Bitcoin tests $50,000 as spot ETF inflows accelerate: 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, Alex Miller, the CEO of Hiro, explains what’s driving bitcoin’s moves higher. Hiro is a company building development tools for Stacks, which aims to bring Ethereum-like capabilities to Bitcoin. Miller also explains how programmability is being brought to the bitcoin ecosystem and the implications for adoption.

Chapters:
00:00 – CNBC Crypto World, Feb 12, 2024
0:24- Bitcoin crosses $49K
1:15- The headlines
4:10 – Alex Miller of Hiro

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Bitcoin tests $50,000 as spot ETF inflows accelerate: CNBC Crypto World

Today Bitcoin crosses the $49,000 level for the first time since spot Bitcoin ETFs got the green light two Executives leave ripples custody business Medico and hero CEO Alex Miller weighs in on what’s behind Bitcoins move higher welcome to cnbc’s crypto world I’m Talia Kaplan Bitcoin kicking off the

Week by jumping to nearly $50,000 as spot ETF inflows accelerate as of noon Eastern the flagship cryptocurrency traded around $49,500 ether climbed nearly 2% to more than $2,500 and salana traded close to $19 now Bitcoin is coming off its best week since the beginning of December ending up nearly 11% as of Friday

Positive sentiment has returned to crypto after big outflows from the grayscale Bitcoin ETF suppressed sentiment over the past month on top of that Bitcoin is catching a bid from the stock market with with the S&P trading above 5,000 now the climb is also pulling crypto stocks higher with micro

Strategy soaring 10% in the past 24 hours and miners marathon on clean spark jumping around 12% as of around noon Eastern okay let’s talk about the top stories Anthony Pompano thinks Bitcoin has become wall Street’s favorite asset the pomp Investments founder told CNBC squawkbox this morning that the flows

Into Bitcoin ETFs prove the digital currency is well-liked among institutional investors I mean look the verdict is in right uh Wall Street doesn’t just like Bitcoin they love Bitcoin if you think of these assets uh there’s been over 5500 ETF launches in history never have we had a fund get to

$3 billion in a in the first 30 days Black Rock and Fidelity both just did it so two for the first time in history and then if you look at bitwise and 21 shares uh Arc they’re both going to hit a billion dollars this year or this week

And so now you have four funds they’re going to hit a billion dollars of inflows but the most interesting part of this is the inflows do these funds are doing $500 million a day of net inflows but there’s only 900 Bitcoin that is actually coming into the daily incoming

Supply and so when you look at that that’s like $4 to $45 million there’s 122x more demand for Bitcoin than what’s being produced on a daily basis now Pompano was also asked what he’s concerned about as a crypt bll and he said that he expects bitcoin’s returns to dampen over time as the

Cryptocurrency becomes more popular and as the type of investor holding it changes next digital currency group saw a 59% rise in revenues last quarter according to the company’s shareholder letter it brought in $ 210 million in Q4 of last year compared to $132 million a year earlier for the full year dcg

Brought in $749 million which is slightly down from $ 813 million in 2022 now notably those numbers exclude the performance of Genesis which filed for bankruptcy at the start of last year on top of that the company is facing an expansion in lawsuit from the New York attorney general who now alleges $3

Billion in fraud from dcg Genesis and Gemini last Ripple’s custody business Medico just saw two major departures the company’s CEO Adrien Tron and chief product officer Peter Deo are both leaving the firm which provides institutions with custody Services customers include City at HSBC now we reached out to Ripple and a spokesperson

Told us quote we appreciate the strong and industry-leading custody business that Adrian and his team built as well as his leadership in integrating the custody team and solution with ripple following the acquisition last year the statement went on to say that custody remains integral to Ripple’s growing business now Ripple acquired Medico back

In May of 2023 for $250 million all right back to markets for our main story I spoke with Alex Miller CEO of hero a company Building Development tools for Stacks which is a layer that aims to bring ethereum like capabilities to bitcoin I got his Insight on what’s behind the recent

Crypto rally he also explains how programmability is being brought to the Bitcoin ecosystem and the implications for adoption Bitcoin broke through $49,000 this morning and as of 11:30 was moving closer to $50,000 now the last time Bitcoin crossed the $449,000 level was on January 10th when the SEC gave the green

Light for the first ever spot Bitcoin ETFs to trade in the US so what do you think is driving prices right now now do you think ETF inflows are playing into bitcoin’s moves higher yeah I think if we’re talking literally today I think if we’ve been tracking the BTC inflows over

The last couple weeks you know we saw what kind of the typical thing was there was a lot of pent up excitement about the ETF speculation that drove that initial Spike uh it drops off because people you know see the actual news um but the reality of it is we’re seeing

Hundred to $200 million do a day in net new inflows into uh these ETFs which is you know really good and if you just calculate that out over a year um especially when you look at how little you know probably only 10% of Bitcoin is even available on exchanges and liquid

The rest is all in Cold Storage uh and been locked up by folks you know there there’s not a lot of available Bitcoin that’s actually out there and I think those really consistent ongoing flows uh are creating a lot of upward price pressure do you expect the upward

Movement to continue in months ahead do you think institutional demand driven by Bitcoin ETFs could bring new highs this year absolutely so I think I think there’s multiple uh things that are putting upward price pressure on bitcoin right now number one is like the actual ETF flows that we’re seeing today number

Two is there’s a lot of optimism and excitement just in the Bitcoin industry right you’ve got the Bitcoin having coming up in April where the block reward goes down but his tradition created some degree of upward price pressure and and then most importantly there’s a ton of technical Innovation

Going on on the Bitcoin chain right and so one thing you’re seeing is that there’s a lot of attention um and a lot of development work that’s being moved back from other chains like say ethereum or salana back into the original chain into the Bitcoin chain and so this isn’t

Just like a oh there’s some excitement going on and so like it’s going to go up for a bit there’s really deep fundamental technical um and core reasons that you’re getting these price pressures um and excitement for the chain from different places and so yeah I think over the course of the entire

Year um if not longer you’re going to see these this continued upward pressure and movement I think so you mentioned the upcoming having that’s set to take place in April before the last having in 2020 the price of Bitcoin increased by 19% in the same day of year earlier so

Do you think 2024’s events will have a similar impact on price and what are the implications of the key technical events on the industry as a whole the important thing is that again if you go back and you look at it there are multiple things that are creating these general price

Upward price pressures so you know exactly where the price goes between now and April and in the month after April and when it goes up when it goes down I don’t think anyone has any idea but what I do think is that if you just look at

Everything that’s going on if you look at the larger macroeconomic situations that are happening right now um 2024 I think is definitely going you know compared to especially something like 2023 and the depths of the bare Market that we saw there uh 2024 is definitely a much more optimistic time uh for

Everyone involved here and you know I definitely like have a obviously there’s a not insubstantial portion of my personal portfolio uh that’s allocated to bitcoin I’m pretty bullish about what we’re going to see from it this year now at hero you work with the Bitcoin ecosystem and I heard you say

Recently that you’re excited about crypto because of the degree of innovation that’s continuing to happen What are some of the innovations that you’re excited about yeah so at hero we build Bitcoin developer tools we’ve been saying for a number of years uh that the biggest contrarian bet in crypto is

Building on top of Bitcoin and one of the things been great about the last year for us is that recognition has really started to spread to others especially uh kind of driven by the launch of ordinals last year which folks may have heard about um and so as I

Mentioned what you’re seeing is you’re seeing a lot of developers who maybe were out building an ethereum land coming back and building on bitcoin and and the thing that’s really happened is that people have unlocked new ways right the big difference the whole reason ethereum was launched in the first place

Was to add this compute this programmability that didn’t exist on bitcoin and thanks to bitcoin layers like Stacks where we do a lot of our building or lightning and bit VM and some of these other Technologies uh all of that programmability the smart contracts and things that you’re used to

Seeing in other crypto ecosystems you can now come back and build all of those same types of applications and capabilities on top of Bitcoin which I think you know as we know Bitcoin is the oldest it’s the most trusted it’s the largest asset value um you know the view

That I really have here is like if you’re going to build something that you really want to be around for 20 30 40 50 years don’t you want to do it on top of the thing that is really trusted and you know whether you love or hate Bitcoin or

What your feelings on it are overall um I think it’s really hard to argue that Bitcoin hasn’t proven that it’s established and going to be around for a very long time and so watching people come back and build defi applications identity applications all of these

Things um that kind of tear down a lot of the traditional International borders that were there and give equal access um to some of these future legal and financial markets that exist across the world right now uh the power and potential of that for Bitcoin and how

It’s going to provide um economic access around the world is really powerful in my mind I also recently heard you say that the biggest promise of crypto is how it gives people around the world equal access to markets can you elaborate on that and explain how building out programmable use cases can

Accelerate adoption absolutely so yeah crypto has already shown its ability to do this one of the biggest applications of crypto right now is stable coins right because it gives you a single uh currency usually the dollar here uh that can be used regardless of who has access

To what bank account where and how right just almost instantaneous very cheap Global transfers uh that’s really really powerful in a globalized world and there’s a lot of people in a lot of parts of the world that don’t have access to the same markets right now and

You know for me personally I’m a I’m a big fan of socioeconomic Mobility um I think capitalism and things like that are are the most powerful forces that we’ve had for eliminating um and uplifting out of poverty in the last uh 100 years and the ability to lower the

Barrier for participation for people even more um is a huge part and that’s that’s the promise of crypto if you have a computer and an internet connection it now doesn’t matter where in the world you are you can get access uh to these markets and we’ve seen that from whether it’s South America

Southeast Asia Africa even parts of Eastern Europe or more rural parts of the US or Western Europe um it gives everyone the same ability uh to access and participate in these system as everyone else and that really just helps unlock a lot of potential for folks who maybe have not traditionally had the

Same access that you know say you or I have okay that’s all for crypto world today but we’ll be back again tomorrow and we’ll see you then