A number of factors are behind bitcoin’s New Year rise, according to analysts, including an increased probability of interest rates being lowered and purchases by large buyers known as “whales.”
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Bitcoin has begun 2023 on a positive note, with the price of the world’s largest digital token up roughly 26% since the start of January.
On Saturday, bitcoin’s price rose above $21,000 per coin for the first time since Nov. 7.
It’s still a far cry from the $68,990 record high bitcoin notched in Nov. 2021. But it has given market players cause for some optimism.
Analysts say that a number of factors are behind bitcoin’s New Year rise, including an increased probability of interest rates being lowered, as well as purchases by large buyers known as “whales.”
New Year, new monetary policy?
Inflation is cooling down, and economic indicators suggest slowing U.S. economic activity. That’s made traders optimistic the Federal Reserve could reverse, or at least soften, its rate hiking strategy.
“Bitcoin looks to have recoupled with macro data as investors shrug off the FTX collapse,” James Butterfill, head of research at digital asset management firm CoinShares, told CNBC by email.
“The most important macro data investors are focussing on is the weak services PMI and the trending down of employment and wage data. This coupled with downwards trend in inflation has led to improving confidence, while it comes at a time when valuations for Bitcoin … are close to all time lows. The prospect of looser monetary policy off the back of weaker macro data and low valuations is what has led this rally.”
The Fed lifted borrowing rates seven times in 2022, forcing risky assets such as stocks — and tech stocks, in particular — into a tailspin. In December, the benchmark funds rate increased to 4.25%-4.50%, reaching its highest level since 2007.
Bitcoin has been caught up in the market drama around lending rates, as it is increasingly viewed by investors as a risky asset.
Backers previously talked up bitcoin’s potential as a “hedge” to buy in times of high inflation. But bitcoin failed to achieve that aim in 2022, instead slipping more than 60% as the U.S. and other major economies grappled with higher rates and living costs.
Yuya Hasegawa, crypto market analyst at Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, said in a Jan. 13 note that this was “brewing a hope amongst market participants that the Fed will further slow down on the pace of rate hikes.”
The Fed is likely to keep interest rates high for the time being. However, some market players are hopeful that central banks will start easing the pace of rate rises, or even slash rates. Some economists predict a Fed rate cut could happen as soon as this year.
That’s as the risk of a recession is also playing on central bankers’ minds.
Some two-thirds of chief economists surveyed by the World Economic Forum believe a global recession is likely in 2023, according to research released by the Davos organizer on Monday.
The U.S. dollar has also sagged, with the greenback down 9% against a basket of currencies used by U.S. trade partners in the last three months. The majority of bitcoin trades against USD, making a weaker dollar better for bitcoin.
“We are seeing the dollar put in a top, inflation easing, interest rate hikes slowing down – all pointing to markets getting more risk-on over the next few months,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, told CNBC.
‘Whales’ buying BTC
Larger purchasers of digital coins known as “whales” may be leading the latest rally in bitcoin, according to Kaiko.
The crypto data firm said in a series of tweets Monday that trade sizes had climbed from an average of $700 on Jan. 8 to $1,100 today on the crypto exchange Binance, indicating renewed confidence in the market by whales.
Whales are investors who’ve hoarded large piles of bitcoin. Some are individuals, like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper. Others are entities such as market makers, which act as the middlemen in trades between buyers and sellers.
Skeptics of digital currencies say this makes the market prone to manipulation by a select few investors with large piles of tokens. The wealthiest 97 bitcoin wallet addresses account for 14.15% of the total supply, according to fintech firm River Financial.
In December, Carol Alexander, a professor at the University of Sussex, told CNBC that bitcoin could see a “managed bull market” in 2023 in which bitcoin travels north of $30,000 in the first quarter, and to $50,000 in the second half. Her reasoning was that with trading volumes evaporating, and the level of fear in the market extremely high, whales would then step in to prop up the market.
Bitcoin mining difficulty rising
There are other factors at play, as well.
Several bitcoin miners have been flushed out by the drop in prices. Bitcoin miners, who use power-intensive machines to verify transactions and mint new tokens, have been squeezed by the slump in prices and rising energy costs.
That’s historically a good sign for bitcoin, according to Ayyar.
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 removes much of the remaining selling pressure on bitcoin.
More recently, however, bitcoin’s network “difficulty” has been increasing, meaning more computing power is being deployed to unleash new tokens into circulation.
Mining difficulty reached a record 37.6 trillion on Sunday, according to BTC.com data, meaning that, on average, it would take 37.6 trillion hashes, or attempts, to find a valid bitcoin block and add it to the blockchain.
“Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to create the next block of transactions,” said Marcus Sotiriou, market analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock, told CNBC.
“Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 3.6% before the last update, after a winter storm led some miners to shut down. However, now miners appear to have come back online, with new and more efficient machines.”
2024 ‘halving’
Meanwhile, events further down the crypto calendar could give traders cause for some New Year cheer. It is still a year away, but the so-called bitcoin “halving” is an event that often leads to excitement for crypto investors.
The halving, where bitcoin rewards to miners are cut in half, is viewed by some investors as positive for bitcoin’s price as it squeezes supply.
“There are signs this could be the beginning of a new cycle with Bitcoin, as it typically does around 15-18 months before halving,” Ayyar told CNBC.
The next halving is slated to happen sometime between March and May of 2024.
However, Ayyar cautioned, “At this point, we’re in overbought territory with Bitcoin and hence could definitely see a dip.” Prices could go for a dip if bitcoin closes below $18,000 in the next few days, he added.
Coinbase unveiled Wednesday an “everything app” designed to bring more people into the crypto economy.
The “Base App,” which replaces Coinbase Wallet, will combine wallet, trading and payment functions as well as social media, messaging and support for mini apps – all running on the company’s homegrown public blockchain network Base, which is built on Ethereum.
So-called super apps like WeChat and Alipay – which bundle several different services and functionalities into a single mobile app – have long been viewed as the holy grail of fintech by the industry. They’re central to everyday life in China but haven’t been successfully replicated in the West. Meta Platforms and X have made attempts to realize that vision, integrating payments, messaging and social content, among other things.
For Coinbase, the intent is to expand its reach to a new subset of consumers who aren’t necessarily interested in buying or trading crypto, the company’s core business. Over-reliance on that revenue stream has been a sticking point for the company, and some analysts view the Base blockchain as a way for it to drive utility in crypto beyond speculative trading.
As part of the Base App launch, Coinbase also rolled out two key functions meant to help power it: an identity verification system called Base Account and an express checkout system for payments with the Circle-issued USDC stablecoin, called Base Pay.
Base Pay is a one-click checkout feature for USDC payments across the web, developed with Shopify. At the end of the year, Coinbase plans to bring Base Pay to brick-and-mortar stores with tap-to-pay support. Alex Danco, product manager at Shopify, said at Coinbase’s unveiling event that the function has been turned on for tens of thousands of its merchants this week, and will roll out to every merchant by the end of the year. Shopify will also offer 1% cash back in the U.S. for users who pay with USDC on Base later this year, he said.
Base is often touted for its ability to settle a payment in less than a second for less than a cent, which its fans expect will help the network grow in a way other crypto-based payments efforts haven’t.
Now, Coinbase hopes to tap into an opportunity to settle payments on the Base network that go beyond trading and payments. With the introduction of the everything app, the company is emphasizing the opportunity for a new economic model for content creators in particular – one that might give them more direct and diverse monetization options for their content as well as more control over their identity and data.
Coinbase will fund creator rewards and waive USDC transaction fees within chats in the app as part of the effort to bring more users on chain. It is not expected to generate significant revenue right away.
The new consumer app comes as the crypto industry and Coinbase, in particular, embrace a boom in product launches and rollouts thanks to the pro-crypto policies of the Trump administration and more clearly defined crypto regulations expected from Congress — perhaps as soon as this week. Last month Coinbase launched its first credit card with American Express and Shopify rolled out USDC-powered payments through Coinbase and Stripe.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to members of the media as he arrives at a lodge for the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on July 8, 2025 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
The reach for additional capacity aligns with OpenAI’s desire for more computing power to meet heavy demand after initially relying exclusively on Microsoft for cloud capacity. The two companies’ relations have evolved since then, with Microsoft naming OpenAI as a competitor last year.
Both companies sell AI tools for developers and offer subscriptions to companies.
OpenAI has added Google to a list of suppliers, specifying that ChatGPT and its application programming interface will use the Google Cloud Platform, as well as Microsoft, CoreWeave and Oracle.
The announcement amounts to a win for Google, whose cloud unit is younger and smaller than Amazon‘s and Microsoft‘s. Google also has cloud business with Anthropic, which was established by former OpenAI executives.
The Google infrastructure will run in the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.
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Last year, Oracleannounced that it was partnering with Microsoft and OpenAl “to extend the Microsoft Azure Al platform to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure” to give OpenAI additional computing power. In March, OpenAI committed to a cloud agreement with CoreWeave in a five-year deal worth nearly $12 billion.
Microsoft said in January that it had agreed to move to a model of providing the right of first refusal anytime OpenAI needs more computing resources, rather than being its exclusive vendor across the board. Microsoft continues to hold the exclusive on OpenAI’s programming interfaces.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, said in April that the startup, which draws on Nvidia graphics processing units to power its large language models, was facing capacity constraints.
“if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!” he wrote in an X post at the time.
Reuters reported in June that OpenAI was planning to bring on cloud capacity from Google.
Elon Musk interviews on CNBC from the Tesla Headquarters in Texas.
CNBC
In May, Tesla changed its corporate bylaws in a way that would require investors to own 3% of the stock, today worth about $30 billion, in order to file a derivative lawsuit against the company for breach of fiduciary duties. Authorities in New York State are now asking Tesla to delete the bylaw entirely.
Overseers of the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which owns about 0.1% of Tesla’s shares, submitted a formal proxy proposal and letter to the company on July 11, and shared it with CNBC on Wednesday. They say that Elon Musk’s automaker engaged in a “bait-and-switch” to convince shareholders to approve an incorporation move from Delaware to Texas in June 2024.
Musk made the move after a judge in Delaware voided the $56 billion pay package that the CEO, also the world’s richest person, was granted by Tesla in 2018, the largest compensation plan in public company history. In getting shareholders to approve the change in its state of incorporation, Tesla said that stakeholders’ rights “are substantially equivalent” under the laws of Delaware and Texas.
On May 14, almost a year after Tesla’s move, Texas changed its law to allow corporations in the state to require 3% ownership before being able to carry forth a shareholder derivative suit.
“The very next day, Tesla’s board amended the Company’s bylaws to the maximum allowable 3% ownership threshold, effectively insulating the Company’s directors and officers from accountability to shareholders,” the New York letter says. The letter was signed by Gianna McCarthy, a director of corporate governance with the retirement fund, on behalf of the fund and New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Only three institutions currently own at least 3% of Tesla’s outstanding shares.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York fund overseers wrote that derivative actions are “the last resort for shareholders to enforce their rights” when company directors or officers violate their fiduciary obligations, and called Tesla’s decision on the matter “egregious.”
In an email to CNBC, DiNapoli said Tesla “deceived shareholders” in assuring them that their rights would remain the same in Texas.
“These actions violate basic tenets of good corporate governance and must be reversed,” he wrote.