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☆ Crypto comeback is just a 'mean-reversion' rally, Bernstein says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

That's one observation about the current crypto bounce Bernstein analysts made in a note to investors Monday. They called it a mean-reversion rally, meaning that they see bitcoin prices reverting to their long-term mean or average level. "We reckon, the mean reversion of crypto still has some headroom," analyst Gautam Chhugani said in the note. BTC.CM= 6M mountain Bitcoin Nevertheless, Chhugani attributed the recent bounce to capital already within the crypto industry, namely "sidelined stablecoins" being deployed. As the crypto asset class becomes "more regulated," Chhugani expects to see institutions take crypto positions this year, he said.

☆ Crypto tokens were once considered a fast track to riches for Web3 startup founders. Now some aren't bothering to launch them.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Crypto tokens were once a quick way for Web3 founders to cash in. Just over a year ago, Web3 startups regularly raised money by selling their own cryptocurrencies directly to the public. But now, the crypto crash has made it an inauspicious time for them to launch tokens. Common has since postponed its token launch indefinitely. Georgen said that his aspirations to launch tokens weren't primarily motivated by cashing in.

☆ A crypto crash for big stablecoins is likely to send shudders through other financial markets too, a Cornell professor warns
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A crashed stablecoin could pose a threat to the wider financial system, a Cornell professor warned. The companies that issue stablecoins would have to redeem their government bond holdings if the digital tokens fail, Eswar Prasad said Thursday. "A large volume of redemptions, even in a fairly liquid market, can create turmoil in the underlying securities market," Prasad said. The turmoil hasn't yet spilt over into traditional financial markets, but financial watchdogs are worried that stablecoin issuers' government bond holdings pose that risk, according to Prasad. "The fact that we haven't had spillovers from this part of the financial ecosystem into traditional financial markets or into the real economy certainly seems to be suggestive of the fact that there is a firewall," he added.

NEW YORK, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Anew Climate LLC, a TPG Inc-owned (TPG.O) provider of carbon emission reduction products to businesses, has agreed to invest as much as $640 million in carbon offset developer Terra Global Capital, the companies told Reuters on Wednesday. This demand gave Anew the confidence to make an investment of this scale, said Randy Lack, Anew's head of portfolio management. "We have been looking for a platform partner to do NBS (nature-based solutions) and Terra Global has a fantastic track record," Lack said in an interview. Lack said Anew would work "hand-in-glove" with Terra Global to ensure all projects meet tight criteria on environmental and social impacts. "The equity investment by Anew is catalytic to the growth of Terra Global," Leslie Durschinger, founder of Terra Global, said in an interview.

☆ From the Shanghai upgrade to U.S. regulation: Watch these 5 events to see where crypto markets are heading in 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Unlike in previous crypto winters, however, macro forces outside the crypto industry are the biggest drivers of the market. The Shanghai upgrade Ethereum developers are gearing up for the network's next big upgrade, the "Shanghai" upgrade, which has a target release of March 2023. "The problem right now is if you stake ether into the network, your ether will be locked until the Shanghai upgrade," Lau said. "There will be more liquidity of ether after the Shanghai upgrade," he added. Gox but the expected distribution of the bitcoin recovered from the exchange's 2014 implosion could be a near-term headwind for bitcoin investors.

☆ New York AG accuses Celsius ex-CEO of defrauding crypto investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-05 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued former Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky on Thursday, alleging that Mashinsky defrauded hundreds of thousands of investors at his now-bankrupt crypto exchange. At one point, deposits at the crypto exchange were valued at $20 billion, according to the complaint. But Mashinsky's statements were false, James alleges, and became part of the former Celsius CEO's efforts to hide deep losses on risky crypto-lending investments. Celsius investors were left bereft and so despondent that some considered suicide, CNBC previously reported. Celsius entered bankruptcy proceedings with only $1.75 billion in crypto assets, a far cry from the $4.7 billion it owed users.

CNBC rounds up some of the boldest price calls for bitcoin in 2023. Bitcoin miners, who use power-intensive machines to verify transactions and mint new tokens, are being squeezed by the slump in prices and rising energy costs. "In prior down markets, miner capitulation has usually indicated major bottoms," Ayyar told CNBC. However, Mobius told CNBC that he is sticking for his $10,000 price call in 2023. "There will be a managed bull market in 2023, not a bubble -- so we won't see the price overshooting as before," she told CNBC.

☆ Bruce Batkin Turned a Love of Architecture Into a Financial Career
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( James R. Hagerty | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Bruce Batkin co-founded Terra Capital Partners in 2002 to package real-estate funds for investors, initially in Australia and later in the U.S.As a boy riding his bicycle on Long Island, Bruce Batkin often stopped at fancy homes and rang doorbells to request house tours, invariably granted to a cherubic child in the 1960s. Back inside his parents’ three-bedroom, one-bath ranch, he drew lavish floor plans. Later, at Cornell University, he earned a degree in architecture. He worked in real-estate finance for Merrill Lynch, ABN Amro Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank. In 2002, he co-founded Terra Capital Partners to package real-estate funds for investors, initially in Australia and later in the U.S.

☆ Crypto exchange Kraken to shutter its Japan operations after global layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Digital currency exchange Kraken will close down its operations in Japan next month, in another sign of consolidation in the battered crypto industry. In a blogpost on Wednesday, Kraken said it would cease crypto trading services through its Japanese subsidiary, Payward Asia, and deregister from Japan's Financial Services Agency on Jan. 31, 2023. It is the second time Kraken has left the Japanese market. It cited a combination of "current market conditions in Japan" and a "weak crypto market globally" as the reasons behind its decision. Japanese customers will have until Jan. 31 to withdraw their fiat and crypto holdings from the Kraken platform, the company said.

☆ The crypto investing outlook for 2023 after a 60% decline in bitcoin this year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The other was the riskiest of risk assets, whose moves mirrored those of tech stocks. It won't happen overnight, but investors more than ever want to see a crypto market driven by utility rather than speculation . Barclays analyst Benjamin Budish said his team believes "crypto assets are likely to continue to behave like high-beta risk assets going forward." Investing in the next two quarters Bitcoin has fallen more than 60% this year and sits roughly 75% off of its all-time high from November 2021. When there's a pullback in that growth, as there was this year, bitcoin tends to struggle, Alden explained.

☆ Bitcoin lost over 60% of its value in 2022—here’s how much 6 other popular cryptocurrencies lost
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( Cheyenne Devon | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

In the latest blow to the crypto space, Core Scientific, one of the largest publicly traded crypto mining companies in the U.S, which primarily mints bitcoin, filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 21, citing falling crypto prices and rising energy costs. Just 8% of Americans have a positive view of cryptocurrency as of Nov. 2022, according to the CNBC All-America Economic Survey. Overall, the crypto market has lost a little over $2 trillion in 2022 and popular digital coins such as bitcoin have fallen far below their 2021 highs. Here's how much the value of seven popular cryptocurrencies changed in 2022 as of Dec. 22, per CNBC's calculations. For this reason, financial experts typically advise against investing more into crypto than you're willing to potentially lose.

Dec 20 (Reuters) - Private U.S. oil and gas companies are increasingly turning to a niche financing structure that securitizes their production, providing a funding avenue for producers and owners as traditional sources become more expensive or simply dry up. With banks pressured by stakeholders to restrict loans to the oil and gas sector over its environmental impact, private energy producers - more reliant on bank lines than listed peers - are able to maintain access to outside finance through this niche product. While the first rated PDP securitization was completed in September 2019 by Raisa Energy, volatile commodity prices and a wave of producer bankruptcies in 2020 stymied its initial application. The investment bank helped arrange, among others, a $750 million ABS sold by Jonah Energy in October - currently the largest PDP securitization completed. GROWING APPEALAs well as financing day-to-day operations, private equity firms that own energy producers are exploring using PDP securitizations as an investor pay-day.

☆ Crypto contagion isn't over and the lack of transparency means the industry is an 'insider's game,' EY strategist says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Jennifer Sor | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

FTX's collapse shows that crypto contagion isn't over and the industry has transparency issues, according to EY strategist Paul Brody. Brody noted that transparency claims made by crypto firms were often "difficult to test," which makes the industry an "insider's game." Policymakers have urged the SEC to tighten regulation on crypto firms, criticizing the current hands-off approach. He noted that his own team finds transparency claims among crypto firms "difficult to test and follow through." Lawmakers have been critical of the SEC's current approach, which asks crypto firms to "come in and talk" to be regulated.

☆ Mark Cuban says last year's crypto boom was '99% noise' – and Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest could pop the bubble
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Mark Cuban said there's still some underlying value in crypto despite the ongoing sell-off. "99% of it was noise but there's real value there," he told 'The Problem with Jon Stewart' Monday. Cuban added that Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest on fraud charges will force crypto to "get its act together". "There's the signal and the noise," Cuban told Apple TV+'s "The Problem with Jon Stewart". Stablecoin issuer Terra and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed earlier in 2022 as the crypto selloff brought to light potential instabilities in the digital asset sector.

New York CNN —Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, has agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee next week as questions and confusion swirl about the collapse of his companies. One of the key questions prosecutors are likely to probe is whether FTX misappropriated customer funds when it made loans to Alameda. “I didn’t knowingly commingle funds,” he told The New York Times last week. The Times said the issue is part of a broadening inquiry into the collapse of FTX, and it’s not clear whether prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried. In a statement to the paper, Bankman-Fried said he was “not aware of any market manipulation and certainly never intended to engage in market manipulation.”

☆ Binance boss says Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm tried to undermine key token Tether — risking a crypto rout
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Binance boss Changpeng Zhao accused Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research of trying to drive down the price of Tether, according to the New York Times. The stablecoin’s collapse would likely trigger a crypto crash, analysts have warned. US federal prosecutors are already investigating Bankman-Fried for manipulating the price of both of those cryptocurrencies, the New York Times reported Wednesday. Having reached $1 again in July, Tether slipped away to fall to $0.9963 on November 10 as FTX's bankruptcy sent ripples through the crypto sector. Analysts have repeatedly warned that the stablecoin's collapse would cause a wider crypto crash — and argued that Tether poses a systemic risk to the crypto sector.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried: US lawmakers want answers from FTX founder
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —Lawmakers are demanding that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, appear before the Senate Banking Committee next week over “significant unanswered questions ” surrounding the collapse of his companies. FTX was one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world until last month, when it faced a sudden wave of customer withdrawals that it couldn’t cover. One of the key questions prosecutors are likely to probe is whether FTX misappropriated customer funds when it made loans to Alameda. The Times said the issue is part of a broadening inquiry into the collapse of FTX, and it’s not clear whether prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried. In a statement to the paper, Bankman-Fried said he was “not aware of any market manipulation and certainly never intended to engage in market manipulation.”

☆ Crypto winners and losers from the FTX fallout, according to Bernstein
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Bernstein has sifted through the various sectors of the crypto industry and identified winners and losers for 2022. Crypto suffered the added handicap of the financial contagion from the collapse of Terra in the first half of the year and FTX currently. Binance, which operates in a regulatory gray zone, will eventually become the "global consolidator" of smaller off-shore exchanges, Bernstein said. While FTX taught investors about the risks of storing crypto holdings with centralized entities, revelations in the stablecoin sector went the other way around. Solana, on the other hand, took a hit, stained by the fallout of FTX, a big and early backer of Solana.

[1/3] A man walks across a set up of terra cotta heads, a French woman collection representing the remaining Chibok school girls in captivity in Lagos, Nigeria, November 29, 2022. The artwork, titled "Statues Also Breathe" and conceived by French artist Prune Nourry, consists of 108 life-size clay heads, made by 108 students from all over Nigeria, and now on display at an art gallery in Lagos. Boko Haram militants abducted around 270 teenage girls from a school in the northeastern town of Chibok in 2014. A small group of women who were among the abducted girls and were later released took part, as did some parents of the missing women. "These girls have been in distress for eight years," said Habiba Balogun, coordinator of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign in Lagos.

☆ How 2 friends at Bain spotted a big compliance risk in the crypto industry — and raised $2.8 million from CRV and Y Combinator to help fix it
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Argus, which makes compliance software for crypto funds and trading firms, has raised $2.8 million. After FTX's fall, crypto firms are focused on compliance but worried about costs, Argus' CEO said. To prevent insider trading, Argus checks employee trades against a list of restricted assets, looking for overlap. Although other startups, such as ComplySci, also offer financial compliance software, Rapaport says that Argus distinguishes itself through its focus on crypto, where compliance procedures are relatively new terrain. "And so they're probably not thinking, 'Can we bring on a new compliance software?'

☆ Tim Draper predicts bitcoin will reach $250,000 next year despite FTX collapse: 'The dam is about to break'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Ryan Browne | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Venture capitalist Tim Draper thinks bitcoin will hit $250,000 a coin by the middle of 2023, even after a bruising year for the cryptocurrency marked by industry failures and sinking prices. $250k is still my number," Draper told CNBC via email. Last week, veteran investor Mark Mobius told CNBC that bitcoin could crash to $10,000 next year, a more than 40% plunge from current prices. Nevertheless, Draper is convinced that bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, is set to rise in the new year. "I expect a flight to quality and decentralized crypto like bitcoin, and for some of the weaker coins to become relics," he told CNBC.

☆ The unraveling of $3 billion crypto lender BlockFi amid FTX's 'death spiral', according to bankruptcy filings
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The crypto platform owes $30 million to the SEC, per bankruptcy filings. FTX, which once offered BlockFi a $400 million credit line, ultimately led to the firm's bankruptcy. BlockFi cited significant exposure to Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire, which filed for bankruptcy on November 11. Ironically, once FTX's "death spiral" began, BlockFi's liquidity crisis ensued and the company paused user account withdrawals on its platform. Due to the loan agreement and $355 million in digital assets held on FTX, BlockFi had substantial exposure.

☆ Bank of Korea's Rhee 'not so sure' about digital currencies
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SEOUL, Dec 2 (Reuters) - South Korea's central bank governor Rhee Chang-yong said he became sceptical of the benefits of new technologies related to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), after recent events in the cryptocurrency market. "I was more positive before, but after seeing the Luna, Terra, and now the FTX issues ... I don't know (if) we will see the real benefit of this new technology, at least for monetary policy," said Rhee, a panelist at a session on digital currency. The market saw another rout last month, after one of the world's biggest crypto exchanges FTX filed for bankruptcy, with crypto lending company BlockFi following suit. Reporting by Jihoon Lee; Editing by Clarence FernandezOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Three things crypto investors need to know in a post-FTX world, according to financial advisors
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Tanaya Macheel | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

While the dramatic story of the firm's failure isn't over yet, it's a post-FTX era in crypto world, and the biggest takeaways for investors are already clear, according to financial advisors. "Investors need to differentiate between blockchain technology and exchanges," said Daren Blonski, managing principal at Sonoma Wealth Advisors. Here's what advisors say about it: Whatever you do, don't leave your crypto on exchanges There's a cutesy mantra in crypto: "Not your keys, not your coins." But as crypto becomes more popular and centralized companies provide easy onramps, advisors agree: it's time investors learn to control their funds. "It's on advisors to understand what happened before rendering some sort of judgment about it," said Adam Blumberg, cofounder at Interaxis, a crypto education and training company for financial advisors.

☆ 3 Ski Vacation Ideas That Suit Both Devotees and Dabblers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Donna Bulseco | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

“A NEW YEAR, a new slope” could be the mantra of Lisa Parilla, whose Bay Area family of four like to try out new ski runs during winter breaks. While dad and the couple’s 11-year-old son ski all day, she and their 13-year-old daughter like to squeeze in shopping, sightseeing and leisurely lunch breaks. Given high travel costs, booking flights, food and comfortable digs for a five-day spree at $10,000 demands creativity and flexibility. Its iconic Corbet’s Couloir run, however, with a terrifying 45-degree pitch, is not for the faint of heart. For this family trip, Ms. Nash suggests Hotel Terra in Teton Village, or a 1-2 bedroom with full kitchen at Teton Mountain Lodge, a ski-in, ski-out option in Mountain Village.

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