載舟覆舟！Crypto、PayPal走勢大相逕庭 比特幣是罪魁禍首
PayPal (PYPL-US) 和 Square (SQ-US) 都靠比特幣吸引顧客使用其 app 並維持其參與度，但兩家股價走勢卻大相逕庭，自從比特幣一個月前開始下跌以來，Square 股價就表現不佳。
如果加密貨幣持續熊市，兩家股價可能都會苦不堪言，但 Square 可能會面臨更多壓力，部分原因是該公司在散戶投資者中與比特幣的聯繫更為緊密。
兩種支付 app 都可輕鬆買賣和儲值加密貨幣，PayPal 在其 app 上提供數種加密貨幣，而 Square 只供應比特幣。這兩家作法像經紀人，賺取的是每筆交易的手續費和利潤。
來自加密貨幣的營收淨額並非其整體業務的大部分。MoffettNathanson 分析師 Lisa Ellis 指出，PayPal 今年營收約只因加密貨幣交易增加 2%，在營收總額 260 億美元中僅占 3 億至 6 億美元。
Square 第一季營收總額 51 億美元，其中比特幣營收 35 億美元。Square 的會計方式是：扣除購買比特幣的成本，在當季 9.64 億美元毛利總額中，只計入這些交易 7500 萬美元的毛利。
雖然加密貨幣的獲利非常微薄，但這兩家支付公司都將加密貨幣交易視為攏絡顧客並提高 app 參與度的一種手段。
Ellis 指出，「他們的加密貨幣用戶一天會多次打開 app 確認價格，這就讓公司有機會出售其他服務。」
Square 與加密貨幣聯繫更緊密，但部分原因是其創辦人兼執行長 Jack Dorsey 是加密貨幣狂粉，近日也曾在推特上表示，「比特幣使一切變得更好。」Square 過去幾季資產負債表上認列投資比特幣 2.2 億美元，現已對該投資進行減值。
加密貨幣低迷顯然對 Square 的影響更大。在過去的一個月中，Square 股價下跌約 17%，而 PayPal 股價僅下跌 4%。
但加密貨幣並非 Square 唯一苦痛來源，投資者逃離高倍數成長股的浪潮也重創 Square，反映投資者在價格上反映預期上升的通膨，這點會降低未來收益的現值。
根據未來 12 個月的估算，Square 現行股價是企業價值倍數 (EV/Ebitda) 的 113 倍，PayPal 則為 43 倍，對比其他同業如 Visa (V-US) 和 Mastercard (MA-US) 僅 27 倍至 30 倍。
Ellis 談到 PayPal 和 Square 時說，「他們是我兩家長期最愛的支付公司，但實際考慮上來說，機構投資者如果擔憂長期通膨，就會對這些高倍數股覺得反感。」
隨著比特幣價格的飆升，投資者也迷戀上這些股票，但水能載舟也會覆舟，如今比特幣和其他加密貨幣恐怕也是令他們憂心忡忡的原因之一。
週一美股普遍上漲，PayPal 週一上漲 2.58%，收 257.17 美元；Square 上漲 5.47%，收 210.95 美元。
Crypto crash an ‘incredible buying opportunity’
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The cryptocurrency crash represents a huge buying opportunity, with the fundamentals of the market remaining strong, according to two Australian institutional fund managers.
Both Apollo Capital and DigitalX (ASX:DCC) are unruffled by the recent volatility in the market and even view it as a positive development.
The board of DigitalX, believed to be the only ASX-listed company holding Bitcoin, on Friday resolved to double its $750,000 original seed investment into its DigitalX Digital Asset Fund over the next 40 days, following the recent correction.
That original $750,000 investment was worth $2.5 million as of Thursday, DigitalX said.
While there’s been negative recent headlines, strong fundamentals for cryptocurrency “just really points to an incredible buying opportunity — and absolutely, that’s what we’re trying to do,” executive director Leigh Travers told Ausbiz television this afternoon.
Travers said highlighted upcoming protocol enhancements to Ethereum, which is transitioning to an energy-efficient proof of stake design this year, with a scalability “sharding” upgrade set for 2022.
“It’s looking at a thousand times improvement — that’s happening for scalability, the number of transactions coming through, and the cost of those transactions over the next year,” he said.
“I think that’s where investors should be focused on, and what sort of opportunities that’s going to create.”
The upgrades should reduce Ethereum fees to around 1c or 2c, from a recent average of around $20. Fees have skyrocketed in recent months as the network has become clogged.
“After these technology upgrades, there’s going to be a tremendous amount of new opportunities to build applications,” Travers told Ausbiz.
Twenty three per cent of all Ether is locked in smart contracts, while 12.5 per cent is on exchanges, indicating that people are using the network in more useful ways than just speculating on price action, he said.
“I think that’s a really positive development, compared to 2017/2018, when that certainly wasn’t the case,” he said.
Excessive leverage cited
Meanwhile, Apollo said in a blog post while the sell-off was “brutal” it was also healthy for the medium-term health of the market.
As exchanges like ByBit, Binance and FTX offer more highly leveraged products to retail investors, smaller coins had experienced wild price swings.
The crash was “a liquidation driven event as this excessive leverage was flushed out of the system,” analyst Matthew Harcourt wrote.
Getting rid of that excessive leverage will enable crypto markets to grow more organically going forward, he said.
He wrote that the panic “presents a unique opportunity to enter the market”.
“In comparison to similar drawdowns seen in the 2017 ICO bubble, crypto is no longer an abstract bet on the future, but a growing reality all around us.”
At 4.48pm AEST, Bitcoin was trading at US$38,650 ($50,370), having found support at US$38,000 but resistance at US$40,000.
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China crackdown forces crypto mining operators to end operations
After Friday’s crackdown, several firms said they are looking to move their business overseas, especially North America.
Cryptocurrency mining operators, including Huobi Mall and BTC.TOP, are suspending their China operations after Beijing stepped up its efforts to crack down on Bitcoin mining and trading, sending the digital currency tumbling.
A State Council committee led by Vice Premier Liu He announced the efforts late on Friday – the first time the council has targeted virtual currency mining, a big business in China that accounts for as much as 70 percent of the world’s crypto supply.
Crypto miners use increasingly powerful, specially-designed computer equipment, or rigs, to verify virtual coin transactions in a process that produces newly minted cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
Bitcoin took a hammering after the latest Chinese move and is now down nearly 50 percent from its all-time high. It shed as much as 17 percent on Sunday, before paring some losses and was last trading steady in Asia.
Investor protection and prevention of money laundering are particular concerns of governments and financial regulators who are grappling with whether and how they should regulate the cryptocurrency industry.
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell turned up the heat on cryptocurrencies last week, saying on Thursday that they pose risks to financial stability and indicating that greater regulation may be warranted.
A shift to overseas
Huobi Mall, part of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, said in a statement late on Sunday that all its custody businesses have been suspended.
“Meanwhile, we’re contacting overseas service providers, to pave way for exports of mining rigs in the future,” Huobi Mall said via its official Telegram community, and asked clients “not to worry and calm down”.
BTC.TOP, a crypto mining pool, also announced the suspension of its China business, citing regulatory risks.
Founder Jiang Zhuoer said in a microblog post via Weibo that in the future, BTC.TOP will mainly conduct crypto mining business in North America.
“In the long term, nearly all of Chinese crypto mining rigs will be sold overseas, as Chinese regulators crack down on mining at home,” he wrote.
China has already lost its position as a global cryptocurrency trading centre after Beijing banned crypto exchanges in 2017.
“Eventually, China will lose crypto computing power to foreign markets as well,” Jiang said, predicting the rise of US and European mining pools.
HashCow, another crypto miner that owns 10 mining sites in Chinese provinces including Xinjiang and Sichuan and sells computing power to investors, said it will fully comply with government regulations.
In a statement to clients, HashCow said it will suspend buying new Bitcoin rigs, and promised a full refund to those investors who had placed orders for computing powers but had not yet started mining.
Risk-adjusted returns
Aside from the sheer scale of the slump in virtual currencies last week – the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index fell almost 40 percent, the most since the pandemic turmoil in March last year – significant intraday price swings have also captivated investor attention.
Still, RBC derivatives strategist Amy Wu Silverman argued in a note Sunday that, based on a measure of risk-adjusted returns known as the Sharpe ratio, Bitcoin has done better than shares in Tesla Inc., the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust or Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1.
Bitcoin, Ether and meme virtual currencies like Dogecoin are still sitting on major gains over longer time-frames, such as the past year – about 12,000 percent in the case of Dogecoin.
For Ben Emons, managing director of global macro strategy at Medley Global Advisors in New York, Bitcoin is “firming its grip on markets through volatility, liquidity and correlation”.