2024-11-18 06:28

Metaplanet to issue one-year bonds to finance BTC purchases. Metaplanet to issue one-year bonds to finance BTC purchases. The Tokyo-listed firm holds over 1,000 BTC as of now. Tokyo-listed Metaplanet has announced a debt sale to boost its bitcoin (BTC) stash, following the lead of U.S.-listed business intelligence firm MicroStrategy. On Monday, Metaplanet announced on X that it is issuing one-year ordinary bonds with a guarantee totaling 1.75 billion yen ($11.3 million) for an annual interest rate of 0.36%. The funds raised will be used entirely to snap up BTC. Metaplanet started buying BTC in April this year as a hedge against Japan's debt issues and volatility in the yen. Since then, it has accumulated 1,018 BTC worth $92.33 million, according to data source Bitcoin Treasuries. The company has also used options strategies to boost its holdings. Still, Metaplanet's BTC balance is a far cry from MSTR's stash of 279,420 BTC. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/18/metaplanet-follows-mstrs-lead-announces-113m-debt-sale-for-additional-bitcoin-purchases/

2024-11-18 06:15

A speculative frenzy seems to have gripped the market, which could lead to a sudden sentiment shift and two-way price turbulence. JPMorgan's retail sentiment score for BTC and BTC-tied assets hit a record high last week. MSTR's options market exhibited extreme upside fear or bullish speculative frenzy. Bitcoin (BTC) and everything else tied to cryptocurrency have been on fire since Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5. Those looking to board the crypto freight train now should be ready for potential twists and turns in the wild rise as data tracked by JPMorgan and other analysts shows things are getting frenzied out there. As BTC rose past the $93,000 mark last week and inflows into the U.S.-listed spot ETFs and crypto stocks surged, JPMorgan's retail sentiment score rose to a record high of 4. The measure is designed to gauge the sentiment of retail investors toward cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, based on the activity in the family of BTC products, including spot ETFs. "Within ETF space, demand for Bitcoin ETFs was particularly strong (IBIT +3.4z) following the election results. The demand for Bitcoin was also reflected in COIN (+6z). In fact, their sentiment score for the Bitcoin family (for both physical ETFs and others) soared to a multi-sigma high," JPMorgan's equity research team said in a note to clients last week, discussing the retail order imbalance. The z score of 3.4 and higher indicates a substantial and positive deviation from the average, indicating strong demand. Meanwhile, the options market tied to shares in bitcoin-holder MicroStrategy (MSTR) exhibited a record bullish sentiment, also pointing to frenzied trading often observed at market peaks. The one-year 25-delta put-call skew nosedived to -26.7% on Wednesday. It meant that call options used to hedge against or profit from price rallies traded at a significantly higher premium to puts offering downside, according to chart from Market Chameleon shared by pseudonymous analyst Markets&Mayhem on X. The skew recovered somewhat to -11.8% on Friday, still exhibiting a solid bias for upside bets. BTC calls have been consistently pricier than puts, but the differential has been notably narrower than MSTR. "Call skew in MSTR is so wildly euphoric that it is hard to imagine we don't see a more meaningful drawdown unless bitcoin continues to move in a parabolic fashion higher. For now, it appears to be cooling off just a little bit from its highs," Markets&Mayhem said. Authors of TheMarketEar analytics service referred to the skew as something "beyond extreme upside fear." So, while BTC and other crypto-linked assets may be solid long-term investments, the surging retail investor sentiment can be unpredictable, potentially leading to a sharp and painful market reversal. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/18/frenzy-alert-jpmorgans-bitcoin-retail-sentiment-score-hits-record-high-mstrs-call-skew-soars/

2024-11-18 05:11

The vault has been filled in excess of an initial $100,000 target as of Asian morning hours, with $240,000 worth of stablecoins deposited for CAT on Solana, data shows. CAT, the memecoin linked to Simon's Cat, is expanding to the Solana blockchain to tap into its active trading community. A vault provides early access to BONK token holders who have locked their tokens for 12 months. Solana's ecosystem has become a focal point for memecoin activities, with significant trading volumes and fees. CAT, the licensed memecoin of the internet cartoon character Simon's Cat, is expanding to the Solana blockchain to capture newer trading audiences. Long-term holders of Solana stalwart BONK, a dog-themed memecoin created in late 2022, who locked their tokens for 12 months would get early access to CAT on Solana. A vault will offer up to $100,000 worth of CAT at a discounted rate compared to the market price at launch. The vault has been filled in excess of an initial $100,000 target as of Asian morning hours, with $240,000 worth of stablecoins deposited for CAT on Solana, data shows. Solana has emerged as a memecoin hotbed in the past years, often seeing frenzied periods of token issuances and trading, that create a loop of demand for SOL — with those gains often trickling back into newer tokens. Other networks have yet to see similar activity take off. Earlier this year, in March, for example, Solana amassed $3.2 million in fees over 24 hours, beating a $300,000 record from 2021. Onchain volumes climbed over $3 billion, flipping a November 2022 record of $300 million, as a CoinDesk analysis showed. No other popular blockchain, such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, or Tron, saw a bump in activity during that period, indicating that traders’ attention was focused on a single network. That reason primarily drives CAT’s decision to expand to Solana. “BNB has given $CAT a strong, reliable foundation with solid liquidity, but we’re excited to open the doors to Solana’s high-speed, low-cost network, which is hugely popular among retail traders and the memecoin crowd,” a Simon’s Cat core team member told CoinDesk under anonymity. “Solana’s deep support from exchanges means even more opportunities for trading and liquidity, which is a major boost. And we’re just getting started—there’s plenty more on our roadmap,” the team added in a Telegram message. The Simon’s Cat token was created in early August with Floki, BNB Chain, and DWF Labs. CAT is officially linked to the mainstream Simon's Cat brand and is the first major cat memecoin on the BNB Chain, backed by the company's IP, which earned $5.8 billion in revenue last year. CAT is up 11% in the past 24 hours and has nearly doubled in the past two weeks alongside a broader memecoin rally, data shows. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/18/cat-token-expands-to-solana-setting-up-long-term-bullish-move/

2024-11-17 10:24

An increase in both OI and prices typically indicates that new money is entering the market — indicative of a bullish trend. Regulatory clarity and upcoming technical changes are spurring growth in XRP-tracked futures, with open interest zooming to record highs on Saturday as prices spiked more than 20% over 24 hours. XRP and U.S. dollar-denominated open interest are at record levels as of Sunday, with over 2 billion tokens (worth nearly $2 billion at current prices) in futures positions betting on further market volatility. Long/short data shows that traders are slightly biased toward shorts, with 51% in bets against further price increases. (While the ratio should theoretically remain 50:50 at all times as there is always a short trade for each long trade, the bias gives an insight into how savvy traders are positioning over a very short-term period, such as 24 hours.) Open Interest (OI) refers to the total number of outstanding derivative contracts not settled for an asset. An increase in both OI and prices typically indicates that new money is entering the market — indicative of a bullish trend. On the other hand, if the price rises but OI falls, the rally might be driven by short covering rather than new buying, potentially signaling a weaker trend. XRP prices zoomed above $1.20 in U.S. morning hours Saturday, taking weekly gains to over 87%, which set a three-year price high for the token. Gains in XRP started late Thursday as 18 U.S. states filed to sue the SEC and commissioners, including chairman Gary Gensler, accusing them of unconstitutional overreach of the crypto industry. The speculative optimism among traders is that a crypto-friendly Trump administration could benefit tokens linked to U.S.-based companies, such as Ripple Labs (related to XRP) and Uniswap (UNI), as the firms are more involved in boosting value for token holders as the regulatory headwinds appear to have cleared. In addition, a key fundamental development that may boost future gains in XRP is the upcoming RLUSD stablecoin by Ripple Labs, a company closely related to the issuance of XRP. Ripple plans to use RLUSD in its cross-border payments product, providing liquidity, facilitating faster and cheaper transactions, and potentially integrating with various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols across multiple blockchains, as previously reported. XRP has beaten a flat bitcoin (BTC) and a 2.7% gain in the broader crypto market tracked by the liquid CoinDesk 20 index (CD20) over the past 24 hours. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/17/xrp-sees-record-futures-bets-amid-price-surge-above-120/

2024-11-17 06:55

Low-unit bias, demand on Coinbase, frenzied community trading activity and BONK’s standing within the Solana ecosystem are positioning it for more growth ahead, traders say. BONK leads with a 16% gain and high trading volumes on Coinbase, outpacing other memecoins like DOGE and SHIB. Technical analysis shows BONK's breakout from consolidation, suggesting potential growth; it's seen as undervalued compared to peers. Deflationary actions aim to increase BONK’s value, with a target of 1 trillion tokens to be burned by December. Fresh bitcoin (BTC) highs and a round of memecoin listings on influential exchanges Coinbase and Robinhood have brought attention back to large cap memecoins, with BONK setting new highs on renewed trading interest and a lofty token burn target. BONK surged 16% over the past 24 hours to lead gains among majors and large cap memes on $2.6 billion in trading volumes — a relatively large figure for the Solana-based dog token. On Coinbase, it led memecoin trading volumes at $384 million in the past 24 hours, higher among dogecoin (DOGE), pepe (PEPE), shiba inu (SHIB) and dogwifhat (WIF) — suggesting a bump in retail and institutional preference for the token on the exchange. Meme coins often see rapid price increases due to viral marketing, community enthusiasm, and speculative trading based mainly on narratives rather than having technical backing. Bonk was created in December 2022 in the aftermath of the FTX exchange collapse by 22 developers from the Solana ecosystem, as CoinDesk reported in early 2023. What Traders Say Price chart data shows BONK has broken out from consolidation patterns, showing a bounce off a triple bottom on its weekly chart against the SOL/USD trade pair, Bonk core contributor @iamkadense pointed out an X post as part of a bullish thesis on the token. The thesis is that SOL’s outperformance may drive attention to BONK as a beta bet on the broader ecosystem, a market behavior that often shows up during times of demand. A triple bottom is a bullish chart pattern used in technical analysis characterized by three equal lows followed by a breakout above resistance. Traders such as @theunipcs—who famously turned a $16,000 trader into over $18 million on Bonk and continues to hold the position—say the low unit bias, Coinbase trading volumes, and relatively low market cap compared to DOGE or SHIB add to BONK appeal for new traders. “The last time we had the kind of retail influx and mania we're about to witness: $DOGE hit an ATH market cap of $90 billion and $SHIB hit an ATH market cap of $43 billion,” @theunipcs said in an X post. “$BONK currently has a market cap of $3.6 billion, which means that it is ridiculously undervalued compared to DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE right now.” “This means there is A LOT of room to grow,” they added. Token Burns Elsewhere, interest in BONK is booming in Solana circles for a host of activities that intend to deflate token supply—a move that has historically contributed to higher prices. BonkDAO, a decentralized group of bonk’s believers that maintains the token, recently burned 100 billion tokens from the circulating supply and targets a trillion token burn in December, which could potentially increase value due to scarcity. Burns refer to the permanent removal of tokens from circulating supply by sending them to a crypto address that’s not controlled by anyone. “7.7 Trillion $BONK has been burned and ongoing daily burns of a billy plus. Yesterday, BONKbot burned 2 billion $BONK and $BERN is burning $BONK rapidly again,” Bonk’s @iamkadense said in an X post. “100B just burned, 1 Trillion to be burned for BONKmas and may not stop there by the community.” Tokens for those burns will originate from applications within the Solana ecosystem that utilize BONK for a feature or set of features. Per tweets, these include burns for bets placed on Dragontail, Christmas cards sent using BONKmark, and trades placed on LiveBonk, among other applications specified by Bonk’s X account. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/17/bonk-jumps-16-to-record-highs-as-traders-eye-even-more-gains-ahead/

2024-11-16 18:53

The National Commission of Digital Assets is the agency in charge of regulating crypto in El Salvador, the first nation to accept bitcoin as legal tender. Juan Carlos Reyes, the CNAD’s president, sat down with CoinDesk for an exclusive interview. Crypto regulators need to deeply understand the technology before offering regulatory frameworks, Reyes said. Tokenization efforts are particularly attractive as they allow the democratization of access to structured securities. When it comes to regulating crypto, El Salvador has a head-start on most other countries. It was the first nation to adopt bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender, in 2021, and has become home to a wide range of crypto companies. “Looking at the big picture, most people won't understand what we're doing in El Salvador, they only see glimpses,” Juan Carlos Reyes, president of the National Commission of Digital Assets in El Salvador (CNAD) — which was created in February 2023 to regulate the crypto sector in the Latin American nation of 6.3 million souls — told CoinDesk in an interview. “Even the foreign companies that are regulated here but don’t have a full office on-the-ground, they don't understand how advanced we already are, and how quickly things are advancing in this industry.” President Nayib Bukele’s initiative forced the nation’s agencies to grapple with the technology and the implications of working with a digital currency, Reyes said. Consequently, El Salvador avoided giving crypto supervisory and regulatory authority to its traditional financial regulators — like, for example, the Superintendence of the Financial System (SFS) — and instead created the CNAD from scratch. The objective was to create a tailor-made regulatory framework to crypto instead of trying to bend existing rules to digital assets. “There’s an old saying in English: ‘If it sounds like a duck, it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck,’” Reyes said. “Well, in this case, it's not a duck. Digital assets are not like traditional financial instruments at all.” That’s why the CNAD took a technology-minded approach to regulating crypto as soon as Reyes — a computer science heavyweight — became the agency’s leader in September 2023. The results have been shocking, according to crypto companies that received El Salvador’s Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) license. “We were completely caught off-guard by how knowledgeable, how detailed, how completely versed in not just regulations, but the technology [the CNAD was],” Nick Cowan, Group CEO of tokenization solutions firm VLRM, told CoinDesk in an interview. “Without trying to over-praise El Salvador, we were completely stunned by how quickly they were able to get to the heart of the matter to review our application.” Victor Solomon, partner at Salvador-based tokenization advisory firm Tokenization Expert, concurred. “We didn’t have to spend time explaining the technical foundations of our operations — [Reyes] already understood the intricacies of tokenization and the compliance measures we had in place,” Solomon told CoinDesk. “He understands the practical challenges [that] businesses face, from fundraising to navigating regulations, and this makes him not just a regulator but an advocate for businesses that aim to positively impact the Salvadoran economy,” Solomon added. The Technologist Born in El Salvador, Reyes moved to Canada as a child to escape the gang warfare that was, at the time, ravaging the country. A self-described “very high achievement person,” he has multiple bachelor’s degrees — computer science, math and physics — as well as a master’s degree in management from Harvard and a doctorate in philosophy from the People’s Friendship University of Russia. Not to mention the PhD in international economics that he’s now pursuing. His professional background is just as varied. His experience ranges from leading a consulting firm for 15 years to developing business opportunities for the Missanabie Cree First Nation to opening a bar on the second floor of his beach house. A Bitcoin believer since 2013, he decided to move back to El Salvador in 2021 to take part in the cryptocurrency nationalization process. The CNAD, which counts 35 employees, is fully independent, and modeled after Reyes’ image: everyone knows crypto (and the underlying technology) like the back of their hand. In fact, 20 members of the staff are currently enrolled in a post-graduate crypto program at the University of CEMA in Argentina to buff up their expertise. “We have the most educated, most complete team when it comes to regulation of crypto assets in the world,” Reyes said. “If anyone doesn't know how to do a transaction on Bitcoin, including my driver, they probably cannot work here.” This crack team certainly leaves a strong impression on the companies that seek to obtain a license to operate in El Salvador. Reyes “is a technologist,” Cowan, whose company has worked with dozens of other regulators over the globe, told CoinDesk. “He absolutely gets the tech. In other jurisdictions, you have regulators who understand the regulations and investor protection, which, of course, is critical, but they don't necessarily understand the technology, and that can sometimes make it quite onerous to get to the point that you need to get to.” “It was a very detailed and complex process. I mean, we submitted a 700-page application,” Cowan said. “But the decision-making process was a lot faster [than in other countries] after the application had been filed… It was incredibly thorough, I would say, as equal as any other regulatory process we've had to undergo before. It wasn't easier, just quicker.” For Reyes, the crypto-literacy of the agency means that it can abide by one of the space’s most valued philosophical tenets — don’t trust, verify — and go examine the blockchain each time they interact with a new company seeking a license. The team doesn’t rely on the documents provided by compliance officers, and that has already led to firms getting caught giving wrong information to the regulator. El Salvador’s advantage Reyes likes to use an analogy to explain why crypto needs its own regulator. If you buy an electric car and it breaks down, and you bring it to your mechanic of 20 years, well, when he pops the hood open, he won’t find an engine — just a battery. And he won’t know what to do with it. That’s what crypto and traditional financial assets are like to Reyes. They look similar on a surface level. But dig a little deeper, and it’s a different beast entirely. It’s one of the reasons why jurisdictions around the globe have been slow to implement regulatory frameworks for digital assets. El Salvador, however, is a small country. With a GDP of $35 billion, its economy is 17th among Latin American nations and 103rd in the world. It doesn’t have its own currency, nor does it boast of strong financial institutions, or even of an existing ecosystem of developers. But Reyes says all of these things turned out to be boons when it comes to regulating crypto, because El Salvador started “with a blank sheet of paper.” To fall back on the electric car analogy, it’s as if El Salvador was able to specialize right away in fixing batteries and motors, instead of having to convert its existing infrastructure — designed for engines and pistons — into the kind of garage that can repair a Tesla. “In other countries, a lot of these new technologies are created by innocent people trying to bring the crypto ecosystem forward, but they don’t always think about how the tech can be perverted and used as a money laundering tool,” Reyes said. “It’s hard for regulators to know how loosely to regulate.” “We were able to make the CNAD the single point of entry for all digital assets in the country,” Reyes said. “Anyone that isn’t licensed by the commission is breaking the law.” There’s also the fact that the financial institutions in Western countries have more to lose by a change of the status-quo than some Latin American nations. “They have lobbyists. They've been fighting it. They implemented Operation Chokepoint 2.0. They've done everything to ensure that this industry doesn't thrive,” Reyes, who once had a Canadian bank account frozen because of his crypto activities, said. Countries like El Salvador have everything to gain in moving fast and seizing the opportunities presented by crypto. How to Regulate Crypto But what kind of regulatory environment does El Salvador want to nurture? Reyes said that in terms of financial instruments, Bitcoin was “more than enough,” but that otherwise the CNAD is technology agnostic. Most of the companies regulated by the agency run on Ethereum. The size of the regulated firms varies: there are global heavyweights like Tether and Bitfinex Securities, but also Salvadoran companies “that started with, you know, $2,000,” according to Reyes. Consumer security and financial security are at the top of the priority list. That means, for example, requiring exchanges to use multi-signature wallets to ensure that another FTX cannot happen, or for a firm’s private blockchain to follow certain security standards. The identification of each and every customer is also mandatory. “You have to remember that we had gangs terrorize our country for multiple years,” Reyes said. “So we take financial transparency and money laundering and financial terrorism very seriously, and those have been strongly embedded into a regulation.” In his view, if a crypto company is regulated in El Salvador, it can obtain a license anywhere in the world. There’s one sector Reyes is particularly enthusiastic about: real-world assets. Efforts like VLRM’s and Tokenization Expert’s will, in his view, expand the range of investment opportunities for retail investors. “Before Robinhood existed, most young people in the U.S. could never have bought Tesla or Nvidia [stocks],” Reyes said. “Robinhood democratized access to all these different stocks that were only available to the super elite. This is exactly what tokenization does.” The expectation is that in the coming years Salvadorans will get exposure to regulated products unavailable in other jurisdictions. “For the first time in modern history, developing countries can lead the financial revolution, rather than being left behind and just picking up the scraps,” Reyes said. “We're trying to encourage other nations to look at El Salvador and learn how they can adapt our model to their countries.” https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/11/16/an-interview-with-el-salvadors-top-crypto-regulator-developing-countries-can-lead-the-financial-revolution/