Jim Chanos publicly shorts Coinbase.
Cardano reacts positively to the Plutus update.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell wages war against inflation.
My name is Ben.
This is your nightly crypto news wrap-up.
Let's get it!
Before we jump into the news, let's head on over to Frankie Candles for a market update.
Thanks, Ben. Let's jump in and do a little market watch here.
Bitcoin coming in at $42,665.
You know, up 3% for the day, 8% in the last seven days.
Very nice to see finally, you know, not moving sideways,
getting a little bit of green price action on Bitcoin.
Ethereum coming in over $3,000.
Finally, we cracked that $3,000.
Looking real good for Ethereum.
Love to see it.
Let's go ahead and take a look at some top movers here.
IOTX up 20% in the last 24 hours
ApeCoin up 20%
ICP up 7%
Polkadot up 7%, 13% on the week
Let's take a look at some of the top losers.
THORChain, right? RUNE has been going on an absolute tear,
so not surprised to see it down 2%, taking a little retrace after its massive pumps.
Zcash kind of the same thing,
been performing really well,
up 28% for the week,
so, you know, typical to see some pullbacks when you see coins going up like this.
Same thing with Terra.
Avalanche was pumping, up 21% for the week.
So down about 1% here.
Like I said, not too abnormal to see when you see these coins pumping
and get a little bit of a retrace.
But things are looking good.
Some coins I have my eye on?
Cardano and XRP.
Back to the news.
Basically, if you're a believer
that crypto technology will develop in a number of different areas,
of course, in brokerage and exchange but also as a method of payment,
as a store of value, in NFTs, etc.,
if you believe in any one or more of these,
Coinbase is positioning itself as that sort of platform play
that creates the on-ramps and on-ramps into the crypto economy
as the major Western regulated version of that.
And in our view, that is an extremely unique, one-of-a-kind asset
where you can get in on the ground floor.
It's volatile.
It's unpredictable in the near term.
But if you're taking a multi-year view, in our view,
this is one of the most attractive entry points to a very unique story over a multi-year timeframe.
Is your price target still 600?
It is. Yes!
Despite the statistics,
despite the users,
despite the hype,
despite $797 billion in transaction volume last year,
veteran trader Jim Chanos publicly revealed that he is shorting Coinbase.
Famous for shorting Enron before their collapse 20+ years ago,
Chanos believes Coinbase is a bubble stock.
He doesn't see them turning a profit this year.
He told Markets Insider that
there are plenty of companies that are in the new economy
that have real growth, real cash flows and real earnings,
but there's a lot that are just being sold on stories,
and we would argue that Coinbase is one that's being sold on a story.
It would be one thing if he took this short six months ago
because then he'd be up almost 24%.
But to short it now probably isn't the best idea.
Crypto is marching towards mass adoption,
and Coinbase is a big driver behind that
since it's a perfect entry-level platform for new traders entering the market.
Sure, it's not the biggest crypto exchange,
but it is the only one currently trading as a stock on Wall Street.
Once more exchanges roll out their IPOs,
there will be more of a competitive edge,
further influencing the crypto exchanges in the stock market.
But that doesn't mean Coinbase will continue to fall just because it stands alone.
He must have missed the memo that Coinbase is available in over 100 countries
and has over 115,000 ecosystem partners.
Coinbase has 73 million registered users,
the NFT platform is coming down the pipeline this year,
and its utility threatens the likes of Western Union.
I think you would need more to short the stock.
And so the way I look at Coinbase is
I think that those that shorted Tesla five years ago
that just thought that Tesla should be compared to a GM or Ford
really missed the broad, you know, market reception to Tesla.
I think Coinbase is similar
because it's not just going to be a trading and custodial platform.
If so, I think that you could make the case that Jim is saying.
In other news,
things are on the up and up for Charles and the gang over at Cardano.
After making the headlines last week from the impact they've had this year in DeFi,
the Plutus update is now complete,
and ADA is up just over 17% in the past five days.
According to newsbtc.com,
operating as a platform, Plutus enables users to leverage a programming environment.
In that way,
users can build their own smart contract without needing technical skills,
maintaining code,
and removing the need to use a full development environment.
With one more thing on their ambitious 2022 roadmap checked off,
they want their users to expect significant growth in the future.
If you're in the ADA Gang, be sure to hit that like button,
subscribe and hit that bell for notifications on your friendly ADA channel.
Lastly, after the rate hike last week,
the first one in three years by the way,
Fed Chair Jerome Powell continues to play checkers while inflation is playing chess.
You might already know that the interest rate hike last week
is expected to be the first of seven rate hikes this year.
In his speech yesterday,
Powell outlines that he will take the necessary steps to ensure a return to price stability,
even if that means aggressively raising the rates 50 basis points at once instead of the usual 25.
Inflation is as high as it's been in 40 years.
So desperate times call for desperate measures.
Besides six more rate hikes coming this year,
the FOMC is also going to start selling off some of the $9 trillion
worth of assets on their balance sheet maybe as soon as May.
Although Powell envisions the Ukraine conflict spilling over into the US economy
and with taking the oil and supply chain issues into account,
he expects to bring inflation down around 2% in the next three years.
That's all I got.
Be blessed.
BitBoy out.