Bitcoin tumbles back to $60,000 to start the week
A photo illustration depicting the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto via Getty Images
Bitcoin continued its descent to $60,000 on Monday.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last down by more than 4% at $61,211.00, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it fell to $60,666.30, its lowest level in more than a month. In the past week, it’s fallen more than 8%.
Digital asset investment products notched a second consecutive week of outflows, according to CoinShares. Last week, crypto investment products saw their lowest trading volumes globally since the U.S. bitcoin ETFs launched in January.
“We have now seen $1.2 billion of outflows from crypto ETFs over the last two weeks which all began after the FOMC meeting. Our belief is that continued pessimism over the number of rate cuts is weighing on sentiment for crypto,” James Butterfill, head of research at the crypto-focused asset manager, told CNBC.
“The Fed have indicated they need to see further evidence of inflation falling before they become more dovish, so any macro say that highlights inflation continues to fall will likely support prices, and conversely, an inflationary date will weigh on prices,” he added.
Eleanor Gaywood, head of strategy at Coincover, said there are often market jitters ahead of the personal consumption expenditure index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, which is due this Friday. She said signs of a rate cut in September could ease investor nerves and steady bitcoin’s price.
Bitcoin has been steadily descending since the beginning of June
Additionally, bitcoin saw a jump in long liquidations, forcing traders to sell their assets at market price to settle their debts. In the past 24 hours, $97.83 million in long bitcoin liquidations have occurred across centralized exchanges, according to CoinGlass.
Cryptocurrencies broadly tumbled with bitcoin. Ether lost 4%, while the token tied to smart contracts platform Solana fell 3%, payments token XRP slipped 1%, and meme token dogecoin dropped nearly 5%.
In equities, Coinbase retreated by nearly 4%, and MicroStrategy declined more than 5%. Miners were lower across the board.
Last week, CryptoQuant suggested bitcoin could slide back to $60,000, after breaking below the key support of $65,800, due to a lack of bullish momentum. The company’s on-chain data shows traders have been reducing their holdings since bitcoin touched $70,000 in late May and have yet to start buying again.
For the month, bitcoin is down nearly 10%. At the start of June, it briefly touched the $71,000 level but has been on a steady decline since. It has been largely stuck in a narrow range between $60,000 and $70,000 since the middle of March when it reached its all-time high of $73,797.68.
Investors and analysts still expect the cryptocurrency to notch another record this year. Ryan Rasmussen, an analyst at Bitwise Asset Management, called the price action “bullishly choppy.”
“There’s a market-changing tailwind behind crypto that isn’t reflected in the choppy price action on a week-to-week basis,” he said, pointing out bitcoin’s 43% year-to-date gain, progress on ether ETFs and crypto’s political tides shifting in its favor.
“From a long-term investment thesis, bitcoin has rarely been more attractive than it is right now.”
Amazon said Tuesday it received regulatory approval to begin flying a smaller, quieter version of its delivery drone, the latest step in its long-running efforts to get the futuristic program off the ground.
The company unveiled the new drone, called the MK30, in November 2022. It said then that the MK30, in addition to the other changes, would fly through light rain and have twice the range of earlier models.
Amazon said the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval includes permission to fly the MK30 over longer distances and beyond the visual line of sight of pilots. The agency granted a similar waiver for Amazon’s Prime Air program in May, though that was limited to flights in College Station, Texas, one of the cities where it has been conducting tests.
Alongside the FAA approval, Matt McCardle, head of regulatory affairs for Prime Air, said the company is starting to make drone deliveries Tuesday near Phoenix, Arizona. In April, Amazon said it planned to spin up drone operations in Tolleson, a city west of Phoenix, after it shut down an earlier test site in Lockeford, California. The company will dispatch the drones near one of its warehouses in Tolleson as it looks to integrate Prime Air more closely into its existing logistics network and further speed up deliveries.
An FAA spokesperson said the agency granted Amazon permission to conduct beyond visual line of sight deliveries in Tolleson on Oct. 31.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first unveiled plans for the ambitious service more than a decade ago, remarking at the time that the program could be up and running within five years. Despite Amazon investing billions of dollars into the program, progress has been slow. Prime Air encountered regulatory hurdles, missed deadlines and had layoffs last year, coinciding with widespread cost-cutting efforts by CEO Andy Jassy. The program also lost some key executives, including its primary liaison with the FAA and its founding leader. Amazon hired former Boeing executive David Carbon to run the operation.
It’s also encountered pushback from some residents in the cities where it’s trialing drone deliveries. Residents in College Station complained about the noise levels enough that it prompted the city’s mayor to mention the concerns in a letter to the FAA, CNBC previously reported. In response, Amazon executives told residents the company would identify a new drone delivery launch site by October 2025.
Amazon isn’t the only company trying to crack delivery by drone. It’s competing with Wing, owned by Google parent Alphabet, UPS, Walmart and a host of startups including Zipline and Matternet.
WATCH: How Amazon’s drone delivery program stacks up to competitors
Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp appears on a Bloomberg television interview during the FoundryCon event in Palo Alto, California, on March 7, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Palantir shares jumped 23% on Tuesday and headed for a record close after the data analytics software maker reported robust third-quarter results and issued uplifting revenue guidance.
The stock reached a high of $51.19, above the prior record of $45.14 reached last week. If the gain holds, it will mark the stock’s biggest jump since Feb. 6, when shares popped 30%.
Revenue climbed 30% to $726 million from a year earlier, topping the $701 million average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 10 cents beat the 9-cent average estimate.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank said in a report that “the beat was driven by better-than-anticipated US Government performance,” boosted by demand for artificial intelligence tools.
“Palantir is among a handful of infrastructure software companies that have started to meaningfully monetize generative AI, where its competitive positioning benefits from longtime investment and deep expertise in complex data integration, and particularly its reputation for data security built into its ontology,” the analysts wrote.
Net income of $143.5 million, or 6 cents per share, was up from $71.5 million, or 3 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago. The company called for fourth-quarter revenue of $767 million to $771 million. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had been looking for $741.4 million.
Palantir is targeting more than $687 million in U.S. commercial revenue for the year, implying about 24% of the total.
Bank of America bumped its price target from $50 to $55 and maintained its buy rating.
“We continue to view the adoption of PLTR’s AI-enabled products and reach in its early days, as more companies realize the time, resource, and cost savings possible,” Bank of America analysts wrote in a note to investors. “In our view, Palantir’s moat as the differentiated agnostic AI-enabler is only growing with each new use-case carrying compounding unit economics.”
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports7 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway