Crypto Stocks Bounce After $6 Billion Drop as Bitcoin Churns

Crypto Stocks Bounce After $6 Billion Drop as Bitcoin Churns

(Bloomberg) – Cryptocurrency-exposed stocks are recovering from a bloody four-day slide that had wiped out roughly $6.1 billion in value from a basket of companies tied to the fortunes of the volatile digital-asset world.

Marathon Digital Holdings Inc.’s 17% jump led the way on Friday, as the shares halted a nine day losing streak. The gains come as Bitcoin climbs back from a slide of more than 15% on Thursday. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk triggered the volatility late Wednesday by souring on the token’s energy demands. Microstrategy Inc. rose 6.8% on Friday, while Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Holdings jumped 16% for the best day in a month.

The turnaround for companies that have ridden Bitcoin’s coattails came as more retail investors gravitated toward even greater speculative plays like Dogecoin. Bitcoin rose 2% to $50,275 at 4:01 p.m. in New York, while a Bloomberg gauge of cryptocurrencies rallied 8.3% after the worst two-day slide since late February.

Riot Blockchain Inc. jumped 17% for its largest gain in more than two months while Argo Blockchain Plc and On-Line Blockchain Plc stormed back in European trading. Coinbase Global Inc. was an outlier. The largest U.S. crypto exchange slumped 2.5% as strong quarterly income failed to excite traders.

While crypto bulls cheered Friday’s bounce, Jack Dorsey’s Square Inc. poured some cold water on the excitement. The company is not planning to buy more Bitcoin for its corporate treasuries after losing $20 million on a $220 million investment in the last quarter, according to a Financial News report.

Elon Musk’s stunning tweet late Wednesday triggered the free-fall for Bitcoin as the billionaire brought concerns surrounding the energy usage of the mining required for the currency to light and forced Wall Street to grapple with an uncertain outlook. Worries deepened after a Thursday Bloomberg News report that Binance Holdings Ltd. is under investigation by the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.

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(Updates share movement throughout, adds detail on Square report in fifth paragraph.)

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Crypto fund Pantera says bitcoin energy concern to impact market

The head of crypto hedge fund Pantera Capital Management is still bullish on Bitcoin even if some of Elon Musk’s concerns about the token’s energy footprint are valid.

Dan Morehead said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that worries about the cryptocurrency’s environmental toll “will have some impact” on the market.

Read: Elon Musk ignites climate debate over bitcoin

Musk’s Bitcoin concerns sink crypto-linked stocks

“There’s a point to think about how renewable the resources are that are used to process transactions on the Bitcoin brand blockchain, but it’s important to remember Bitcoin is only one of the many blockchains,” he said.

The largest cryptocurrency plunged on Thursday in the wake of Musk’s comments about Bitcoin’s energy use, in which he called recent consumption trends “insane.” The chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. said his company would stop allowing purchases using Bitcoin, while signalling the automaker would consider accepting other, less energy intensive tokens.

“The ESG concerns have come up more in the past three or four months,” Morehead said, referring to referring to environmental, social and governance issues. “It’s a topic no one talked about a few years ago. The space as a whole, the majority of the coins in the space don’t use electricity, so it shouldn’t be a big issue for the industry as a whole.”

Targeting $115 000

Morehead is one of a handful of power players in the digital-token landscape. He founded Pantera in 2003 and launched the first US crypto fund in 2013.

On Thursday, he reiterated his belief that Bitcoin could still double in the next five to six months, reaching $115 000 by August. Even if that doesn’t happen, his firm is still investing in other digital coins like rival blockchain Polkadot that don’t have the massive energy footprint of Bitcoin.

A Bloomberg report that crypto exchange Binance Holdings is under investigation by the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service also doesn’t worry him, he said.

“Criminals commit crimes, they were doing it for a long time before crypto came around,” he said. “While I’m sure there are criminals who do use cryptocurrencies, it’s a very very small percentage of the business in crypto.”

© 2021 Bloomberg

What Changed in Crypto Markets While You Were Sleeping — May 14

The Guardian

Photo of ex-president will make way for a painted portrait as gallery says Trump’s team is considering artists A photo of Donald Trump at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images A picture is worth a thousand tweets. Donald Trump gained immortality of sorts on Friday when he made his debut at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. But he also ran into some “good trouble”. Canny curators have placed the 45th president face-to-face with a painting of John Lewis, the late congressman and civil rights hero whose habit of making what he called “good trouble” included boycotting Trump’s inauguration. “Keeping him honest!” remarked Eric Bargeron, 40, a book editor from Columbia, South Carolina, as he observed Lewis in an exhibition called The Struggle for Justice, staring across the room at Trump in the popular America’s Presidents show. The photo of Trump was taken by New York–based Pari Dukovic for Time magazine on 17 June 2019, the day before the president officially announced he would seek re-election. It shows him sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, wearing his trademark long red tie. A man takes a selfie with the photo of Trump at the National Portrait Gallery. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP The picture is accompanied by a caption in neutral museum language, noting that Trump was elected “after tapping into populist American sentiment” and that he “put forth an ‘America First’ agenda”. It records his two impeachments and says the coronavirus pandemic “became a key issue during his re-election campaign”. The caption adds: “Trump did not concede [defeat], and a mob of his supporters, who refused to accept the results, attacked the US Capitol complex on 6 January 2021, when Congress was working to certify [Joe] Biden’s win.” The caption also appears in Spanish, a policy rarely seen at the Trump White House. In another symbolic twist, the Trump picture has supplanted Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Barack Obama, which is embarking on a year-long, five-city tour. Trump is now back-to-back with the famous Hope poster featuring Obama, by the artist Shepard Fairey. The gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution, reopened to timed pass holders on Friday after a six-month pandemic shutdown. It includes a special exhibition of portraits of first ladies, from Martha Washington to Melania Trump. A trickle of visitors made their way to see Trump, whose likeness never quite made it to Mount Rushmore, join the pantheon of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt on the gallery walls. Dan Freedman, a British documentary maker based in Louisville, Kentucky, was celebrating his 40th birthday but did not see Trump at first. “I deliberately averted my eyes,” he said. “It’s cool they put Obama behind the bad guy.” A bronze-looking emblem with the number 45 is visible next to the photo of Trump. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP Freedman made a noble sacrifice for the Guardian, walking across the room to study the Trump portrait. “He looks like an insecure man holding the desk to believe in himself,” he reported. “He doesn’t look very humble.” Fellow Brit Fran McDonald, a professor at the University of Louisville, agreed: “It’s hard to look at. I started to take a picture of it and then decided I don’t want it on my phone. I’m so relieved we don’t have to look at him or listen to him any more. It was a relentless assault on the senses to have him in the 24-hour news cycle.” The gallery draws visitors from all over America but judging by Friday’s crowd there will be few Trump worshippers eager to turn this into a “Make America Great Again” shrine ahead of a potential White House run in 2024. Kevin Newman, 38, a police sergeant from Chicago, said he was “not a fan” of Trump. “I was interested in how they would portray him because he was a controversial president,” he said. “They have made him look good. If they had made him look bad it would have inflamed the controversy. They didn’t make him look orange.” The photo will make way for a painted portrait – the gallery says Trump’s team is considering artists. Newman added: “He obviously cares very much about his image so it be interesting to see who he picks.” Trump could look to the 1968 painting of Richard Nixon for a template. The artist, Norman Rockwell, admitted that, finding Nixon’s appearance elusive, he decided to err on the side of flattery. Meg Krilov and James Fogel were visiting from Trump’s birthplace, New York. Krilov, 65, a retired physician, said of his portrait: “He looks very unhappy. I don’t think he really wanted to be president. He wanted to be king.” Her husband Fogel, 70, a retired judge, added: “He was treasonous. He tried to overthrow the government. And I guess he’s still trying.” Did it feel strange to see a former reality TV host, credibly accused of paying off a porn star, enshrined in the same room as Lyndon Johnson and George HW Bush? “It felt strange the entire time,” Fogel said. “It continues to feel strange.”