bitcoin climbs back to $59,000 after Fed signals it’s unlikely to raise rates: CNBC Crypto World

Bitcoin climbs back to $59,000 after Fed signals it’s unlikely to raise rates: CNBC Crypto World

today Bitcoin and ether rise after the FED keeps interest rates unchanged Arkansas State lawmakers passed new rules for crypto miners in new form capitals Alex marinier breaks down why traditional institutions are now more open to blockchain Investments welcome to cnbc’s crypto world I’m TAA mckel cryptocurrencies recovering some of their losses after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said the central bank’s next move is unlikely to be a rate hike Bitcoin Rose about 4% to $59,800 by noon Eastern ether Advanced more than 3% to $29.90 and salonet jumped 12% to trade at $139 okay let’s talk about some of the top stories Bitcoin mining firm stronghold digital announced first quarter earnings and said it’s exploring a possible sale the company reported $27.5 million in Revenue last quarter up nearly 60% year-over-year plus $5.8 million in net inome come but in that same earnings release stronghold said it had started a formal strategic review process using outside advisors it said it’s considering alternatives to maximize shareholder value and that includes a sale of all or part of the company’s assets Greg beard the chairman and CEO of stronghold said the company has observed what we believe to be a valuation dislocation When comparing strongholds market value to valuations of public Bitcoin mining peers Merchant power companies and data center and power generation assets Trading in the market shares were down about 2% at noon the news of course comes after the Bitcoin having which lashed minor revenue and was expected to lead to consolidation in the Bitcoin mining pool next and sticking with Bitcoin mining Arkansas’s State Legislature has passed new rules reigning in crypto miners lawmakers passed two bills on Wednesday Senate Bill 78 creates requirements for miners to reduce noise coming from their facilities that’s been a growing complaint from Arkansas residents who have sued over the fan noise coming from miners within the state meanwhile Senate Bill 79 adds permitting requirements and regulations for digital asset miners by amending Arkansas’s data centers Act of 2023 that law sought to limit regulation of miners at the local level lawmakers later said that they didn’t have all the information about that 2023 bill when they passed it now these latest bills had to Governor Sarah huab Sanders desk and finally PayPal is enabling customers of the web 3 exchange moonay to buy crypto through PayPal the two companies announced today that moonpay users now have the ability to buy and sell more than 110 tokens with PayPal whereas other Integrations only allow users to buy its stable coin PayPal USD or eth using their PayPal account moonpay says the partnership will help customers who struggle to buy crypto with debit cards due to certain Bank restrictions PayPal began offering crypto Services back in 2020 and just this past summer it announced its own dollar back stable coin the first for a major US financial institution all right all turning to venture capital Investments for our main story crypto world’s Talia Kaplan spoke with Alex marinier founder and general partner at new form Capital an early stage VC firm about Trends to watch in the fintech and blockchain space he explains why more traditional Finance institutions are now moving towards blockchain Investments you believe there’s a quote seismic shift happening on Wall Street with traditional institutions that have historically ignored blockchain Investments now seriously looking at the sector so you’re the founder and general partner of new form capital A blockchain focused VC firm so what have you been noticing when it comes to wall Street’s appetite for blockchain technology and what do you attribute the shift in sentiment to what are some of the catalysts do you do they include the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs here in the US earlier this year yeah that’s absolutely been the biggest catalyst so far this year in both the appreciation of crypto prices and the kind of re-engagement that we’re seeing amongst large uh Financial asset firms on Wall Street um look it’s it’s no secret that the blockchain space has had a rough go uh in 2022 with the market correction and the uh frauds that came to light during that correction um and you know mostly the media has been covering the space in a negative light covering the frauds and the more speculative nature in the space but you know black raw kind of spearheading this new ETF push uh and unveiling a number of other tokenized assets has really kind of reentered the conversation around uh a new generation of digital Financial assets that are running on tokenized Rails so you know when Larry f who runs the world’s largest asset manager says at Davos that you know their grand plan is to tokenize 10 trillion dollars of their AUM on tokenized Rails people tend to listen so I think with the price appreciation with kind of leaving crypto winter and a lot of the negative press behind us you’re starting to see sophisticated investors revisit the space um and really kind of test uh blockchain technology for its merits as it pertains to financial markets so what are you noticing are some of the use cases and opportunities in the blockchain space for traditional institutions what have they been most interested in recently so we just touched on on Larry thinkink uh you know talking about how he’s planning on tokenizing 10 trillion dollar of their financial assets you know some viewers might be asking what does tokenization mean that’s really just kind of the process of taking a more traditional financial asset and coming up with a digital representation of that asset that trades onchain and enables a lot of the benefits of having an onchain assets you know benefits that include 247 peer-to-peer transfers uh built in kyc and Regulatory Compliance um programmatic uh payments and dividends that you can build into these uh different uh blockchainbased Securities um that that’s really kind of the interesting part to us and we’re investing in companies that are helping with that tokenization um process you also saw you know another super large Financial Manager uh Franklin Templeton come out last week and mentioned that uh they’re actually enabling peer-to-peer transfers for a tokenized money market fund they launched in 2021 on a public blockchain and the hope is that you know longer term assets like that can be interoperable with the broader uh digital asset ecosystem um so another big kind of step in the right direction from large financial institutions um we also just last week saw an announcement from stripe that they’re enabling crypto payments uh in their product again this is actually the second time that they reintroduced it the first go round you know the the tech was not quick enough um it it wasn’t cheap enough but they’re now finding that after two years a lot of the scalability problems have been solved and it’s now cheaper and more pragmatic to enable usdc stable coin payments in their products so these are all you know massive uh existing fintech firms and financial asset managers that are kind of uh announcing uh big products in the space um all kind of in this larger secular trend of of blockchain coming into kind of the Wall Street lexicon now expanding on that the stripe announcement came six years after the payments firm dropped support for Bitcoin cying the tokens notoriety for volatile price swings and a lack of efficiency in making everyday transactions also in March you noted this black rock the world’s largest asset manager jumped into the asset tokenization race creating that new fund on the ethereum network so what do you make of these developments from traditional financial institution and what’s your outlook for the future of blockchain and finance yes so I’ll address uh you brought up stripe so I’ll address that first you know stripe you mentioned that six years ago that they had kind of started you know they tested the waters with Bitcoin payments actually they found that there wasn’t a lot of demand for it citing you know the volatility that’s inherent in Bitcoin uh it’s also just a question that it was a little bit too early you know digital asset penetration was still uh in the single digits whereas they’re reaching higher now um the biggest thing is that they’re now using uh usdc or a stable coin that’s to the US dollar so one they’re taking kind of the volatility out of the equation that’s inherent with Bitcoin um but two the tech has just gotten more scalable uh and cheaper to transact so it makes it more pragmatic for U the mainstream today um you know I will say that uh you know firms like like Black Rock uh entering the fry is also massive as it der risks the space for other asset managers who look to the largest asset managers to see what they’re doing um and again you know I think we’re going to see with this ETF launch that later this year um you know we’ll see um you know different advisers start to advise kind of a one to five% digital asset allocation to their clients portfolios which I think is about right given the volatility inherent with the space and this is all kind of part of a larger shift of crypto and digital assets moving from more of a kind of Fringe asset class to entering kind of the mainstream uh Financial portfolio which is which is obviously big so the price of Bitcoin has been dropping this week but in March the cryptocurrency hit a new alltime high above $73,000 how has that played into VC interest in blockchain technology in February pitchbook released its fourth quarter update revealing that the level of investment for crypto related companies in the quarter climbed for the first time in nearly two years amid Bitcoin Stellar run what do you think about the uptick in Crypt VC funding and what do you think caused that increase yeah so like i’ I’ve been investing in this space since 16 uh there’s a lot of inherent cyclicality that comes with investing in digital asset markets uh that plays out both in public markets and private markets on the VC side uh we work with a lot of our Founders to you know create a plan to become Capital efficient to be able to survive both Market booms and busts um you know look I I think that we’ve come a long way in terms of the recovery of the space from the lows in November of 22 post FTX where Bitcoin was trading around 16 grand um you know now we’re seeing it in in the 50s even after the consolidation so um look it’s it’s definitely a sign that we’re moving kind of out of crypto winter into kind of the next phase of the expansion um this isn’t our first our first rodeo right you know we’ve we’ve dealt with these boom and Buzz Cycles before we try and pay attention to longer you know 10-year Trends versus having to worry about kind of the daily fluctuations in the space but you’re right in that you know that the price action tends to uh kind of lead uh private Market valuations by about six months or so so you’re starting to see the reemergence of interest from more generalist SPC funds that typically are fair weather investors they tend to leave the space in crypto Winters and tend to come back when the price action is going up and to the right okay that’s all for crypto world today we’ll be back again tomorrow and we’ll see you then

CNBC Crypto World features the latest news and daily trading updates from the digital currency markets and provides viewers with a look at what’s ahead with high-profile interviews, explainers, and unique stories from the ever-changing crypto industry. On today’s show, Alex Marinier of New Form Capital discusses Wall Street’s growing interest in blockchain technology.

Chapters:
00:00 – CNBC Crypto World, May 2, 2024
0:22 – Bitcoin rises
0:42 – The headlines
3:18 – New Form Capital’s Alex Marinier

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Bitcoin climbs back to $59,000 after Fed signals it’s unlikely to raise rates: CNBC Crypto World