Bitcoin rises above $65,000 after CPI report shows inflation easing in April: CNBC Crypto World

today Bitcoin Rises as new economic data shows signs that inflation may be cooling off Robin Hood launches crypto staking for customers in the EU and Rob hadock General partner of crypto focused Venture firm dragonfly discusses the upcoming expected decision from the SEC on spot ether [Music] ETFs welcome to cnpc's crypto world I'm McKenzie sigalos cryptocurrency getting a boost today after the release of the latest Consumer Price Index which showed that the rate of inflation is slowly coming back down Bitcoin jumped sharply after the release of that data this morning trading well Above The $64,000 price level by noon Eastern ether also climbed to just under $3,000 and cardono Rose to4 okay let's get to the top stories Ryan Salem the former CEO of FTX digital markets is asking for an 18-month prison sentence for his and the collapse of the crypto Exchange in a filing on Tuesday attorneys for Salem said that he should face a sentence below federal guidelines because he had absolutely no knowledge that top Executives at FTX and Alam research conspired to steal from customers now they asserted that Salem had stolen from no one and was duped like everyone else at the same time they said that he had quote lapses in judgment but that his actions were motivated by the desire to build a lawful business and ADV Advan crypto for societal good back in September Salem pleaded guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and Def frud the Federal Election Commission next Circle the issuer of the usdc stablecoin is trying to shift its legal home base ahead of its upcoming IPO a circle spokesperson confirmed to us that its parent company filed paperwork with the high court of the Republic of Ireland to redomicile the company to the United States the move comes as Circle prepares for a US IPO which is expected once the SEC completes its review and many companies often pick Ireland as a home base for its low taxes but the country recently hiked its corporate taxes to 15% for some of the biggest businesses that's still lower than the US's 21% effective tax rate though finally Robin Hood crypto is launching staking for users in Europe the company announced that customers in the region can stti salana directly through the Robin Hood app to let them earn rewards that feature launches alongside new learning tools for crypto investors and region specific apps with local languages the VP and general manager of Robin Hood crypto said in the announcement that the update was a significant step in bringing a tailored app experience these features are rolling out in the EU just as Robin Hood faces a potential legal challenge here in the US the company disclosed earlier this month that the SEC sent a Wells notice warning of possible legal action over its crypto operations all right sticking with with the SEC for our main story all eyes are on the agency's expected decision on spot ether ETFs next week so crypto worlds Talia Kaplan spoke with Rob hack General partner at dragonfly a global crypto venture capital and research firm about what he thinks we can expect I want to start off talking about markets because the latest CPI report out today showed inflation easing last month with consumer prices still Rising nearly 3 and a half% from a year ago now following that announcement Bitcoin has been climbing trading above $64,000 this morning but in the days leading up to today Bitcoin has been stuck in a range of around 60 to $63,000 after hitting new all-time highs in recent months with all the excitement around ETFs and the Bitcoin having so what do you think is driving crypto prices right now and what do you see happening in the weeks to come yeah I think broadly Bitcoin prices and crypto prices broadly have been mostly uh affected by the macro environment so um you see that today with you know Bitcoin and eth and the entire market price moving up uh post that CPI print it was down on a month-over-month basis um and down on a year-over-year basis as well it's that follows what has been I would say a a couple months of un unnerving uh reads and a little bit of of concern that we might be uh having inflation pick back up um and so you see that the market is clearly uh you know playing off of these CPI prints I think Bitcoin even more than the rest of the market is you know pretty obviously a a macro asset and it seems to be trading most in line with like how much liquidity there is in the market um so whether or not quantitative easing is coming back and you know whether or not we see the reduction of the bank balance sheets and and that's um what the market is reacting to and especially relative to where they expect uh interest rates to come uh and and whether they get cut or whether they there was a potential uh hike in interest traes later this year and it certainly will be very interesting to continue to follow and see what happens but you know many people are paying attention to next week's expected decision from the SEC on spot ether ETFs the agency must decide on venex and arcs filing which are first in line by next Thursday and Friday respectively last month issuers of spat Bitcoin ETFs told CNBC that the SEC is unlikely to approve such a product for ether that includes vanex CEO I know you hold that same view why do you think the SEC might not Greenlight The Ether applications like they did for spot Bitcoin ETFs back in January yeah I mean my perspective uh is that we're we're we're pretty near zero in terms of the likelihood of a a spot uh EF getting approved this month um I do expect it to happen eventually I think the SEC has signaled uh that they they do not want to engage on this topic right now and I think there's a number of different reasons for that um some of them are just political in nature and it's clear that the SEC has wanted to um you know take a a tough stance on the entirety of the crypto market and and they see this as you know one of those Beach heads um so whether or not they decide that there's the reasoning is because of staking or the reasoning is because of you know potentially that they see eth as a security which would go against the guidance I do believe that they will decide to deny uh the ETFs this month um though I I think that's just kind of the first and what will be a long battle so how do you think the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs back in January here in the US changed the landscape and sentiment towards crypto I want to point to some data from dragonfly's data scientist according to the data nearly 11.5 billion dollar flowed into Bitcoin ETF since launching accounting for about 4% of current bitcoin Supply the data shows flows into these ETFs over the past week slightly in the red what do all these figures signify and do you think the hype surrounding these products might be cooling a bit now or is it just temporary yeah my belief is it's just temporary the Bitcoin ETFs were by far and way the most successful ETFs uh at launch and within a month and two months that have ever launched right and so so it far exceeded my expectations and I think most of our expectations on how quickly they would grow becoming $12 billion of net inflows over that period of time is just an extraordinary achievement and typically when ETFs launch it actually takes quite a long time for uh the wirehouses the wealth managers the asset managers to be able to go through their investment committees and you know recommend or deploy some Capital into these types of ETFs and so the fact that we had that that much in terms of inflows in such a short period of time time uh is in and of itself just extraordinary I believe that we're just seeing the market start to digest that a little bit and uh we will start now start to see you know that longer tale of wealth managers asset managers start to come in but at a more you know kind of normal and you know slower moving Pace uh over the the rest of the year and it certainly will be very interesting to follow that as well but last month you were quoted in the Wall Street Journal in an article about Venture Capital deals as saying that your crypto focused Venture Firm made roughly 15 to 20 deals each quarter in the Years leading up to and including 2021 but since the Venture Market soured in 2022 that number was cut back to a handful you did note however that dragonfly increased the size of each investment by up to four times since 2022 so where do things stand right now and how do you decide what's worth investing in and generally speaking what are you noticing as it pertains to deal activity yeah I mean so for dragonfly specifically uh I think it's still status quo to what I said back then which is we are really focused on getting the appropriate ownership and like large check sizes into things that we really believe in um and what we're not doing is we're not spraying and praying what we've actually seen very interestingly in the crypto Market uh on the public side is that there's been um kind of more differentiation between returns uh in different types of assets so in 2021 I think it was a bit where all risk assets inclusive of all almost all crypto tokens were gaining at the same time uh now what we're seeing is asset selection matters and you know traditional Venture math would tell you that you know uh you need to get a lot of ownership in the things that work because that's the only way it makes up for the things that don't work and so that's where we're really focused in the market more broadly um I think we're seeing a lot of spraying and praying to be honest which is how I think we differentiate so we see a lot of deals getting done a lot of froth in the Venture Market I think April we were over 1.35 billion of of venture capital uh that was announced I think the actual number you know pre-announcement is much much larger than that the deal sizes are getting big the valuations are getting bigger people are rushing to get money into the market because they're seeing this um kind of stamp of approval that the ETFs have brought that the price action have brought this year and uh I think that spells a lot of bad uh bad things for these funds and and potentially bad returns for people who are overpaying and forgetting that um price still matters and that you have to be judicious with how you get into things when you get into them and and you know what your your appropriate sizing is okay that's all for crypto world today but we will be back again tomorrow and we'll see you then [Music]

Channel: CNBC Television

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Keywords: crypto world, cryptocurrency, bitcoin, digital currency, CNBC, business news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, financial news, stock market news, stocks, crypto investing, crypto, crypto mining, bitcoin mining, crypto industry, ether, U.S. currency, U.S. economy, cryptocurrency news, Bitcoin, crypto world cnbc, blockchain, web3, nft, etf, btc, markets, eth, ethereum, etfs, vc, capital

Id: M7t7XA-5DiU

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Wed May 15 2024