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A bitcoin is on a screen showing the Bitcoin-U.S. dollar exchange rate.

Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez | picture alliance | Getty Images

Bitcoin fell for a second day to start the new month and quarter, amid rising Treasury yields and strength in the U.S. dollar.

The flagship cryptocurrency fell more than 6% on Tuesday to $65,150.00, bringing its two-day loss to about 7%, according to Coin Metrics. On Monday morning, it was trading at about $70,000, before data came out showing growth in the manufacturing sector for the first time since September 2022 and investor bets on June rate cuts began to cool. Bitcoin is now off its all-time high, reached on March 14, by about 11%.

Ether went down with it, losing 4.5% to trade at $3,319.08.

Meanwhile, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit its highest level of the year and the dollar, which has an inverse relationship with bitcoin, reached its highest level in almost five months.

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Bitcoin (BTC) drops to start April

“Bitcoin doesn’t need much excuse to go through a period of correction after such an explosive performance in Q1,” said Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group. “Having said that, U.S. economic data has been stronger of late, all while inflation continues to be a concern. This has resulted in a repricing of Fed expectations, translating to broad based U.S. dollar demand on the more attractive U.S. dollar yield differentials.”

Bitcoin’s move may have been exacerbated by a large bitcoin holder, or “whale,” who transferred more than 4,000 bitcoin to the Bitfinex exchange late Monday night. Data from CryptoQuant shows a spike in that exchange’s reserves, which typically signals a boost in selling activity, that coincides with the sudden drop in bitcoin price late Monday night.

Stocks tied to the performance of bitcoin were dragged down. Crypto exchange Coinbase fell 4%, while software provider MicroStrategy, which largely trade as a proxy for the price of bitcoin, lost nearly 7%. The largest mining stocks, Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms, lost 7% and 6%, respectively. CleanSpark, one of the best-performing miners this year, slid 6%.

April could be tumultuous for crypto and related stocks – particularly mining stocks. Investors are looking toward the bitcoin halving – which will slash the reward, and therefore revenue, of bitcoin miners – in the second half of the month. The event could hurt the performance of miners but historically has set bitcoin up for rallies of 300% or more in the months that follow.

Bitcoin is still up 53% for 2024.

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Former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick leaves Meta board after eight-month stint

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Former Trump advisor Dina Powell McCormick leaves Meta board after eight-month stint

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Dina Powell McCormick, who was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration, has resigned from Meta’s board of directors.

Powell McCormick, who previously spent 16 years working at Goldman Sachs, notified Meta of her resignation on Friday, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing did not disclose why McCormick was stepping down from Meta’s board, but said her resignation was effective immediately.

Meta does not plan on replacing her board role, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Powell McCormick is considering a potential strategic advisory role with Meta, but nothing has been decided, the person said.

Powell McCormick joined Meta’s board in April along with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the two executives “bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board.”

Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to President Trump during his first stint in office and was also an assistant secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s administration.

She is married to Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa, who took office in January.

Powell McCormick is the vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners, which formed in 2023 after the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD.

With her departure, Meta now has 14 board members, including UFC CEO Dana White, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and former Enron executive John Arnold.

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Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package must be restored as court rules cancellation was too extreme

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Musk's  billion Tesla pay package must be restored as court rules cancellation was too extreme

Elon Musk's 2018 Tesla pay package must be restored, Delaware Supreme Court rules

Elon Musk‘s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, worth some $56 billion when it vested, must be restored, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Friday.

“We reverse the Court of Chancery’s rescission remedy and award $1 in nominal damages,” the judges wrote in their opinion.

In the decision, the Delaware Supreme Court judges said a lower court’s decision to cancel Musk’s 2018 pay plan was too extreme a remedy and that the lower court did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation ought to be.

The decision on the appeal in this case, known as Tornetta v. Musk, likely ends the yearslong fight over Musk’s record-setting compensation.

Musk’s net worth is currently estimated at around $679.4 billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List.

Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School, told CNBC that while the Friday opinion may restore the 2018 pay plan for Musk, it leaves the rest of the lower court’s decision unaddressed and intact.

“The court had previously decided that Musk was a controlling shareholder of Tesla and that the Tesla board and he arranged an unfair pay plan for him,” she said. “None of that was reversed in this decision.”

“We are proud to have participated in the historic verdict below, calling to account the Tesla board and its largest stockholder for their breaches of fiduciary duty,” lawyers representing plaintiff Richard J. Tornetta said in an e-mailed statement.

Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Delaware Supreme Court issued the order per curiam with no single judge taking credit for writing the opinion and no dissent noted.

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Musk’s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, comprised of 12 milestone-based tranches of stock, was unprecedented at the time it was proposed. After it was granted, the pay plan made Musk the wealthiest individual in the world.

Tesla shareholder Tornetta sued Tesla, filing a derivative action in 2018, accusing Musk and the company’s board of a breach of their fiduciary duties.

Delaware’s business-specialized Court of Chancery decided in January 2024 that the pay plan was improperly granted and ordered it to be rescinded.

In her decision, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick also found that Musk “controlled Tesla,” and that the process leading to the board’s approval of his 2018 pay plan was “deeply flawed.”

Among other things, she found the Tesla board did not disclose all the material information they should have to investors before asking them to vote on and approve the plan.

After the earlier Tornetta ruling, Musk moved Tesla’s site of incorporation out of Delaware, bashed McCormick by name in posts on his social network X, formerly Twitter, where he has tens of millions of followers, and called for other entrepreneurs to reincorporate outside of the state.

Tesla also attempted to “ratify” the 2018 CEO pay plan by holding a second vote with shareholders in 2024.

In November, Tesla shareholders voted to approve an even larger CEO compensation plan for Musk.

The 2025 pay plan consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted to the CEO if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade and is worth about $1 trillion in total. The new plan could also increase Musk’s voting power over the company from around 13% today to around 25%.

Shareholders had also approved a plan to replace Musk’s 2018 CEO pay if the Tornetta decision was upheld on appeal. That plan is now nullified.

As CNBC previously reported, a law firm that currently represents Tesla in this appeal penned a bill to overhaul corporate law in Delaware earlier this year. The bill was passed by the Delaware legislature in March, and if it had applied retroactively, it could have affected the outcome of this case.

Read the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling here.

Ron & Michael Baron on Elon Musk, Tesla and the next big, currently-overlooked opportunities in the market

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Cramer says Boeing is a buy here — plus, Wells Fargo and bank stocks keep rolling

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Cramer says Boeing is a buy here — plus, Wells Fargo and bank stocks keep rolling

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