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Cryptocurrency bulls say bitcoin could surge to more than $100,000 this year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made a pivotal step to approve the first-ever U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

Several crypto investors CNBC spoke with said they see the world’s top cryptocurrency rising in 2024, as the effects of approval of a bitcoin ETF, which would diversify the range of investors that can gain exposure to the cryptocurrency, begin to become more apparent.

Bitcoin’s price hasn’t moved a great deal since the news of the SEC ETF approval came in, which saw the agency give 11 products the green light.

The regulator approved rule changes to allow the creation of the ETFs, but stressed that this move “should in no way signal the Commission’s willingness to approve listing standards for crypto asset securities.”

Prices reacted to that substantially since the SEC’s move Wednesday. Bitcoin’s price was trading at $46,118 apiece Friday, down around 0.4%.

It briefly topped $49,000 to levels not seen since December 2021.

Over time, though, ETFs, coupled with other developments in the crypto world, are expected to drive major upward movements in bitcoin.

What’s a bitcoin ETF?

ETFs allow more retail investors to hold bitcoin indirectly via a share traded on a stock exchange. Investors expect acceptance of the token could begin to become more mainstream with more and more institutions like BlackRock, Fidelity, and others offering these products.

Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, said he’s been increasing his exposure to bitcoin, ethereum, solana and other cryptocurrencies over the past year.

Scaramucci says 2023 was best year for his crypto funds, will buy bitcoin ETF

“I think this is a really big breakthrough for bitcoin as a digital asset, it’s a much broader story for digital property in general,” Scaramucci told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal at the CfC conference in St Moritz.
“I think bitcoin will probably see its all-time high at the end of the year, and is likely to go through its all-time high by the end of the year.”

As for what price Scaramucci expects for bitcoin, the noted investor said he sees the cryptocurrency hitting $100,000 over the next year.

“Could bitcoin be $100,000, which is more or a little bit more than a double over the next year? I do believe that.”

But he made a caveat: “I have been wrong so many times before.”

‘Digital gold’

He compared the token’s ETF approval to the 2004 green lighting of the first spot gold ETF. That development took years to translate into major price gains, but gold eventually skyrocketed in value.

The precious metal is now worth around $1,592.76, up around 556% since 2004 when the SPDR Gold Shares ETF began trading. Crypto bulls expect a similar direction of travel for bitcoin — except it’ll be much quicker this time around.

“We see it as digital gold,” Scaramucci told CNBC. “If you look at the market cap of gold, $13 trillion, there’s no reason why bitcoin couldn’t be 50% or 60% of that market capitalization. So that implies a 10x price over then next decade.”

Many crypto investors have compared bitcoin with gold in the past. But it’s worth noting that, while backers believe they have similar qualities — like a finite supply and immunity to external economic and geopolitical headwinds — bitcoin hasn’t exactly passed the mark as “digital gold.”

Past price performance over the past few years has shown bitcoin trades in correlation with stocks, in particular the tech-heavy Nasdaq, rather than gold.

Bitcoin did massively outperform the Nasdaq in 2023, many other risk-assets, and gold in 2023.

But the cryptocurrency primarily got a boost from speculation that the Federal Reserve would dial back its aggressive interest rate rises, which would be supportive for risk assets like cryptocurrencies.

Vijay Ayyar, vice president of international for Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX, said ETF approvals had been “priced in for some time now.”

Bitcoin’s already gone from about $25,000 to nearly $47,000 since October.

“The next leg up is when we start seeing Bitcoin purchases for the ETF itself,” Ayyar said. That could happen in the next week or two.”

“If sentiment is to be believed, we are potentially looking at an accelerated move to new all-time highs some time this year, given we also have the Bitcoin halving coming up in April this year,” Ayyar added.

2023 was bitcoin’s turnaround year

If bitcoin were to reach those levels, it would mark a turnaround for an industry that’s been in the doldrums since the collapse of FTX, the once $32 billion crypto exchange, in 2022. FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of all seven criminal counts brought against him by federal prosecutors in the U.S. last year.

What is DeFi, and could it upend finance as we know it?

In 2022, bitcoin was already falling sharply, with sky-high inflation and higher interest rates knocking prices of digital currencies across the board.

But FTX’s collapse caused deep distrust in the crypto industry among consumers, business players in the industry and regulators, as one of the largest names in the field was exposed for using assets it held on behalf of customers to make risky trades in other crypto assets and risky crypto-linked derivatives.

The crypto market saw a little over $2 trillion erased from its market capitalization, as investors got cold feet and abandoned digital tokens en masse.

In 2023, however, it was a different story. Bitcoin’s price rose more than doubled for the year, with the token’s price climbing some 152%. Other digital tokens also saw price gains. Ether roughly doubled in price, and XRP, solana, and ada also made strong gains.

“2022 was the worst year for us [but] 2023 happened to be the best year for us. So it’s been the best and worst of times,” Scaramucci said.

Also in 2023, Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges and stepped down as the company’s CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. Many crypto investors see this as a chance to move forward and draw a line under bad behavior in the industry.

Industry executives are calling the start of another bull run. They say that, on top of the approval of a bitcoin ETF, the bitcoin “halving” is a factor that will drive gains in 2024.

The halving, which happens every four years, is an event written in bitcoin’s code. The rewards so-called miners get for mining bitcoin is cut in half. This keeps a cap on the supply of bitcoin, of which there will only ever be 21 million. In previous price cycles, halving preceded a rise in the price of bitcoin.

$250,000 by July?

Tim Draper, founder of Draper Associates, believes the bitcoin halving — along with other factors — could spur the price of bitcoin to hit $250,000 by July.

The billionaire investor said he sees increased bitcoin adoption among mainstream investors and the token’s much-anticipated halving event driving it to a new all-time high.

Bitcoin's price will be above six figures by end of 2024, CoinShares strategy head says

“The halvening, more usage of a currency that is decentralized, trusted, global, [and that] stores value from anywhere,” are all factors that are supportive of bitcoin at the moment, Draper told CNBC.

A major part of Draper’s thesis is that women will drive the adoption of bitcoin in 2024 and beyond.

The investor told CNBC that women “will start to see the need to have at least some bitcoin in case of a run on dollars.”

It’s worth noting Draper, who first invested in bitcoin in 2014, has been wrong about the token’s price trajectory.

He told CNBC in late 2022 that he thought bitcoin would reach $250,000 by June 2023. Draper then said in July 2023 that investors will have to wait “a little longer (maybe 2 years) for bitcoin to hit his $250,000 target.

And despite successful bets on Tesla, Baidu and Skype, Draper’s broader venture investing track record hasn’t been pristine.

The investor once backed Theranos, the controversial blood-testing startup that collapsed after its founder Elizabeth Holmes was accused of defrauding investors. Rather than call her out, Draper doubled down on his support for the entrepreneur, saying he believed critics had “taken down another icon.”

But Draper isn’t the only investor bullish on bitcoin. Tom Lee, managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that bitcoin could hit $150,000 in the next 12 months, and as much as $500,000 in five years.

And Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer of CoinShares, told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal she thinks bitcoin can reach the $100,000 mark — she made that comment before the ETF approval, in response to a question on a hack that led to the SEC falsely posting that it had approved the ETFs late Tuesday.

“I think we are going over six figures by the end of the year,” Demirors said, highlighting two key reasons: a bitcoin ETF approval and the so-called upcoming “halving” event.

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Tesla asks for $243 million verdict to be tossed in fatal Autopilot crash suit

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Tesla asks for 3 million verdict to be tossed in fatal Autopilot crash suit

Dillon Angulo, 33, looks at a roadside memorial sign reading “Drive Safely In Memory Naibel Benavidez” next to the site of a car crash where a Tesla driver using Autopilot killed her, and left him catastrophically injured in 2019, on Aug. 12, 2025, in Key Largo, Florida.

Eva Marie Uzcategui | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Tesla has filed a motion to appeal the verdict in a product liability and wrongful death lawsuit that could cost the company $242.5 million if it is not reduced or overturned.

Elon Musk‘s automaker has asked for the verdict to be tossed or for a new trial in Florida’s Southern district court.

Gibson Dunn, which is representing Tesla in the appeal, argued that compensatory damages in the case should be steeply reduced from $129 million to $69 million at most. That would result in Tesla having to pay a $23 million award if the prior verdict holding the company partially liable for the crash stands up.

The firm also argued that punitive damages should be eliminated or reduced to, at most, three times compensatory damages due to a statutory cap in the state of Florida.

The suit focused on a fatal crash that occurred in 2019 in Key Largo, Florida, in which George McGee was driving his Tesla Model S sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system.

While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way.

Read more CNBC tech news

McGee’s Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle.

The collision killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides and severely injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.

A jury in a Miami federal court earlier this month said that Tesla should compensate the family of the deceased and the injured survivor, paying a $242.5 million portion of a total $329 million in damages that they decided were appropriate.

In their motion to appeal, Tesla’s lawyers argue that the Model S vehicle had no design defects, and that even alleged design defects could not be blamed for the crash, which they say was caused entirely by the driver.

“For as long as drivers remain at the wheel, any safety feature may embolden a few reckless drivers while enhancing safety for countless others,” the appeal states. “Holding Tesla liable for providing drivers with advanced safety features just because a reckless driver overrode them cannot be reconciled with Florida law.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for additional comment.

Brett Schreiber, lead trial counsel for the plaintiffs in this case, said in a statement that he believes the court will uphold the prior verdict, which should not be seen as “an indictment of the autonomous vehicle industry, but of Tesla’s reckless and unsafe development and deployment of its Autopilot system.”  

“The jury heard all the facts and came to the right conclusion that this was a case of shared responsibility but that does not discount the integral role Autopilot and the company’s misrepresentations of its capabilities played in the crash,” he said.

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Ambarella stock rips 20% higher after earnings as AI demand boosts guidance

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Ambarella stock rips 20% higher after earnings as AI demand boosts guidance

Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Ambarella stock roared 20% higher Friday as the chip designer reported better-than-expected second-quarter results and issued strong guidance.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG expectations:

  • Earnings: 15 cents per share adj. vs 5 cents per share expected
  • Revenue: $96 million vs $90 million expected

Ambarella, which is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence, said it expects third-quarter revenue between $100 million and $108 million, beating the LSEG estimate of $91 million.

The company boosted its fiscal year revenue growth outlook to a range of 31-35%, to $379 million at the midpoint, which topped the $350 million expected by LSEG.

“After a multi-year period of significant edge AI R&D investment, our broad product portfolio enable us to address a rising breadth of edge AI applications,” CEO Fermi Wang said in a call with analysts Thursday.

Read more CNBC tech news

Wang singled out strength in “portable video, robotic aerial drones and edge infrastructure.”

Edge computing refers to the direct processing and storing of data at the device level instead of those actions being handled remotely in the cloud at a data center.

Ambarella had a net loss of $20 million, a loss of 47 cents per share in the second quarter. That narrowed from the same quarter a year ago, when the company had a net loss of $35 million, a loss of 85 cents per share.

The company said stock-based compensation and the amortization of acquisition-related costs weighed on earnings.

In June, Bloomberg reported that the company was considering a sale and had held talks with banks. Shares climbed 20% higher on the news.

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Ambarella year-to-date stock chart.

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Marvell stock slumps 16% after data center revenue, forecast disappoint

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Marvell stock slumps 16% after data center revenue, forecast disappoint

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shares of Marvell Technology plunged 15% on Friday after the artificial intelligence chipmaker’s data center revenue fell short of estimates and it gave lackluster guidance for the current quarter.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: 67 cents adjusted vs. 66 cents expected
  • Revenue: $2.01 billion vs. $2.01 billion expected

Revenue jumped 58% from a year ago in the fiscal second quarter that ended Aug. 2, a record for the company that was fueled in part by “strong AI demand” for its custom silicon and electro-optics products, Marvell CEO Matt Murphy said in a statement.

The company had net income of $194.8 million, or 22 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $193.3 million, a loss of 22 cents per share, during the same period last year.

For the fiscal third quarter, the company called for revenue to be $2.06 billion, plus or minus 5%. That was slightly below the $2.11 billion forecast by analysts, according to LSEG.

Read more CNBC tech news

Marvell is known for creating customized chips and hardware, which it offers to cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Sales in its data center segment reached $1.49 billion during the quarter, which fell short of Wall Street’s projected $1.51 billion, according to StreetAccount.

On a conference call with investors, Murphy said the company expects “overall data center revenue in Q3 to be flat sequentially,” which he attributed to nonlinear growth in its custom AI chips business. Fourth-quarter growth is expected to be “substantially stronger” than the third quarter, Murphy said.

He added that “lumpiness” of the guidance is normal as large hyperscalers build out infrastructure.

Still, some investors were hoping for greater clarity around the company’s pipeline of new customers.

“Without this, we find it very difficult underwriting the company’s 20% data center market share target,” Cantor analysts wrote in a Thursday note to clients. “Thus, we wait for more bottoms up granularity before potentially turning more positive.”

Analysts at Bank of America downgraded Marvell’s stock to neutral from buy on Friday and lowered their price target to $78 per share from $90, partly on concerns around the company’s AI growth prospects “in the near/medium term.”

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