CBX Weekly Newsletter // 11 Nov 2020
- 3 Reasons Why Is BTC Still Bullish
- Ex-Microsoft Dev Steals Over $10M in Bitcoin
- Billionaire Hedge Fund Investor Says He Owns Bitcoin in CNBC Interview
3 Reasons Why Is BTC Still Bullish
Bitcoin (BTC) has chalked up a stellar price rally in the past two months, reaching 33-month highs close to $16,000.
The uptrend began in early September after buyers bought a dip below $10,000, and gathered pace in the second half of October.
Last week, prices reached a high of $15,971, a level last seen in January 2018. That’s a 63% price gain in eight weeks, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.
So, what’s behind the rapid gains in recent weeks? Here are three of the primary factors driving the bull market:
1. Increased institutional participation
“Over the past eight weeks, we have seen various notable public companies and hedge funds enter the cryptocurrency market with sizable deployment of capital,” Matthew Dibb, co-founder, and COO of Singapore-based Stack Funds said.
2. Supply crunch
Large spot buyers, mostly institutions, have created a shortfall in bitcoin liquidity, pressuring prices to the higher side.
3. Technical breakout
Bitcoin’s bullish bias strengthened following the cryptocurrency’s convincing break above $12,500 in the third week of October.
Bitcoin is changing hands near $15,390, representing a 113% year-to-date gain.
Ex-Microsoft Dev Steals Over $10M in Bitcoin
A former software engineer at Microsoft received a nine-year prison sentence Monday for an elaborate multi-million dollar criminal scheme involving bitcoin and digital gift cards.
Ukrainian citizen Volodymyr Kvashuk, 26, was sentenced in the U.S. District Court in Seattle for 18 federal felonies related to his scheme to defraud Microsoft of more than $10 million. This marks the first case of its kind in the U.S., according to a press release by the Department of Justice.
Kvashuk was involved in the testing of an online retail sales platform for Microsoft from August 2016 until he was fired in June 2018. He had used his employee access to steal “currency stored value” (CSV), namely digital gift cards. He then resold that value online and used the proceeds to fund a lavish lifestyle including a $1.6 million lakefront home and a $160,000 Tesla car.
Billionaire Hedge Fund Investor Says He Owns Bitcoin in CNBC Interview
Billionaire U.S. investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who just weeks ago was said to be shorting the dollar, is long on bitcoin.
Druckenmiller said on CNBC Monday he owns bitcoin (BTC, -0.52%), becoming the latest high-profile, ultra high-net-worth investor to get in on the benchmark digital currency.
Though he said his gold position is “many, many more times” larger than his bitcoin allocation, Druckenmiller predicted his bitcoin would outperform.
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