After a tumultuous 2022, crypto investors are trying to figure out when the next bitcoin bull run could be.
Last week, at a crypto conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland, CNBC spoke to industry insiders who painted a picture of 2023 as year of caution. Bitcoin is expected to trade within a range, be sensitive to the macroeconomic situation such as interest rate rises and continue to be volatile. A new bull run is unlikely in 2023.
However, experts are looking to next year and beyond with optimism.
While bitcoin has gotten a small bump at the start of the year, in line with risk assets like stocks, experts say bitcoin is unlikely to retest its all-time high of just under $69,000 but it may have bottomed.
“I think there’s a little bit more downside, but I don’t think there’s going to be a lot,” Bill Tai, a venture capitalist and crypto veteran told CNBC last week.
“There’s a chance that [bitcoin] kind of has bottomed here,” adding that it could fall as low as $12,000 before jumping back up.
Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at CoinShares, said bitcoin is likely to be rangebound trading at the lower end between $15,000 and $20,000 and on the upper end between $25,000 to $30,000.
She said a lot of the “forced selling” that happened in 2022 as a result of collapses in the market is now over, but there isn’t much new money coming into bitcoin.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of forced selling remaining, which is optimistic,” Demirors told CNBC Friday. “But again, I think the upside is quite limited, because we also don’t see a lot of new inflows coming in.”
Investors are also keeping one eye on the macroeconomic situation. Bitcoin has proved to be closely correlated to risk assets such as stocks, and in particular, the tech-heavy Nasdaq. These assets are affected by changes in interest rates from the Federal Reserve and other macroeconomic moves. Last year, the Fed embarked on an aggressive interest rate hike path to try to tame inflation, which hurt risk assets along with bitcoin.
Industry insiders said a change in the macro situation could help bitcoin.
“There could be catalysts that we’re not aware of, again, the macro situation and the political environment is fairly uncertain, inflation continuing to run quite hot, I think is a new thing. We haven’t seen that, you know, in 30, 40 years,” Demirors said.
“So who knows, as people look to make allocations going into the new year where crypto will fit into that portfolio?”
Timing the next bitcoin bull run
In CNBC’s interviews, several industry participants spoke about historical bitcoin cycles, which happen roughly every four years. Typically, bitcoin will hit an all time high, then have a massive correction. There will be a bad year and then a year of mild recovery.
Then “halving” will happen. This is when miners, who run specialized machines to effectively validate transactions on the bitcoin networks, see their rewards for mining cut in half. Miners get bitcoin as a reward for validating transactions. The halving, which happens every four years, effectively slows down the supply of bitcoin onto the market. There will ever only be 21 million bitcoin in circulation.
Halving usually precedes a bull run. The next halving event takes place in 2024.
Scaramucci called 2023 a “recovery year” for bitcoin and predicted it could trade at $50,000 to $100,000 in two to three years.
“You are taking on risk but you’re also believing in [bitcoin] adoption. So if we get the adoption right, and I believe we will, this could easily be a fifty to one hundred thousand dollar asset over the next two to three years,” Scaramucci said.
Tai meanwhile said the beginning of a bull run is “probably a year away,” saying the after effects of the FTX collapse might continue to be felt for another six to nine months.
Jean-BaptisteGraftieaux, global CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp, told CNBC last week that the next bull run could come over the next two years, citing rising interest from institutional investors.
However, Demirors warned that the events over 2022 “have caused tremendous reputational damage to the industry and to the asset class,” adding that “it will take some time for that confidence to return.”
Mario poses at the “SUPER NINTENDO WORLD” welcome celebration at Universal Studios Hollywood on February 16, 2023 in Universal City, California.
Rodin Eckenroth | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Nintendo on Tuesday cut forecast for Switch sales for its fiscal year ending March 2025 as demand wanes for its ageing console.
The Japanese gaming giant said it now expects to sell 12.5 million units of the Switch over the course of the period. That’s down from a previous forecast of 13.5 million units.
Nintendo has been contending with fading demand for its flagship Switch console, which is now more than seven years old.
Investors are waiting for news surrounding a successor to the Switch, which they hope will re-energize Nintendo’s gaming business. In the past, the company said that the Switch successor will be announced in its current fiscal year, which ends in March 2025.
Nintendo also cut full fiscal year forecasts for sales and operating profit. The company said it now expects sales of 1.28 trillion yen versus a previous forecast of 1.35 trillion yen. The operating profit outlook for the period was slashed from 400 billion yen to 360 billion yen.
Here’s how Nintendo did in its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30 versus LSEG estimates:
Revenue: 276.7 billion Japanese yen ($1.8 billion), compared with 273.34 billion yen expected.
Net profit: 27.7 billion yen, versus 48.06 billion yen expected.
Revenue fell 17% year-on-year. Net profit plunged just over 69% versus the same period last year.
Super Mario, Zelda boost fading
The Switch is Nintendo’s second best-selling console in history, behind the Nintendo DS. Despite the recent fall in sales, Nintendo has prolonged the console’s appeal for an extended period of time since its launch in 2017 by relying on its recognizable characters.
In its last fiscal year, Nintendo managed to reinvigorate sales of the Switch thanks to the the success of the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” and the highly anticipated release of the “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” game, which underscored the appeal of its iconic characters.
But that effect is fading.
On Tuesday, Nintendo noted the boost that the company received in the first half of its last fiscal year, but said “there were no such special factors in the first half of this fiscal year, and with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly year-on-year.”
Sales of the Switch totaled 4.72 units in the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with 6.84 million units in the same period of last year.
In the face of falling sales, Nintendo has tried to license out its intellectual property for use everywhere, from movies to theme parks. A new Super Mario movie is slated for release in 2026.
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.
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images
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.