As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week's top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly.
JPMORGAN TO LAUNCH CRYPTOCURRENCY: JPMorgan (JPM) engineers have created the "JPM Coin," a digital token that will be used to instantly settle transactions between clients of its wholesale payments business and the first cryptocurrency created by a major U.S. bank, CNBC's Hugh Son reported Thursday. "Anything that currently exists in the world, as that moves onto the blockchain, this would be the payment leg for that transaction," said Umar Farooq, head of JPMorgan's blockchain projects. "The applications are frankly quite endless; anything where you have a distributed ledger which involves corporations or institutions can use this."
QUADRIGA ACCIDENTALLY LOSES MORE BITCOIN: Shuttered Canadian crypto exchange Quadriga CX “inadvertently” shifted 103 bitcoins worth C$468,675, or $354,300 to cold wallets secured by passwords held by company founder Gerald Cotten, who died in December, Bloomberg’s Doug Alexander and Olga Kharif reported Wednesday. Ernst & Young, which is overseeing the exchange’s restructuring under creditor protection, didn’t disclose how the transfer took place. The recent loss comes after Quadriga suspended operations in January as it was unable to retrieve cryptocurrency owed to about 115,000 clients after Cotten’s death. According to court filings, the exchange cannot retrieve C$190M in digital tokens and cannot pay C$70M of cash owed to customers.
NVIDIA EARNINGS: On Thursday, Nvidia (NVDA) reported fourth quarter earnings per share of 80c on a revenue of $2.21B, which compared to analyst estimates of 78c and $2.2B, respectively. “This was a turbulent close to what had been a great year,” said CEO Jensen Huang. “The combination of post-crypto excess channel inventory and recent deteriorating end-market conditions drove a disappointing quarter. Despite this setback, Nvidia’s fundamental position and the markets we serve are strong. The accelerated computing platform we pioneered is central to some of world’s most important and fastest growing industries -- from artificial intelligence to autonomous vehicles to robotics. We fully expect to return to sustained growth.”
NOVOGRATZ SAYS BITCOIN WILL BE “DIGITAL GOLD”: Galaxy Digital Holdings founder Mike Novogratz said institutional funds should begin to flow into cryptocurrencies within the next year, leading to a rally, Bloomberg’s Manus Cranny and Mahmoud Habboush reported Wednesday. “All the architecture that institutions need to feel comfortable with this is being put in place,” he said. “You’re going to start to see custody come online,” in March, Novogratz said, adding, “Over the next six to 12 months you are going to see institutions put a small amount of their assets…a small amount of institutional assets is a lot of money.” He suggested the inflow could allow bitcoin to rally to $8,000 and reaffirmed he thinks the cryptocurrency will become “digital gold”.
NASDAQ TO LAUNCH NEW CRYPTO INDICES: Nasdaq (NDAQ) announced Monday that it will launch two new indices tracking cryptocurrency prices on February 25. Nasdaq said, “The Bitcoin Liquid Index and the Ethereum Liquid Index are each designed to provide a real-time spot or reference rate for the price of 1 BTC and 1 ETH respectively, quoted in USD, and based on the most liquid ends of their markets. Both indices are calculated using a methodology that has been independently audited against key IOSCO principles. The BLX is one of the most widely-referenced BTC indices among crypto traders and has been calculated back to 2010. Likewise, the ELX has been calculated back to 2014.”
CRYPTO STOCK PLAYS: Cryptocurrency revenues have been pointed to as reasons to be bullish on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia in select research. Overstock (OSTK), DPW Holdings (DPW), Kodak (KODK), Ideanomics (IDEX), Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Pareteum (TEUM) and Social Reality (SRAX) are other stocks that have been touted, or promoted themselves, as a way to play the crypto theme.
PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin rose roughly 3.2% this week to $3,566, in U.S. dollars, according to TradeBlock.
Bitcoin
+ (+0.00%)
Bitcoin
+ (+0.00%)
JPMorgan
+2.59 (+2.53%)
Nvidia
+5.63 (+3.64%)
Nasdaq
+0.3 (+0.34%)
AMD
+0.22 (+0.95%)
Overstock.com
-0.02 (-0.10%)
Ault Global Holdings
+0.0005 (+0.54%)
Eastman Kodak
-0.02 (-0.67%)
Ideanomics
+ (+0.00%)
Riot Platforms
+ (+0.00%)
Pareteum
+0.08 (+2.51%)
Srax
-0.13 (-3.33%)