Gemini says crypto lender Genesis moves to sell Grayscale Bitcoin Trust assets: CNBC Crypto World

CNBC Crypto World features the latest news and daily trading updates from the digital currency markets and provides viewers with a look at what’s ahead with high-profile interviews, explainers, and unique stories from the ever-changing crypto industry. On today’s show, Trevor Filter, the co-founder of Flexa, breaks down what’s driving prices right now amid a historically strong month for the crypto market.

00:00 – CNBC Crypto World, Feb 5, 2024
0:26 – Crypto drops
0:45- The headlines
3:33- Trevor Filter of Flexa

For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi

» Subscribe to CNBC TV: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBCtelevision
» Subscribe to CNBC: https://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC

Turn to CNBC TV for the latest stock market news and analysis. From market futures to live price updates CNBC is the leader in business news worldwide.

Connect with CNBC News Online
Get the latest news: http://www.cnbc.com/
Follow CNBC on LinkedIn: https://cnb.cx/LinkedInCNBC
Follow CNBC News on Facebook: https://cnb.cx/LikeCNBC
Follow CNBC News on Twitter: https://cnb.cx/FollowCNBC
Follow CNBC News on Instagram: https://cnb.cx/InstagramCNBC

https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-cred…

#CNBC
#CNBCTV

Gemini says crypto lender Genesis moves to sell Grayscale Bitcoin Trust assets: CNBC Crypto World

Today the former CFO of terraform Labs who was arrested in Montenegro with dquan is extradited to South Korea Gemini says crypto lender Genesis is moving forward to authorize the sale of trust assets and Trevor filter of flexa breaks down what’s driving crypto prices right now amid a historically strong month for the crypto

Market welcome to cnbc’s crypto world I’m Jordan Smith crypto prices in the red to kick off the week as of new Eastern Bitcoin was down half a percent trading around $$ 42,68419 bucks all right let’s talk about the top stories crypto Market liquidity is getting a boost from rising stablecoin

Market cap but JP Morgan thinks challenges lie ahead between their May 2022 Peak and their October 2023 low of 122 billion stable coins expanded by $60 billion the top came just before the collapse of the teranet Network which created the contagion that spread to other stable coins and crypto lenders

The bank warned that stable coins haven’t fully recovered and could face regulatory challenges this year tether the biggest and most popular stable coin has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency about the backing of the coin a JP Morgan analyst wrote in a note that quote tether is most at risk given

Its lack of Regulatory Compliance and transparency and that the bank views the increasing concentration in tether over the past year as a negative for the stable coin universe and the crypto ecosystem more broadly on the flip side the analyst said usdc whose issuer confidentially filed for an IPO last

Month could benefit from a coming Crackdown adding that usdc appears to be looking to expand across jurisdictions and be proactively preparing for the upcoming stable coin regulations next the former Chief Financial Officer of terraform Labs has been extradited to South Korea in a post on X today the ad

Ministry of justice of Montenegro said the region handed over Han Chang Jun to authorities in his home country the post featured a photograph showing the former CFO in handcuffs at an airport next to two masked policemen the former executive was arrested in Montenegro with Tera co-founder dwan in March of

2023 while trying to travel with falsified documents they were later sentenced to four months in prison by a Montenegro Court both South Korea and the US have asked for dwan to be transferred to their jurisdictions to face criminal charges for the collapse of terraform labs in 20122 last month we

Told you a federal judge delayed the sec’s trial against oan and terraform lab to allow for him to be extradited to the US so he could attend last Gemini says that Crypt lender Genesis has filed a motion in US Bankruptcy Court authorizing a sale of trust assets the

Crypto exchange said that the motion filed by Genesis late on Friday seeks Authority for Gemini to monetize the initial collateral nearly 31 million shares of the grayscale Bitcoin trust Genesis has requested an expedited hearing on the motion for Thursday last week Genesis settled an SEC lawsuit over

Its part in the Gemini earned lending program the crypto lender is moving forward with a liquidation plan that aims to repay customers in cash or crypto depending on the type of currency they had deposited in earn that program was halted during the crypto market crash in November 2023 and its failure

Sparked litigation between Gemini Genesis and its parent company digital currency group all right back to crypto markets for our main story we are now in a historically strong month for the crypto market and I spoke with Trevor filter the co-founder of flexa about what’s driving prices right now and what we can

Expect for Bitcoin as the next having event approaches all right Trevor bitcoin’s starting out this year pretty strong it’s up about 20% year to date what do you make of the strong performance of the cryptocurrency so far this year and how much of that do you attribute solely

To the ETFs that got launched in January or are there other things driving the market right now that investors should know about as well great question so I think there are a lot of interesting things happening in Bitcoin right now a lot of uh General Trends and and then

Some more specific or time- sensitive things I don’t know that I would trace it entirely to the ETFs I think there are some underlying aspects at play here uh some of which we see directly in the payments for processing in flexa some of which is more external those three

Things I think that that I would consider most Salient are one last Wednesday the FED announced that they would be holding interest rates and this usually affects Bitcoin because lower interest rates enable more borrowing more borrowing means people can buy things like Bitcoin so keeping the

Status quo is usually a little bit of a negative signal in my experience but I don’t know that the markets anticipated that and so you can see a small runup taking place about a week before last Wednesday and then a brief dip on Wednesday when the rate holds were

Announced and so the question in my mind is what is the what are the factors where where’s that recovery coming from that we’ve continued to see a climb over the weekend and then continuing into today and I think that really comes down to two big things one is that the

Bitcoin having is exactly 11 weeks away today and that’s when the Bitcoin block reward that encourages miners to process bit Bitcoin transactions is cut in half and that usually leads to more activity on bitcoin because that uh reduced block reward is causing miners to uh kind of

Sit back and and balance out um their books with whatever activity they’re seeing inside of the transactions so there’s there’s usually something of a preh having rally that happens leading up to the having event which again is just 11 weeks away some people say this is probably already priced in I think

That’s an unsafe assumption lastly and definitely most interesting to me is we’re finally seeing a lot of new use cases take off on bitcoin and that is driving an increase in transaction fees so over the last five days or so since the FED announced they’d be holding interest rates we’ve seen transaction

Fees on bitcoin go up by 4X I think a lot of that can be attributed to inscriptions and vc20 tokens um I think that’s probably the major use case that’s driving Bitcoin transaction fees right now basically these nfts and collectibles that can be stored natively on the Bitcoin blockchain but in

Addition to that we’re seeing adoption of the lightning Network growing we’ve seen more than 2x capacity on the lightning network over the last year and then here at flexa of course we’re seeing something of a surgeon Bitcoin payments ethereum is actually flat for the year salana the Matic token xrp are

All down um is all the interest taken up by Bitcoin right now or do you expect these tokens to have their own moments this year as sort of the news of the ETFs and and we get past the having all of that stuff gets in the rear view

Miror it’s a good question so in my experience I’ve seen the altcoins follow Bitcoin at least when the markets are concerned but I think a lot of the activity is definitely still there I’ve seen some really exciting stuff coming out from Solana from ethereum all these cross chain Bridges and and ways of

Moving money between chains obviously coinbase base Network these are all major major infrastructural developments that have taken place over the last year and I haven’t seen the market necessarily react to them although soul and and salana maybe is a little bit of the exception to the rule uh I think

That we’re we’re overdue but it’s going to take some some movement with respect to bitcoin first and so there are these conflicting signals that are happening right now there’s buy and sell pressure that are keeping things in this status quo as soon as there’s a good reason to

Break out of that that’s when things are really going to start to get interesting yeah let let’s also talk about trading volume and just sheer investor interest right now your company flexa is a digital payments platform so I’m sure you’re closely watching volumes across the crypto Market interest in crypto um

Volumes have bounced back from the lows of 2023 but they’re still way off from the peak in 2021 what’s your take on the sheer number of people using crypto right now and whether that trend is looking up for 2024 definitely looking up we are absolutely noticing signs of more and

More activity and engagement I I noted that we’ve seen payments up three or fourx that’s pretty consistent pretty consistent across chains actually uh in addition to what we’re seeing on bitcoin and that really started to take off in November December of last year we usually look at that as a Telltale sign

That people are interested in showing their friends they can spend with Bitcoin they’re interested in showing their friends uh that these use cases that people have been complaining about not existing in crypto for a long time actually do exist and so I would say we’re we’re very very close to something

Big happening here and I do think it’s going to be driven by a new type of use case specifically something like payments or another wave of interest in nfts are you seeing any signs that maybe the new type of investor the new type of Interest that’s coming into the market

Is is maybe more diligent or or more focused on actual use use cases compared to the last bull cycle what does the makeup of the actual movement you’re seeing in crypto right now from a user standpoint I would say that it’s becoming less about investing and speculation and more about doing and and

Actually having fun on chain there are a lot of new ways of minting very very cheap nft Collectibles that can later be used to unlock rewards or certain membership levels and different types of online platforms that ultimately to me is what we see or what we need to see in

Order to achieve some kind of mainstream adoption I always have my eyes on gen Z gen Alpha because I really believe that crypto is a technology that can enable better flows of funds in almost any possible use case so if we’re thinking about money transfer overseas or we’re

Thinking about being able to earn points in an app and then spend them in stores that’s where crypto I think has a real opportunity to shine and we are seeing a shift in the user away from perhaps just this speculative investor being 95% of volume toward people who are starting to

Use these for other types of more leisurely activities or or perhaps just a part of their everyday lives all right that’s all for crypto world today we’ll be back again tomorrow and we’ll see you then