The narrowing discount to net asset value (NAV) for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), valued at over $19 billion, appears to be retaliating with the U.S application for a spot bitcoin ETF by asset manager, BlackRock. Lauded for its market movements, GBTC’s NAV plummeted to a staggering 26% last week, maintaining an average of 27% shortly after, based on data metrics by Ycharts. The BlackRock initiative sent echoes across the industry, prompting several filings and re-filings from giants such as Fidelity.
On the sidelines, a wave of disgruntlement was spurred by crypto data firm, Arkham Intelligence’s recent prospect of a unique service targeting digital wallet users, an initiative quickly dubbed privacy intrusive. Ironically, the scandal surrounding Arkham’s privacy measures elevated as it was discovered ill-handling their customer data. The firm’s former weblink referral program has proven quite controversial, as seemingly random referral URLs in reality encrypted users’ emails, causing concern as they were found to be effortlessly decoded.
In prospect, Bitcoin’s (BTC) climb to a significant milestone of $50,000 by year-end and a projected peak of $120,000 by the end of 2024 was sensationally announced by Standard Chartered Bank in a Monday research report. The multinational banking giant adjusted their previous 2024 estimation of $100,000 foreseeing an upturn due to factors like an imminent banking crisis. The bank’s forecast further emphasized the potential surge in miner profitability as a root cause for the likely bullish trend.
Implicitly, BTC miners’ transaction volumes to centralized exchanges soared to a 30-day simple moving average record of 2581.98 BTC. In clarity, miners transferred a noteworthy over 77,000 BTC (equivalent to $2.3 billion) to platforms in the past month. While beneficial for exchanges, this surge added weighty selling pressure in the crypto market.
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Source: Coindesk
