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Bitcoin price eyes $65K breakout as BTC exchange reserves fall to 2018 lows

Decreasing reserves mean a decline in Bitcoin supply for selling, altcoin purchasing and margin trading.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) ongoing price rally above $64,000 has coincided with a substantial drop in its reserves across all exchanges.

According to data provided by CryptoQuant — a South Korea-based blockchain analytics service — the amount of Bitcoin held in exchanges’ wallets dropped to as low as 2.379 million BTC earlier this week, the lowest in more than three years. Currently, the reserves are around 2.38 million BTC.

Bitcoin reserves across all exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant

CryptoQuant noted that the declining Bitcoin reserves showed the availability of fewer BTC tokens “for selling, altcoins purchasing, and margin trading.” Additionally, that also reflected traders’ intention to “hodl” the cryptocurrency.

Demand for Bitcoin grows among whales and fishes

On the other hand, the cryptocurrency’s demand appears to have been increasing across retail and institutional traders, with the number of wallets holding more than $100 and $10 million worth of BTC reaching their record high of 16.67 million and 10,510, respectively.

Bitcoin addresses with balance greater than $100 and $10 million. Source: Messari, Coin Metrics

On-chain analyst Willy Woo published a report in August 2021 that discussed Bitcoin’s “supply shock” against its rising demand, concluding that the cryptocurrency’s per-token worth should be at least $55,000

The “conservative” target remained lower than pseudonymous analyst PlanB’s $135,000 price projection by the end of 2021, based on his stock-to-flow model.

Meanwhile, PlanB’s Bitcoin price prediction for November 2021 sits around $98,000, above $70,000, the most preferred strike target for the options expiring on Nov. 26, as shown in the chart below.

BTC options OI by strike price (expiry Nov. 26, 2021). Source: Bybt

BTC price macro fundamentals

Bitcoin’s bullish on-chain fundamentals are likely to see further strength from Wall Street adoption. 

On Tuesday, ProShares became the first exchange-traded product firm to launch a Bitcoin futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the New York Stock Exchange. In a milestone for Bitcoin investing opportunities, the listing opened a new road for institutional investors to gain exposure to BTC.

For instance, Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder Tom Lee said he anticipated Bitcoin ETFs to attract at least $50 billion in the coming 12 months, reasserting his team’s year-end $100,000 price target for BTC.

Technically, Bitcoin appeared to be heading toward its record high near $65,000, now acting as a resistance level.

BTC/USD daily price chart featuring Fibonacci retracement levels. Source: TradingView

On the flip side, Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI), a momentum indicator that analyzes an asset’s overbought/oversold signals, reported the cryptocurrency price as excessively high on the daily candle chart, suggesting that a pullback is on the table. 

Related: Bitcoin sees its highest ever daily close as BTC/Euro pair hits all-time highs

Should a correction happen, Bitcoin’s next support target could be near $57,500, which serves as the 78.6% Fib level of the Fibonacci retracement graph, drawn between the $65,000 swing high and the $30,000 swing low.

The level also coincides with Bitcoin’s 20-day exponential moving average (the green wave in the chart above). The said level has earlier acted as strong support during Bitcoin’s uptrend. 

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Artist threatens legal action on ‘Chill Guy’ meme tokens; community responds

Bakkt sheds more than 6% on first of public trading

The price of BKKT contracted by more than 6% during its first day of public trade.

Bakkt ($BKKT), an institutional and retail-facing digital asset platform founded by Intercontinental Exchange, has suffered a drawdown of -6.4% after closing a volatile first day of trading as a publicly listed company.

After launching on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) at $9.45 on the morning of Oct. 18, BKKT rose by roughly 3.3% up to $9.77 during its first 30 minutes of trading. However, traders quickly moved to take profits, causing prices to slump by -9.5% down to $8.84 followed by lunchtime.

According to Bloomberg, BKKT was trading at $8.76 by the day’s close after having shed almost -7% from its opening.

Bakkt went public via a merger deal with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings on Oct. 15.

Bakkt initially launched in 2018 as a cryptocurrency custodian. The firm has since pivoted to launch institutional-facing bitcoin futures contracts and a retail crypto asset payments app.

Related: Crypto finserv firm Bakkt to soon trade publicly on New York Stock Exchange

Bakkt is not Intercontinental Exchange’s first foray into cryptocurrency, with the firm having participated as a lead investor in Coinbase’s Series C $75 million funding round in January 2015

Like Bakkt, Coinbase posted a bearish performance for its first day of public trading, shedding -13.8% from a starting price of $381 over the course of the day. Intercontinental Exchange sold their stake in Coinbase for $1.2 billion during the first quarter of 2021.

Earlier this month, Bakkt announced partnered with Google to enable its retail app users to make payments from their digital asset balances using Google Pay.

Artist threatens legal action on ‘Chill Guy’ meme tokens; community responds

Crypto world largely silent as little-known exchange announces plans to go public

The public offering announcement comes less than two months after Bullish launched with $10 billion in capitalization.

One might assume that a firm with a name like "Bullish" would garner a lot of attention in announcing its intention to go public, especially given that the exchange is backed by blockchain software company Block.one. Until today however, it seems to have gone mostly unnoticed by participants in the crypto space.

In a Friday announcement, Bullish said it would be going public on the New York Stock Exchange via a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The tech firm, which described itself as “focused on developing financial services for the digital assets sector,” will merge with Far Peak Acquisition, whose CEO is Tom Farley, former president of the New York Stock Exchange. Farley will become the new Bullish CEO and Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer will be chairman of the crypto exchange. The deal isexpected to close sometime this year. 

The announced SPAC plans come less than two months after the launch of Bullish capitalizing with roughly $10 billion. Block.one provided 164,000 Bitcoin (BTC) — roughly $9.7 billion at the time — $100 million in cash, and 20 million EOS tokens, while an additional funding round raised $300 million.

However, it is unclear what exactly Bullish is offering in terms of products or services prior to going public, other than seemingly having billions of dollars to move around. The firm’s investor website includes a 19-minute video along with two notices of the initial capitalization and public offering, while the main website offers no information other than “go boldly, go Bullish.” The video includes Bullish claiming that it controls a "hybrid style order book" that combines liquidity pool capability from the DeFi space with a central limit order book.

Some crypto holders responded to the public offering on social media, with user Crypto Krillin likening the SPAC announcement to a "news scam pump.” Others have similarly accused Block.One of doing a cash grab.

Bullish’s $9 billion valuation is around one quarter of crypto exchange Coinbase’s $45 billion valuation since its April public offering. The proceeds will reportedly include $300 million of committed private investment in public equity from EFM Asset Management, BlackRock, Cryptology Asset Group and Galaxy Digital, with $600 million net cash in trust.

Related: Crypto exchange Kraken says it is 'too big' to go public through a SPAC

U.S.-based exchange Kraken has also hinted at going public soon, but has made no firm announcement at time of publication. However, stablecoin-focused crypto company Circle said yesterday that it plans to go public in a $4.5 billion deal.

Artist threatens legal action on ‘Chill Guy’ meme tokens; community responds

NYSE celebrates historic ‘first trades’ with NFT series

The NYSE’s NFTs will celebrate the first trades made in the shares of Spotify, Unity, DoorDash, Snowflake, Roblox, and Coupang.

The New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE, has jumped on the NFT bandwagon by minting nonfungible tokens celebrating the first trade made in the shares of prominent U.S. companies.

In an April 13th announcement, NYSE’s president, Stacey Cunningham, described NFTs as a “new, fun way to mark the moment” of a company’s first trade on the NYSE.

The first six NYSE NFTs commemorating the first trades for Spotify, Snowflake, Unity, DoorDash, Roblox, and Coupang, with Cunningham confirming “there will be many more NYSE NFTs to come.”

The first NFTs are already listed on Crypto.com’s NFT marketplace, with the tokens hosting a 10-second video clip presenting information about the company’s first trade — including its time, date, and listing price.

NYSE’s First Trade NFT for Spotify: Crypto.com

NYSE’s announcement received a mixed response on social media, with Twitter user “Aaron” saying he “had to check the calendar just to make sure it wasn’t April 1st” upon reading the news.

Infamous crypto Twitter troll “Bit Lord” was less political with his phrasing:

“You clowns haven’t even listed $BTC, get off my timeline scammers.”

Alex Gausman, the founder of nonfungible token fractionalization platform, NFTX, noted he could not find the contract address for NYSE’s tokens, adding: “That’s like the least cool/artistic thing ever. Just buy the stock.”

While NYSE’s NFT listings are yet to receive any bids, similar tokens issued by rival publications including Forbes, Times, and the New York Times have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars this year.

Forbes’ first NFT featuring its latest issue cover with Gemini owners and billionaires the Winklevoss twins sold for $333,333 on April 8 this year. Times Magazine has issued nine NFTs to date with each individual cover NFT selling for between $100,000 and $250,000.

A column in the New York Times was tokenized for charity in March, raising more than $550,000 for NYT’s Neediest Case Fund.

Artist threatens legal action on ‘Chill Guy’ meme tokens; community responds