Bitcoin rockets to $64,000 as it closes in on previous all-time high: CNBC Crypto World

today Bitcoin quickly Rises after jumping above $60,000 for the first time in more than two years Sam bakman freed asks for a shorter prison sentence and bitos Mike belly breaks down the Bitcoin ETF hype and the cryptocurrency rally welcome to cnbc's crypto world I'm TAA mckel bitcoin's rally continuing this morning with the cryptocurrency shooting above $60,000 for the first time in than 2 years as of noon Eastern Bitcoin jumped more than 9.5% to around $662,500 less than $7,000 short of its all-time high reached back in November 2021 just 10 minutes later Bitcoin crossed the $63,000 mark as it was Rising quickly be sure to check out cnbc.com for the latest price updates as of noon Eastern ether shot up nearly 6% to 3,420 its highest level since April 2022 and salana soared nearly 9% to $116 the moves gave a lift to bitcoin related stocks this morning with coinbase Rising nearly 5% and micro strategy jumping more than 13% as of noon investors are expecting Bitcoin to set a new record this year after the launch of ETFs made the asset class more accessible to institutional investors and with the Network's having event set for April that event has historically set the stage for a major rally in the months that follow on the ETF front black Rock's ibit recorded more than 2 billion in trading volumes so far today after $1.3 billion in volume yesterday this week alone Bitcoin soared more than 21% after a weekl long pause of this year's rally as of noon it was up more than 46% for the year okay let's talk about the top stories attorneys for Sam bankman freed are seeking a shorter prison sentence for the convicted former FTX executive citing medical conditions including autism spf's lawyers are suggesting a sentence of 5 to 6 and A2 years much lower than the roughly 100 years that he faces for stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers in this sentencing memo filed yesterday his lawyers argued that a long prison sentence would pose a risk to pman Freed's safety due to his autism spectrum disorder given people with the condition could struggle with social cues and might be more likely to fail to respond in an expected way to other inmates and prison guards they added that the harm to FTX customers lenders and investors for the collapse of FTX is zero given customers and creditors are now expected to get get their money back in full from bankruptcy next Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted crypto again stressing that the industry needs to follow the same rules as trafi like Banks and credit card companies while talking with Bloomberg yesterday she said that she wants to collaborate with the crypto industry but that it has been reluctant to follow the rules she added that crypto has been helping to fuel drug traffickers terrorists and the Rogue Nations like North Korea Warren stress she wants a Level Playing Field for crypto and pointed to her digital asset anti-money laundering Bill introduced last year which would bring anti-money laundering requirements to the industry by the way this comes amid the entry of a new Challenger for her senate seat in Massachusetts John Deon a pro crypto attorney and his millions of dollars have flowed into Crypt backed packs notably though Deon faces an uphill battle in estate Senator Warren handily won in 2018 all right let's talk more about that huge rally in crypto this morning for our main story I spoke with Mike baly the CEO of bitgo about bitcoin's push to near alltime highs he shared what he thinks is driving the market higher exciting day Bitcoin above 60k today for the first time in more than two years and inching closer and closer to its record to start broadly what do you make of it well it's a it's a good day of course um for those of us that have been working hard in the space for so long um we've been expecting that this will continue to happen and I think immediately right now what's going on is that we've actually removed all the barriers for institutional ad option um the ETFs were kind of the last hurdle I think we had to get over but basically at this point you have a blessed approach by the US government by the The Regulators that says this is a perfectly fine way to access Bitcoin and it's taking off exactly as we expected yeah it sure is and we we have a lot of things that I want to talk with you about you know this week so looking at last week Bitcoin kind of took a pause from its rally this year it was trading sideways all weekend then it kind of woke up at the start of this week and has just been soaring Higher and Higher and it feels a lot like that good hypogenic feels dare I say it a little bit like 2021 there are some obvious differences because there have been so many developments in the space what how how is now different from 2021 well I guess I'll take some issue with the the term good hype I think all hype is bad um you know this is actually a long-term thing you know if you're looking at Bitcoin you should be thinking about how do you want to uh invest in Bitcoin over the long term not the short term over the short term you're going to see ups and downs it's highly volatile people are figuring it out new things are coming out Regulators are changing there's a lot lot of reasons for things to uh to go sideways or trade in in unexpected patterns but you know just this week Fidelity has their all-in-one funds with recommended portfolios and you know their conservative version of it says you should have 1% in Bitcoin the aggressive version us at 3% in Bitcoin and and what we're seeing on the ETF front is just larger inflows than outflows so I've been in the space for you know about 10 years we talk to institutions all the time uh and uh the the people that are best at predicting price I think are usually looking at okay what are the up upward you know Supply sorry demand side pressures that are coming and then what are the downward pressures in terms of uh sales and things like that and right now what we're seeing is that there's just a tremendous influx in the ETFs there was a pent up demand for this I think the first sectors that come in you know the raia sector is one that we've all talked about for years it's a very frankly it's kind of a decentralized sector right you've got you know thousands of Raa managers all over the the nation and it's been difficult to access Bitcoin natively um it's it's a bigger risk for them but to be able to suddenly be able to participate on the ETF side that's completely unlocked so the same story is true for a number of hedge funds endowments things like this and we're just seeing this start to take off the approval came in January had to kind of watch a little bit of the initial ShakeOut happen but definitely you can see investment decisions being made all over the nation right now talk a little bit uh a little bit more about the supply and demand Dynamics I know that for many months now we've been waiting for these ETFs to be approved they came in January now the Bitcoin price has been climbing Higher and Higher and we're constantly turning to these ETFs and saying look at the positive impact that it's had talk to me a little bit about what exactly is going on why the price is rising and why that's you know significant especially now when we have not even hit the having yet which is expected in April yeah the having uh it comes up a lot as a topic I do think it affects uh the sales that miners do um for those that aren't familiar uh Bitcoin is a you know fixed Supply schedule it's all announced in advance so unlike the FED where we're always guessing as to how they're going to treat the supply on a by Monon basis um in the case of Bitcoin it's been fixed for 15 years it's fixed for the next 100 years we know exactly what's going to happen and that allows us to think logically about our investment there in terms of the immediate price that we're seeing right now on the inflow side and I don't have the the exact numbers in front of me I hope I don't get quite wrong I think there was you know 500 million of net positive inflows into just the Black Rock ETF yeah 11 ETFs approved you know in January the two big ones Fidelity and black rock what are Fidelity and black rock these are the two largest asset managers on the planet it's a massive distribution channel is what it is and suddenly Bitcoin is being sold through that distribution channel so uh the inflow side uh is is quite High um in terms of the the largest downward pressure on sales I mean obviously can come from the market Mr Market is a moody guy and sometimes he wakes up grumpy and and he he wants to sell um but in terms of like the things we know about miners who are doing the security the validation of the network you know they need to pay their bills they pay their people they pay their electricity Etc so that's downward pressure that happens on a daily basis uh in terms of price but at this point that's far exceeded by the upward pressure which is coming from the Dune distribution Channel Through Fidelity and black rock where do you see the retail investor right now and down the road this this year uh you know I know that there was a pause in retail appetite recently between the end of last year I think that's rebounded a little bit in February but you know I just I I look at the setup for this year and I know that we have all of this demand coming in largely thanks to the ETFs but you know what does that mean for Bitcoin adoption I guess because buying as an investor into ETF shares is different from say a retail investor opening a new wallet address so so to what extent does growth adoption in those terms still matter in a post ETF World well I think the ETF actually does make it accessible to to retail I think that's actually um the big benefit of it uh a couple of years ago without an ETF you know whatever your your Walk of Life is whether you're retail or institutional you had to assemble a number of Parts together obviously bito has been building that for the institutional side in order to make it so that these distribution channels could open um but now you know you can call up Charles Schwab uh you know your your existing broker the same place where you buy your Apple stock and your Microsoft stock and all that you can do it through uh Robin Hood you can do it through a number of parties and you can now have direct access to bitcoin without having to get into the details of holding private Keys now some people on the the Bitcoin purist side are concerned about this I do think that it's something to watch you know does this centralize the entire uh product and and distort it in some way and over time we'll see how that grows but I think the big answer there is mostly around the fact that Bitcoin is so Global Bitcoin is not just a US product Bitcoin is a global product and the most amazing thing about it is that you can have liquidity from your Bitcoin in any Nation uh in the in the entire world right so if you're in South Africa if you're uh in um in Singapore if you're in the United States Canada Etc you can get liquidity um and that's that's that's a real attribute um outside of just the ETFs okay that's all for crypto world today we'll be back again tomorrow and we'll see you then

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, ftx, etf, ethereum, web3, mike belshe, bitgo

Id: aXhexX7G6JY

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024