Crypto markets rally; THETA now a top 20 token with 125-fold gains (!!!) in 12 months

Crypto markets rally; THETA now a top 20 token with 125-fold gains (!!!) in 12 months

share

Link copied to

clipboard

Here’s hoping you bought that mother-freakin’ dip.

Cryptocurrency markets are surging today, with 82 of the top 100 crypt-assets gaining ground in the 24 hours to 3.16pm AEDT, and just 15 losing it, all modestly, according to Coingecko.

Bitcoin was up 6.5 per cent to $US53,724 ($70,000), Ethereum had gained 6.6 per cent to $US1,830 ($2,400), and unbridled enthusiasm had returned to Crypto Twitter.

Bitcoin is once again a $1 trillion asset. — Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) March 9, 2021

Sports coin Chiliz (CHZ) was the best-performing top 100 asset in the past 24 hours, up an astonishing 73.2 per cent to US23.7c at 3.23pm AEDT. Four hours earlier, it had hit an all-time high of US25c, after beginning the month around US5c and the year at about US2.5c.

Your humble scribe’s former flatmate called it:

The worst-performing asset was Voyager Token, down 4.7 per cent to $US5.60. The ERC-20 token is used to reward users within the Voyager ecoystem.

Seven other top 100 crypto-coins had hit all-time highs in the past four hours: Decentraland (MANA); Reserve Rights Token; SwissBorg; Enjin Coin — again! — Terra (LUNA); VeChain; and Theta Network (Theta).

At 3.41pm, Enjin was up 5.7 per cent to $US1.84, having reached $US1.94 around lunchtime. The gaming token is now ranked No. 52 on Coingecko.

THETA cracks top 20

THETA, a blockchain-powered network for video streaming, is now ranked as the 18th-most-valuable token on Coinmarketcap, up from the 25th spot at the start of the month. The project has a nominal market cap of $US5 billion.

THETA was changing hands at $US5.12 — up 15.6 per cent in the past 24 hours and a mind-boggling 126-fold from US4c, the value it dipped to a year ago this week.

Around 2pm, it hit an all-time high of US$5.14.

When people used to laugh at me for investing #THETA NOW WHOS LAUGHING 😂 🤣🤣🤣 — TherealB4KER (@ker_b4) March 9, 2021

Subscribe to our daily newsletter

Join our small cap Facebook group

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter

CryptoBigfoot NFT Crypto Art Collection Launched on OpenSea Ethereum Blockchain

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang Inc.’s initial public offering is on track to be the largest listing by a Korean company in a decade. And, like most of the major tech offerings these days, it’s happening in New York.There are three big reasons that explain why the U.S. is a better pick for the e-tailer backed by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son. Perhaps most significantly, New York offers a considerable valuation premium. It also has a deeper, more liquid market, and allows uneven voting rights that would benefit Coupang’s founder, Harvard Business School drop-out Bom Kim.The U.S. has been the destination of choice for mega tech IPOs, with 2020’s biggest debuts Airbnb Inc. and DoorDash Inc. both listed in New York. Chinese e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. also went public there. Coupang is seeking to raise up to $3.6 billion in its IPO and could garner a value of more than $50 billion. That would make it the largest float by a Korean company since Samsung Group took its insurance unit public at home in 2010.Had the loss-making e-commerce firm listed in Korea – which from this month will allow unprofitable companies to go public – Coupang could have fetched a maximum valuation of just $10 billion, according to Suh YongGu, a marketing professor at Sookmyung University.“The history of capitalism in South Korea is short, so Koreans don’t ascribe high valuations to loss-making companies,” said Suh.South Korea’s stock market is less than 70 years old, and is dominated by chaebols, or family-controlled industrial groups. In fact, SK Bioscience Co., a unit of SK Group, one of the county’s largest chaebols, will be the latest to have a stock market presence when it goes public this month. The maker of AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 vaccine for Korea, is seeking to raise $1.3 billion ahead of its March 18 listing, according to Korean-language Seoul Economic Daily Monday.Korean investors’ appetite for their homegrown entrepreneur-led startups, however, will be tested in coming months with IPOs by Krafton Inc., the creator of hit game PUBG, and the country’s biggest mobile-only bank Kakao Bank. Unlike Coupang, those firms are profitable.Coupang has lost money in the last three years, recording an accumulated deficit of $4.12 billion as of December, according to its filing. Thanks to the surge in online shopping during the pandemic, however, it managed to nearly double its revenue to $12 billion last year.A $51 billion valuation would put Coupang among the five most valuable companies in Korea, of which Samsung Electronics Co. is the biggest. Korea’s other big startups with growing clout in e-commerce – the $58 billion Internet conglomerate Naver Corp., and the $39 billion messaging app Kakao Corp. – are both listed in Seoul, but were both profitable when they went public. The two are backed by entrepreneurs and not linked to the chaebols like Samsung Group.In fact, Coupang’s listing in the U.S. will allow it to exceed the combined market value of the six chaebol-owned retailers trying to expand their presence in e-commerce – E-Mart Inc., Lotte Shopping Co., GS Retail Co., Shinsegae Inc., BGF Retail Co., and Hyundai Department Store Co..Liquidity is another allure of the U.S. market, allowing companies to raise funds frequently through secondary share sales. Korea’s stock market, at a total value of $2.12 trillion, is a fraction of the $44.2 trillion of the U.S., according to Bloomberg data.“It’s easier for investors to exit” their stakes in the U.S., said Seo Sang-Young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities in Seoul. “And the trading volume is much larger.”And finally, a U.S. listing gives founders more power.Korea doesn’t allow uneven voting rights, favored by tech firms like Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc., who see it as a way for founders to focus on the long-term. But the U.S. does, even if the ownership structure is itself not without controversy, as it lacks shareholder protections. Kim, Coupang’s 42-year-old founder, will end up with 76.7% of the company’s voting rights with just 10.2% of its outstanding shares.“We would have liked Coupang to list in Korea,” said Kim Sung-gon, a spokesperson at Korea Stock Exchange. “But we respect the company’s choice.”Korea IPO Boom Year Kicks Off With Coupang FloatStill, missing out on the chance to buy into one of the country’s hottest companies in the biggest Asian company IPO since Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s $25 billion New York listing in 2014 is rankling the retail investors who have come to dominate Korea’s stock market since the pandemic spread.“There is certainly regret among retail investors that they cannot buy into the IPO,” said Kim DongJoo, the CEO of Iruda Discretionary Investment, a Seoul-based investment firm catering to retail investors seeking to buy foreign stocks.Largest IPOs by Korean Companies:Coupang prides itself on its same-day or at least pre-dawn deliveries. It is also giving its warehouse staff and 15,000 full-time delivery workers a total of $90 million in pre-IPO stock, a unique largess that comes at a time when the deaths of a string of couriers from overwork as online orders soared is causing a national uproar.“We believe we are the first company in Korea to make our front-line employees stockholders,” Kim said in a letter to shareholders in Coupang’s IPO filing.Five Coupang warehouse workers have died in the past year, according to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a major labor organization. On Saturday, a Coupang delivery driver was found dead in an incident which Yonhap News said showed symptoms his colleagues attributed to overwork.Coupang said in a statement on Monday that the deceased worker had “worked around four days a week on average and worked about 40 hours for the past 12 weeks.” It added, however, that it would “make efforts to thoroughly protect the health and safety of workers.”(Updates with Coupang’s statement on a worker’s recent death in the last two paragraphs)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Crypto Coin Outperforming Bitcoin Is About to See Supply Reduced

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – Thanks to the pandemic, U.S. banks won a long-sought regulatory break that let them expand their balance sheets by as much as $600 billion without adhering to profit-denting safeguards. Now, firms are frantically lobbying to extend that relief before it expires at month’s end.The reprieve from what’s known as the supplementary leverage ratio – granted a year ago as Covid-19 rocked markets and the economy – gave lenders free rein to load up on Treasuries and deposits, while avoiding a requirement that they hold more capital as a buffer against losses. The Federal Reserve and other agencies eased the rules because they said they wanted excess capital deployed to struggling businesses and households.As watchdogs mull letting the relief continue, Wall Street isn’t shying away from offering arguments and even warnings. Executives point out that the pain from coronavirus is far from over, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. has cautioned that it might have to shun customer deposits if tougher rules are reinstated. Analysts have also said recent bouts of wild trading in the $21 trillion Treasury market could be tied to concerns that banks will be forced to hold less government debt, even selling some of their holdings.“We estimate the potential for about $200 billion in Treasury selling, with the potential for it to be even larger,” said BMO Capital Markets strategist Dan Krieter. He added that the outlook remains “extremely uncertain” because it’s not clear what banks’ capital demands will be going forward.The lobbying has put the Fed at the center of a political firestorm, one of its first tests in the Biden era of seeking to support a fragile economy while fending off attacks from Democrat lawmakers who oppose any backpedaling on regulations adopted after the 2008 financial crisis. Progressive Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown have already fired a warning shot about doing the banks’ bidding.Pressuring PowellMeanwhile, Republicans repeatedly pressed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell at recent congressional hearings with industry-encouraged requests to grant an extension. Powell responded that the Fed hasn’t decided what to do, and the regulator has continued to decline to comment on its plans.The supplementary leverage ratio – one of the key responses to the 2008 crisis – limits banks’ indebtedness by measuring the amount of capital they have standing against all their assets. When regulators relaxed the requirement last April, disruption in Treasuries was a major factor in their decision. The move allowed banks to help stabilize that market, while maintaining funding for short-term borrowing arrangements known as repurchase agreements.“The market has assigned almost mythical powers” to the temporary capital break, said Mark Cabana, head of U.S. interest rates strategy at Bank of America. In reality, he argued, the impact probably hasn’t been that significant because banks’ share of the demand for Treasuries is “very marginal.”Without incurring extra capital costs, the relief enabled the largest banks to pile up about $400 billion in reserves created from the Fed’s ongoing asset purchases and $200 billion in Treasuries, BMO’s Krieter estimated in a client note.The Fed has indicated that it intends to continue its asset buying, and those who want the break extended argue that continued economic stimulus will lead to a flood of new issuance, meaning it’s a bad time to deter banks from buying more Treasuries.“If that were to wane this year, when supply issues are likely to be worse, I think it could be problematic,” said NatWest Markets strategist Blake Gwinn.Fed’s FactorsFactors the Fed is likely to consider include whether the threat to the economy is as urgent as it was a year ago and the message it sends when regulators are seen as kowtowing to Wall Street. Also, the leverage ratio is an international agreement struck between global watchdogs, meaning overseas banks have a legitimate gripe that their U.S. counterparts are benefiting from less aggressive oversight.In pushing for an extension, Wall Street lobbyists have conducted a campaign of blog posts, research and letter writing. They’ve also homed in on one argument that regulators might be receptive to: banks needed the relief to respond to a dilemma that the federal government created.All the stimulus programs rolled out last year flooded corporations and consumers with cash that they had to store somewhere. That happened as companies – scared by the pandemic – were also drawing down credit lines that needed a home. Banks’ domestic deposits rose by 23% to $16.3 trillion in 2020 from 2019 and lenders had to invest the funds in Treasuries and other low-risk assets. So relaxing bank capital requirements for deposits and Treasuries was a natural reaction to the deluge.JPMorgan Chief Financial Officer Jennifer A. Piepszak said last month that “all of the major banks” are concerned about the relief going away. If it does, “we could turn away deposits,” she said.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency also have a say in whether banks are granted an extension. But FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams believes the relaxed capital demands have been the most meaningful for the bank holding companies the Fed oversees, according to an agency spokeswoman.The OCC is currently led by acting comptroller Blake Paulson, an agency veteran, though Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has the authority to name anyone she wants to run the regulator. An OCC spokesman declined to comment on the agency’s plan.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.