Cryptocurrency - Thomson 158 Reuters https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com Latest News Updates Thu, 19 Sep 2024 20:01:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 Bitcoin and crypto stocks rise after the Fed cuts rates by half a percentage point https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/bitcoin-and-crypto-stocks-rise-after-the-fed-cuts-rates-by-half-a-percentage-point/ https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/bitcoin-and-crypto-stocks-rise-after-the-fed-cuts-rates-by-half-a-percentage-point/#respond Thu, 19 Sep 2024 20:01:13 +0000 https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/bitcoin-and-crypto-stocks-rise-after-the-fed-cuts-rates-by-half-a-percentage-point/ Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images Cryptocurrencies rose as part of a broad market rally Thursday, one day after the Federal Reserve delivered a half-percentage-point reduction in interest rates, the first in more than four years. The price of bitcoin was recently higher by 5% at $63,255.00, according to Coin Metrics, building on a […]

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Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images

Cryptocurrencies rose as part of a broad market rally Thursday, one day after the Federal Reserve delivered a half-percentage-point reduction in interest rates, the first in more than four years.

The price of bitcoin was recently higher by 5% at $63,255.00, according to Coin Metrics, building on a rally underway before the central bank decision Wednesday. Bitcoin, similar to stocks, initially jumped and then pulled back as traders absorbed the news.

“Bitcoin’s tightest correlations over time have been a positive relationship with money growth and a negative relationship with the U.S. dollar,” said Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck. “With this move from the Fed, we think the likelihood of strong Q4 performance from bitcoin rises.”

Ether rose 6%. Its competitor, the Solana token, jumped 10%.

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Bitcoin rises after Wednesday’s Fed decision

Stocks tied to the price of bitcoin climbed. Bitcoin exchange operator Coinbase advanced 3%. MicroStrategy, widely used as a high beta play on the price of bitcoin, gained 9%.

Some investors are concerned that the size of the interest rate reduction, when the Fed could have eased policy by only a quarter point, shows that policymakers must be more worried about the economy than the markets would indicate. Others are more focused on easier borrowing costs spurring an uptick in liquidity that is likely to support prices.

Bitcoin behaves as both a hedge and a risk asset, and is currently more closely correlated to the Nasdaq Composite Index than it is with gold.

Bitcoin is up 6% in September, usually its worst month of the year. It is not out of the woods yet, however, said Yuya Hasegawa, crypto market analyst at Japanese bitcoin exchange Bitbank. He warned about the outcome of the Bank of Japan’s policy meeting, which began Thursday.

“The BOJ will likely keep the policy rate this time around but signs of additional rate hikes could boost [the Japanese yen] and may trigger yen carry trade to rewind, which could result in a sell-off in the Japanese stock market and the risk-off sentiment could cascade into the crypto market,” he said. “Bitcoin has some time until the BOJ makes the decision and could extend its gain during Thursday’s U.S. session. The next likely short-term target is around $65,000.”

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Crypto spending on 2024 election hits $190 million, led by Winklevoss twins https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/crypto-spending-on-2024-election-hits-190-million-led-by-winklevoss-twins/ https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/crypto-spending-on-2024-election-hits-190-million-led-by-winklevoss-twins/#respond Wed, 18 Sep 2024 01:18:33 +0000 https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/crypto-spending-on-2024-election-hits-190-million-led-by-winklevoss-twins/ Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (L-R), creators of crypto exchange Gemini Trust Co., on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a cryptocurrency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021. Joe Raedle | Getty Images Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are the biggest individual crypto donors this election […]

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Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (L-R), creators of crypto exchange Gemini Trust Co., on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a cryptocurrency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021.

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Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are the biggest individual crypto donors this election cycle, giving a combined $10.1 million, or slightly over $5 million each, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by crypto market and blockchain analyst James Delmore and independently verified by CNBC.

With 50 days to go until the November general election, political donations from, or in support of, the crypto industry are up to around $190 million, as some of the biggest names in the sector open their digital wallets to help elect candidates sympathetic to their interests.

The Winklevoss twins gave around $1.7 million combined in bitcoin to the Trump 47 Committee, which raises money for Republican former President Donald Trump, over $700,000 combined to the pro-Trump Make America Great Again PAC, $250,000 each to the pro-Trump America PAC, and $4.9 million to the bipartisan pro-crypto Fairshake PAC.

Top executives from blockchain giant Ripple Labs have collectively given more than $3 million to candidate committees and super PACs so far this cycle, with co-founder Chris Larsen donating nearly $2.4 million of that, mostly to help Democratic candidates. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has donated more than $384,000 to multiple PACs and candidates, including to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and John Deaton, a Republican running against Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. The company’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, gave $300,000 to the Trump 47 Committee.

At a fundraiser for Trump in June, Alderoty explained how Ripple had spent over $100 million litigation to defend itself against civil charges brought by the SEC. The event was held at the San Francisco mansion of venture capitalist David Sacks.

The Winklevoss twins and Coinbase didn’t respond to requests for comment. Ripple referred CNBC to prior comments from executives, including a June post from Garlinghouse on X, where he wrote that “candidates will only gain votes for being pro-crypto, and absolutely lose them for being anti-crypto.”

The month after the San Francisco fundraiser, Trump promised to fire SEC Chair Gary Gensler if he were elected, even though U.S. presidents do not have the authority to fire members of independent commissions without cause. While the incoming president could unseat Gensler from his position as chairman, he would remain on as a commissioner until the end of his term.

Tech for Trump: Silicon Valley investors turn against Biden

Under Gensler, the SEC has taken on major industry players, including centralized cryptocurrency exchanges Kraken and Coinbase.

Executives from the two companies have been spending big this cycle. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has given over $1.3 million to a mix of PACs including Fairshake and JD Vance for Senate Inc., as well as directly to Democrats and Republicans running for both House and Senate seats. Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal has attended at least two Trump fundraisers, including one in Nashville on the sidelines of the biggest bitcoin event of the year.

Kraken co-founder and Chairman Jesse Powell has donated just over $1 million to the Trump campaign.

Individual crypto contributors include ex-Bitfinex strategy chief Phil Potter (over $1.6 million), Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani ($878,600), Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam ($735,400), Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson ($1,4 million), Paxos CEO and co-founder Charles Cascarilla ($198,500), BitGo CEO Mike Belshe ($119,825), Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakavenko ($67,100), and Gibraltar-based Xapo Bank founder Wences Casares ($374,899).

According to Delmore’s report, no known donations have been made in cryptocurrency to the Future Forward PAC, which is raising funds for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president. Future Forward began accepting crypto donations this month through a partnership with Coinbase Commerce. It appears the donation page on the website still doesn’t offer a crypto option.

Crypto companies outspend Big Oil and banks in 2024 elections

CNBC reached out to two representatives from Future Forward listed on the PAC’s FEC filing to ask about the tally of crypto donations thus far and when it plans to add a crypto payment option on its website. They didn’t immediately respond.

Harris’ fundraising operation has taken off since President Biden dropped out of the race, with her campaign raising $47 million in the first 24 hours after her first, and perhaps only, debate against Trump on Tuesday.

Huge jump from 2020

Delmore, who has been assembling reports on crypto donations in the 2024 election for blockchain analytics platform Breadcrumbs, told CNBC that industry spending is nearly double where it was in the mid-terms — more than $190 million in the 2024 election versus $98 million in the 2022 election. It’s nearly 13 times spending in 2020 of $15 million — a figure based on a mix of data from FEC and OpenSecrets filings.

Unlike the past two election cycles, which featured spending from the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX and founder Sam Bankman-Fried, this year’s contributor list is more robust and diverse. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March for stealing $8 billion worth of customer money through FTX.

“Most of the crypto donations in 2022 were from FTX and SBF and almost all of them went to Democrats or PACs that support Democrats,” Delmore said.

Delmore said that spending is more balanced between the two parties, but “more has definitely gone to Republican candidates and PACs that supported Republicans and opposed Democrats.”

A Public Citizen report last month found that nearly half of all the corporate money flowing into this year’s election has come from the crypto industry, with Coinbase and Ripple leading the pack.

There is a lot of overlap between crypto’s biggest corporate and individual spenders.

The majority of funds for Fairshake, one of the top-spending PACs this year, can be traced to four sources: Coinbase, Ripple, Jump Crypto and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Widening the category to all of crypto, Delmore’s research finds that billions of dollars are at play, including more than $20 million in sales generated by non-fungible tokens (NFT) released by Trump, according to Bloomberg reporting, Trump-branded meme tokens, the $190 million in political donations from or in support of crypto, and another $1.1 billion on betting on the platform Polymarket.

So far, $922 million in bets have been placed on who will be the winner of the election, and another $206 million on who will win the popular vote. 

Electing pro-crypto candidates ultimately comes down to turning out the vote.

The Stand With Crypto Alliance, launched by Coinbase last year, is in the midst of a cross-country bus tour through battleground states to get people registered to vote. The campaign culminates in an event on DC on Wednesday that will include speeches by members of Coinbase’s C-suite, as well as a live performance by music duo The Chainsmokers.

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New details of Trump family crypto project released, including who can buy in https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/new-details-of-trump-family-crypto-project-released-including-who-can-buy-in/ https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/new-details-of-trump-family-crypto-project-released-including-who-can-buy-in/#respond Tue, 17 Sep 2024 03:25:05 +0000 https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/new-details-of-trump-family-crypto-project-released-including-who-can-buy-in/ More than two hours into Republican former President Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial launch event on X Monday night, the team behind the Trump family’s new crypto project finally unveiled a key detail: Who can buy the forthcoming tokens it plans to release, and how shares of the project will be allotted. For over a month, the […]

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More than two hours into Republican former President Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial launch event on X Monday night, the team behind the Trump family’s new crypto project finally unveiled a key detail: Who can buy the forthcoming tokens it plans to release, and how shares of the project will be allotted.

For over a month, the former president and his family have been pumping up the endeavor with vague descriptions, promising that it will do many things at once.

Lofty goals set by those involved in the project on Monday night’s X space suggest that World Liberty Financial will be a sort of crypto banking platform, where the general public will be encouraged to borrow, lend and invest in crypto.

There will also be an accompanying token called WLFI, founders said Monday.

The equity structure for these tokens will be that 20% of the project’s tokens are allotted to the founding team, which includes the Trumps, 17% of tokens are set aside for user rewards, and the remaining 63% of the coins will be made available for the public to purchase, said founder Zak Folkman.

There will be no pre-sales or early buy ins, Folkman added.

An earlier leaked draft of an internal project outline had the founders’ share at 70%, sparking concerns that the project would be little more than a get-rich-quick scheme.

The token will be a Reg D token offering, which follows the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation D — a provision that makes it possible for a company to raise capital without first registering their securities with the commission so long as certain conditions are met.

These were themes that Trump covered in a conversation format early on in the more than two hour event, as he spoke about the perceived hostility of the Securities and Exchange Commission towards the digital currency industry.

Several high profile figures in the industry take issue with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming that he is regulating the industry through enforcement actions, rather than via rules.

Over the course of Trump’s 40-minute fireside chat at the top of the more than two hour livestream, he talked about how he “wasn’t overly interested” in crypto initially.

But that changed, he said, when sales of his Trump trademarked nonfungible token collections were paid for with crypto. “I think my children opened my eyes more than anything else.”

“Crypto is one of those things we have to do,” Trump said near the end of his remarks. “Whether we like it or not, we have to do it.”

Monday’s event came at an unprecedented moment for Trump’s presidential campaign.

On Sunday afternoon at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump and his longtime friend and political donor, Steve Witkoff, were between the fifth and sixth holes on the course when gunshots were fired. The FBI has characterized the incident as an apparent assassination attempt on the former president.

Witkoff is a longtime friend of Trump’s. He’s also part of the small group of World Liberty Financial founders.

Witkoff was seated to Trump’s right during Monday night’s livestream, and described how he brought the Trump family together with two crypto entrepreneurs to get the project started.

“My son introduced me to two partners, Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, who are exceptionally bright people …These guys are as smart as any currency traders I’ve ever met. And they began talking to me about decentralized finance, which means frictionless finance, and why it made sense for people. And about the forgotten, who can’t get credit out there,” Witkoff said.

“As I began to understand that, I said, ‘Who would understand this better than the Trump family?’ And we had a meeting initially with Eric, Don Jr., and the president and his counsel. And we said, ‘Let’s go pursue it.’ We’ve been on it for close to nine months,” said Witkoff.

As Witkoff spoke, the parallels between World Liberty Financial and Trump’s other recent venture, Trump Media & Technology Group, were inescapable.

In Trump Media’s case, two former cast members from Trump’s NBC hit reality show “The Apprentice” approached Trump in 2021 with an idea for a new, conservative social media platform.

Three and a half years later, Trump Media’s publicly traded stock has boosted Trump’s net worth by billions of dollars, and Truth Social is his social platform of choice.

Alongside Trump and Witkoff, founders of World Liberty Financial include Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, as well as Witkoff’s son, Zach Witkoff.

A copy of an early internal report, known as a white paper and obtained by CoinDesk, listed Barron as “Chief DeFi Visionary,” Eric and Donald Jr. as “Web3 Ambassadors,” and Trump Sr. as “Chief Crypto Advocate.”

But while the Trumps will receive compensation from the project, the platform itself is “not owned, managed, operated or sold” by members of the Trump family.

Witkoff, a real estate investor, and Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, are the two people calling the shots at World Liberty Financial, according to a person familiar with the project. Both are new to the crypto industry.

Until Monday, much of what the public knew about World Liberty was based on interviews Trump’s sons had given to the press over the past month, as well as a leaked white paper that served as a sort of crypto project manifesto, and conversations with insiders.

Anyone who wanted material details of the platform, including the white paper, was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, according to a person familiar with the project.

World Liberty Financial represents the latest step in Donald Trump’s evolving political and personal relationship with the crypto industry.

Some visible figures in crypto have cozied up to Trump during the 2024 election cycle, lending their cash and endorsements to the Republican nominee for president.

At the same time, Trump has adopted increasingly bullish talking points about crypto on the campaign trail. This culminated in his delivery of a keynote address in July at the biggest bitcoin event of the year in Nashville, Tennessee.

Some of these supporters however, have also said they are concerned that Trump’s foray into crypto himself could jeopardize his rapport with the sector more broadly, especially if the launch doesn’t go as planned.

Founders offered scant details on Monday about any future timelines for the project, saying only that new information will be shared on official social media channels, and warning fans not to fall for scams.

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The IRS is coming for crypto — Here’s what’s happening https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/the-irs-is-coming-for-crypto-heres-whats-happening/ https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/the-irs-is-coming-for-crypto-heres-whats-happening/#respond Thu, 06 May 2021 15:16:44 +0000 https://thomson158reuters.servehalflife.com/the-irs-is-coming-for-crypto-heres-whats-happening/ ShareShare Article via FacebookShare Article via TwitterShare Article via LinkedInShare Article via Email Squawk on the Street CNBC’s Eamon Javers reports on how investors will have to pay taxes on gains from crypto trades. 01:42 Thu, May 6 202111:16 AM EDT Eamon Javers . Source link

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CNBC’s Eamon Javers reports on how investors will have to pay taxes on gains from crypto trades.

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Thu, May 6 202111:16 AM EDT

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