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A worsening macroeconomic climate and the collapse of industry giants like FTX and Terra have weighed on bitcoin’s price this year.

STR | Nurphoto via Getty Images

2022 was a rough year for crypto. More than $1.3 trillion was wiped off the value of the market. And bitcoin, the world’s largest digital coin, saw its price slump more than 60%.

Investors were caught off guard by a wave of collapses in the industry from stablecoin project terraUSD to crypto exchange FTX, as well as a worsening macroeconomic climate. Those who made predictions about bitcoin’s price in the past year really missed the mark.

But with 2023 now here, some market players have stuck their neck out with price calls for what could be another volatile year.

Interest rates around the world are on the rise, and that’s weighing on risk assets like stocks and bitcoin. Investors are also watching how the FTX saga, which resulted in the arrest of the company’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas, will develop.

CNBC rounds up some of the boldest price calls for bitcoin in 2023.

Tim Draper: $250,000

FTX's collapse is shaking crypto to its core. The pain may not be over

The halvening, or halving, is an event that happens every four years in which bitcoin rewards to miners are cut in half. This is viewed by some investors as positive for bitcoin’s price, as it squeezes supply. The next halving is slated to happen sometime in 2024.

Bitcoin miners, who use power-intensive machines to verify transactions and mint new tokens, are being squeezed by the slump in prices and rising energy costs.

These actors accumulate massive piles of digital currency, making them some of the biggest sellers in the market. With miners offloading their holdings to pay off debts, that should remove most of the remaining selling pressure on bitcoin.

That’s historically a good sign for bitcoin, said Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development at crypto exchange Luno.

“In prior down markets, miner capitulation has usually indicated major bottoms,” Ayyar told CNBC. “Their cost to produce becomes greater than the value of bitcoin, hence you have a number of miners either switching off their machines … or they need to sell more bitcoin to keep their business afloat.”

“If the market reaches a point where it’s absorbing this miner sell pressure sufficiently, one can assume that we’re seeing a bottoming period.”

Standard Chartered: $5,000

For some market participants, the worst is yet to come.

In a Dec. 5 research note, Standard Chartered said bitcoin may sink as low as $5,000. The prediction, one of the bank’s list of “surprises” that are being “under-priced” by markets, would represent a 70% plunge from current prices.

“Yields plunge along with technology shares” in Standard Chartered’s nightmare 2023 scenario, “and while the Bitcoin sell-off decelerates, the damage has been done,” said Eric Robertsen, the bank’s global head of research.

“More and more crypto firms and exchanges find themselves with insufficient liquidity, leading to further bankruptcies and a collapse in investor confidence in digital assets,” he added.

Robertsen said the scenario has a “non-zero probability of occurring in the year ahead” and falls “materially outside of the market consensus or our own baseline views.”

Mark Mobius: $10,000

Veteran investor Mark Mobius had a relatively successful 2022 in terms of his price call. In May, he forecast bitcoin would drop to $20,000 when it was trading above $28,000.

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He said bitcoin would fall to $10,000 in 2022. That did not happen. However, Mobius told CNBC that he is sticking for his $10,000 price call in 2023.

The investor, who made his name at Franklin Templeton Investments, told CNBC that his bear case for bitcoin stemmed from rising interest rates and general tighter monetary policy from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

“With higher interest rates, the attraction of holding or buying Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies becomes less attractive since just holding the coin does not pay interest,” Mobius said via email.

Carol Alexander: $50,000

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at Sussex University, wasn’t far off the mark with her prediction that bitcoin would slip to $10,000 in 2022.

Now, she thinks the cryptocurrency could be set for gains — but not for reasons you might expect.

The catalyst would be more dominos from the FTX fallout tipping over, Alexander said. If this happens, she expects the price of bitcoin will top $30,000 in the first quarter, and then $50,000 by quarters three or four.

“There will be a managed bull market in 2023, not a bubble — so we won’t see the price overshooting as before,” she told CNBC.

“We’ll see a month or two of stable trending prices interspersed with range-bounded periods and probably a couple of short-lived crashes.”

Alexander’s reasoning is that, with trading volumes evaporating with traders on edge, large holders known as “whales” will likely step in to prop up the market. The wealthiest 97 bitcoin wallet addresses account for 14.15% of the total supply, according to fintech firm River Financial.

FTX's collapse was a punch in the face for crypto, but not a knockout blow, analyst says

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.

The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones. 

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Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Apple’s SVP of Services Eddy Cue testified Wednesday that Apple chooses to feature Google because it’s “the best search engine.”

The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.

Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.

“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.

Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.

Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.

The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.

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Rippling valued at $16.8 billion as HR software startup raises $450 million, says IPO not imminent

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Rippling valued at .8 billion as HR software startup raises 0 million, says IPO not imminent

From left, Parker Conrad, co-founder and CEO of Rippling, and Kleiner Perkins investor Ilya Fushman speak at the venture firm’s Fellows Founders Summit in San Francisco in September 2022.

Rippling

Human resources software startup Rippling said Friday that its valuation has swelled to $16.8 billion in its latest fundraising round.

The company raised $450 million in the round, and has committed to buying an additional $200 million worth of shares from current and previous employees. The company’s valuation is up from $13.5 billion in a round a year ago.

Rippling said there was no lead investor. Baillie Gifford, Elad Gil, Goldman Sachs Growth and others participated in the round, according to a statement from the San Francisco-based company.

With the tech IPO market mostly dormant over the past three-plus years, and President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on imports leading several companies to delay planned offerings, the most high-profile late-stage tech startups continue to tap private markets for growth capital. Rippling co-founder and CEO Parker Conrad told CNBC in an interview the the company isn’t planning for an IPO in the near future.

Conrad also highlighted a change that’s taken place in public markets in recent years, since inflation began soaring in late 2021, followed by higher interest rates. With concerns about the economy swirling, many tech companies downsized and took other steps toward generating and preserving cash.

“It does look a lot like, in order to be successful in the public markets, your growth rates have to come down so that you can be profitable,” said Conrad, who avoided enacting layoffs. “And so for us, that sort of pushes things out until the company looks profitable and probably slower growing, right?”

At Rippling, annual revenue growth is well over 30%, Conrad said, though he didn’t provide an updated sales figure. The information reported last year that Rippling doubled annual recurring revenue to over $350 million by the end of 2023 from a year prior.

Given the pace of expansion, Conrad said he isn’t fixated on profits at the moment at Rippling, which ranked 14th on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list.

Rippling offers payroll services, device management and corporate credit cards, among other products. Competitors include ADP, Paychex, Paycom Software and Paylocity.

There’s also privately held Deel, which Rippling sued in March for allegedly deploying a spy who collected confidential information. Conrad suggested that the publicity surrounding the case may be boosting business.

“I think it’s too early to say, looking at the data, how all of this is going to evolve from a market perspective, but certainly we see some companies that have said, ‘Hey, we’re talking to Rippling because of this,'” Conrad said.

WATCH: The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann

The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark's Rick Heitzmann

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Fortnite applies to launch on Apple’s App Store after Epic Games court win

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Fortnite applies to launch on Apple's App Store after Epic Games court win

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Epic Games said on Friday that it submitted Fortnite to Apple’s App Store, the month after a judge ruled in favor of the game maker in a contempt ruling.

Fortnite was booted from iPhones and Apple’s App Store in 2020, after Epic Games updated its software to link out to the company’s website and avoid Apple’s commissions. The move drew Apple’s anger, and kicked off a legal battle that has lasted for years.

Last month’s ruling, a victory for Epic Games, said that Apple was not allowed to charge a commission on link-outs or dictate if the links look like buttons, paving the way for Fortnite’s return.

Apple could still reject Fortnite’s submission. An Apple representative didn’t respond to a request for comment. Apple is appealing last month’s contempt ruling.

The announcement by Epic Games is the latest salvo in the battle between it and Apple, which has taken place in courts and with regulators around the world since 2020. Epic Games also sued Google, which operates the Play Store for Android phones.

Last month’s ruling has already shifted the economics of app development for iPhones.

Apple takes between 15% and 30% of purchases made using its in-app payment system. Linking to the web avoids those fees. Apple briefly allowed link-outs under its system but would charge a 27% commission, before last month’s ruling.

Developers including Amazon and Spotify have already updated their apps to avoid Apple’s commissions and direct customers to their own websites for payment.

Before last month, Amazon’s Kindle app told users they could not purchase a book in the iPhone app. After a recent update, the app now shows an orange “Get Book” button that links to Amazon’s website.

Fortnite has been available for iPhones in Europe since last year, through Epic Games’ store. Third-party app stores are allowed in Europe under the Digital Markets Act. Users have also been able to play Fortnite on iPhones and iPad through cloud gaming services.

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