Bitcoin on Thursday surged to its highest price in nearly a month, as traders bet on a U.S. inflation cooldown and digested news that lawyers for defunct crypto exchange FTX found billions of dollars’ worth of assets.
The world’s largest digital currency climbed above $18,000 for the first time since Dec. 14 late Wednesday, increasing in value by about 5% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin was trading at $18,154.35 as of 5 a.m. ET Thursday morning, according to CoinMetrics data.
On Wednesday, attorneys for collapsed crypto exchange FTX said they had found around $5 billion in “liquid” assets, including cash and digital assets. The recovery will be a welcome boon to FTX customers after the crypto exchange imploded in November.
FTX lawyers nevertheless warned the $5 billion cache was so high that selling the assets could lead to significant downside pressure on the market, driving down their value.
“Bitcoin has been in a downtrend for over a year now, which is a standard period of a bear market in crypto,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, told CNBC in emailed comments Thursday morning.
“We’ve had many negative events transpire over the past year, and if one looks at the price reaction to those events, in general it’s been declining less and less — an indication that the market is accepting the news quite well, sell pressure is being absorbed, and hence we’re moving to an accumulation stage,” he added. “This could also mean that the market thinks the worst is over for crypto and that most negative news in now priced in.”
U.S. inflation data due out Thursday is forecast to show a softening of inflation. Economists polled by Dow Jones anticipate that the consumer price index declined 0.1% month-on-month in December.
Inflation is still expected to rise 6.5% year-over-year, though this would be down from a 7.1% jump in November and well off a 9.1% peak rate in June. Investors hope the decline may put pressure on the U.S. Federal Reserve to reverse interest rate increases.
The Fed and other central banks have been raising interest rates over the past year or so in an effort to tame soaring inflation — in moves that forced stocks and cryptocurrencies sharply lower in 2022.
The hope now is that the central bank will cut rates, taking some pressure off risk assets.
“Today’s CPI numbers could be quite telling, and a hot CPI print could definitely throw a spanner in the works for risk-on assets such as crypto,” Ayyar said.
That or further negative news in crypto may cause the price of bitcoin to slip below $17,000, Ayyar warned, setting the stage for additional declines and a potential fall of the digital asset within a $12,000 to $14,000 range.
Bitcoin is down about 74% from its November 2021 all-time high of $68,990. Last year, nearly $1.4 trillion of value was wiped off the cryptocurrency market, as traders dumped risky assets like technology and growth stocks.
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Bitcoin and the broader digital currency market also slumped, suggesting increasing correlation with major stock benchmarks like the Nasdaq Composite.
The plunge was also caused by crypto-specific issues, including the collapses of projects and companies like FTX and Terra.
Bitcoin has however started 2023 on positive footing, with its price rising steadily over the last 12 days.
Other digital currencies were buoyed by the jump in bitcoin prices Thursday. Ether, the second-largest coin, rose almost 5% to $1,397.78 while Binance’s BNB token rose 3% to $283.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, told CNBC Wednesday that the exchange plans to increase hiring by 15% to 30% in 2023, in stark contrast with other exchanges that have cut jobs.
Binance, which earlier earmarked $1 billion for a fund aimed at propping up the industry after the collapse of FTX, has itself been beset by fears over the soundness of its reserves. The auditor working on the company’s so-called proof of reserves, Mazars, paused all work with crypto companies in December.
Binance says it has more than enough assets to cover liabilities.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
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Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.
The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.
Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.
The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.
Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.
Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”
Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.
Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.
Reuters
Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.
Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.
Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.
The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.
Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.
To Barry Diller, a friend of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the decision for The Washington Post not to endorse a candidate in tomorrow’s presidential election was “absolutely principled” — and poorly timed, he said Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“They made a blunder — it should’ve happened months before, and it didn’t, and that’s the issue with it,” Diller said.
Diller is chairperson of both online travel company Expedia and IAC, which owns media platforms and websites like Dotdash Meredith and Care.com. He and Bezos appear to have been close friends for years, with Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, hosting Bezos’s engagement party to fiancee Lauren Sanchez.
The decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 race or for future presidential races came directly from Bezos, the paper’s owner, according to an article published by two of the Post’s own reporters.
The move prompted public condemnation from several staff writers, a flood of at least 250,000 digital subscription cancellations and the resignations of at least three editorial board members.
Bezos defended his position in his own op-ed late last month, calling the move a “meaningful step in the right direction” to restore low public trust in media and journalism.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote, emphasizing that the decision to not endorse a candidate was made “entirely internally” and without consulting either campaign. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it.”
Diller said he spoke to Bezos following the decision.
“I think it was absolutely principled,” Diller said. “The mistake they made — and it was a mistake admitted by him — was timing.”