Strengths
• Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was WIF, up 233.72%.
• A record $520 million stampeded into BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF in a single day. The iShares Bitcoin Trust saw its biggest one-session haul on Tuesday, marking the largest daily inflow so far among the batch of new U.S. ETFs investing directly in the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, writes Bloomberg.
• Bitcoin jumped past $60,000 (briefly touching $63,000) for the first time in more than two years this week, amid surging optimism that demand for the token is widening beyond committed digital asset enthusiasts, writes Bloomberg.
Weaknesses
• Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performer for the week was Bitget Token, down 5.42%.
• FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried should serve no more than six and a half years in prison for orchestrating the fraud that brought down the cryptocurrency exchange, his lawyers told a federal judge who could issue a sentence of as long 20 years for the most serious charges in the case. His attorneys made their recommendation to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ahead of Bankman-Fried’s March 28 sentencing, writes Bloomberg.
• The U.S. government appears to have transferred about $922 million worth of Bitcoin from crypto wallets that held seized assets from a 2016 Bitfinex hack, writes Bloomberg.
Opportunities
• A group of former FTX and Alameda Research employees have raised $17 million to build out a crypto exchange called Backpack, joining the ranks of startups seeking to fill a gap left by the collapse of their former employer. The Dubai-based company, which also offers a crypto wallet and NFT collection called Mad labs, said it reached $120 million valuation, writes Bloomberg.
• Kraken, one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, has started a new unit, Kraken Institutional, to better serve its largest customers. Designed to cater to users such as hedge funds and ETF issuers, the firms aim to become a one-stop shop with services like spot, trading, custody, lending, and staking, writes Bloomberg.
• Bitcoin climbed for a seventh consecutive day, with option traders increasing bets that the digital asset will soon surpass its late 2021 high. Bitcoin has surged more than 20% since last Friday, the biggest weekly increase in a year, writes Bloomberg.
Threats
• Coinbase Global experienced a spate of outages Wednesday just as Bitcoin continued its rally above $60,000. Coinbase reported that some users may see zero balances across their Coinbase accounts, writes Bloomberg.
• Michael Novogratz is cautioning investors that Bitcoin may see some corrections before rallying to a record and ending the year “much higher.” “I wouldn’t be surprised to see some correction and some consolidation,” Novogratz said during an interview, according to Bloomberg.
• Nigerian authorities have detained two executives of Binance just days after the central bank governor said that the nation is losing out on taxes from unregistered crypto exchanges. The two were intercepted by national security officers after arriving in the country on the grounds that Binance was illegally in Nigeria, writes Bloomberg.
