Ether trades above $2,800 for the first time since May 2022: CNBC Crypto World

Ether trades above $2,800 for the first time since May 2022: 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, Robert Le, a crypto analyst with PitchBook, breaks down the findings of the data firm’s Q4 crypto report, which revealed a slight uptick in venture capital funding, marking a modest recovery after six quarters of decline.

Chapters:
00:00 – CNBC Crypto World, Feb 15, 2024
0:24- Ether crosses $2,800
1:18- The headlines
4:27- PitchBook’s Robert Le

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

#CNBC
#CNBCTV

Ether trades above $2,800 for the first time since May 2022: CNBC Crypto World

Today Bitcoin holds its ground above the $52,000 level Genesis gets Court approval to sell more than $1 billion in grayscale crypto trust shares and pitchbooks Robert lay breaks down the company’s Q4 crypto report which saw a surprising turnaround in VC interest welcome to cnbc’s crypto world

I’m Talia Kaplan Bitcoin is in the green again trading above the $52,000 mark after Crossing that level for the first time in 2 years Yesterday by noon Eastern it had gained another 1 and a qu% ether also gaining ground Rising more than 3 and a/ qu% and trading above

$2,800 for the first time since May of 2022 salana meanwhile fell by about 1% to $114 now going back to bitcoin for just a second yesterday the value of all the Bitcoin in circulation or market cap Rose above $1 trillion for the first first time since late 2021 as growing

Success of spot Bitcoin ETFs turned investor sentiment more positive that’s according to coin market cap data now the price rise continues a rally that began in January last year this year alone Bitcoin is up more than 22% okay let’s talk about the top stories Genesis got the green light to

Sell about $1.6 billion in greats scale crypto trust shares to repay creditors that’s according to Reuters which reported that yesterday a bankruptcy judge permitted The Firm to monetize its shares of grayscale Bitcoin trust grayscale ethereum trust and grayscale ethereum classic trust reuter’s report to the judge overruled an objection from

Genesis parent company digital currency Group which had warned that the sale might be premature if Genesis doesn’t win Court approval of its overall bankruptcy plan Reuters added that Genesis holds about 35 million shares in the Bitcoin trust worth nearly $1.4 billion an ethereum trust sh shares worth more than $200 million Genesis has

Been moving ahead with a liquidation plan that would repay customers in cash or crypto earlier this month the crypto lender reached settlements with the SEC and the New York attorney general’s office in their separate settlements both agencies said Genesis should prioritize customer repayments next in a CNBC exclusive Robin Hood CEO Vlad tenf

Discussed the trading platform’s crypto business yesterday we told you Robin Hood raked in $43 million in crypto revenue and monthly active users expand after reporting fourth quarter earnings yesterday Robin Hood got a boost but that retreated by midday today speaking with cnbc’s Kate Rooney ten of said that Robin Hood’s crypto business is

Important and that Robin Hood is a major player in the crypto Market adding that its crypto component accounts for about 10% of the firm’s overall Revenue mix what we focus on is there’s periods of price appreciation in crypto bull runs and kind of winters and in the bull runs

Uh you tend to see a lot of retail engagement and excitement and and volumes can tend to increase quite dramatically um but in other periods we’ve continued to invest we’re continuing to add functionality we’re expanding in the EU as well and and there we’ve been tracking our market

Share and if if our market share continues to increase during the winters then I think that positions the company very well to capture the line and share of the activity during the bull runs another company we’re following is coinbase the crypto exchange is set to report earnings after the Bell today and

We’ll bring you the highlights in tomorrow show last CH analysis released its annual report on crypto money laundering today revealing that elicit crypto activity declined significantly in 2023 two reasons why lower trading volume and sophisticated crypto criminals like the North Korean hacking group Lazarus are developing new tactics

In an effort to evade detection the blockchain analytics firm said that more than 22 billion dollar was laundered using crypto last year that’s a drop from $ 31.5 billion doar in 2022 now the firm wrote that the changes in money laundering strategy they’ve seen from crypto criminals serve as an important

Reminder that the most sophisticated elicit actors are always adapting their money laundering strategy and exploiting new kinds of crypto Services they encouraged law enforcement and compliance teams to study these new methods and become familiar with the onchain patterns associated with them all right sticking with crypto reports

For our main story data firm pitch books out with its crypto report for the last quarter of 2023 showing a surprising turnaround for VC funding in the industry crypto world’s Jordan Smith spoke with Robert lay a crypto Analyst at the firm to have him break down the

Findings and what projects he expects to get the most attention in 2024 so pitchbook is out with its latest quarterly crypto report and in this time you’re looking at Q4 of 2023 and you’re you’re capping off a real year of recovery for the crypto Market let let’s

Start with with this data on VC funding in the industry because it is a bright spot pitchbook found that funding actually ticked up last quarter after six quarters of declines let’s talk about that turnaround and where you think that’s coming from especially as crypto is competing for funding dollars

With things like AI right now yeah so definitely we saw um like you mentioned Jordan there’s a positive increase in quarter over quarter investments in Q4 it’s the first uh time we’ve seen an increase in uh since the beginning of 2022 $1.9 billion was invested across

326 deals um you know the sentiment on the ground was that it has kind of turned last summer and and for us you know sentiment is really a leading indicator so we really didn’t see that capture into the data until towards the end of last year but you know we speak

To investors and and Founders and you know investors who are more open to speaking to projects and and writing checks and Founders for having an easier time um um getting meetings with investors and being able to connect and talk to investors so we we really saw

That capture in the data and ke for where there’s an uptick um the little caveat is that the deal count is still down so even though the total capital investment was up deal count was down so what this means is that we’re seeing overall check sizes are larger for the

Quarter which means you’re starting to see a concentration of capital within really like the strongest projects out there so you know in the last full Market run we anyone with a white paper or some Fork project was able to raise Capital that’s just not going to happen

Anymore in in in this new cycle and so you’re really seeing the ones that building um um core infrastructure or applications are getting real traction those are the ones are just seeing Investments and you see that happen in the quarter now you mentioned in the report that a lot of those Investments

Are focused on centralized Finance why has centralized market makers become such a focus for crypto last year and is the infrastructure Focus that we’re seeing really a symptom of the industry maturing um or is this more about institutions becoming more and more important to the ecosystem I think it’s a combination of

Both um I think the convergence right now at the right time is that the infrastructures down a mature when we talk about infrastructures everywhere from you know the underlying layer one blockchains to the scaling solutions to interoperability layers um to centralized market makers which we written in the report these are all key

Components of building a really um fast scaled um um blockchain ecosystem that can you know bring on billions of users and so at the same time institutions are are interested in this space and a lot of them have been building their infrastructure themselves or they partner with external providers to to um

You know bring some of the infrastructure uh to them and you know the convergence is that the infrastructure is maturing while institutions are coming in so I think all that you’re starting to see the sentiment have changed you know like I mentioned earlier so um that’s where you’re starting to see more investments

In this space let’s also talk about Innovation outside of just the infrastructure startups you know so much of the last cycle was about layer twos it was about the promise of smart contracts and daps um where are those projects now are they just gone when you’re talking about closing out 20123

Are are they largely on the back burner where do the ideas like that stand right now yeah so I I think once we get to a place where we’re not using these crypto jargon you know talking about smart contracts users don’t care even institutions don’t really care okay so

What is the specific use case for this technology H you know we’ve talked about you know stable coins and and crossboard transs a great use case right even today if you want to go through the traditional route of sending money abroad if I wanted to send money to Vietnam today it’s still pretty

Difficult even with ftech companies like wise out there that makes it a little bit easier but still costly still takes a lot of time those things I can’t send it on a Saturday night if I wanted to because those things don’t run those things still run on Old banking rails

Which Clos during the weekend so we know that the technology is valuable but what is the specific use case and you know crossb transfer is one of them and so that is what we’re talking about we want to talk about how users are using it and how they’re getting into the ecosystem

Um we don’t really care about what smart cont they don’t care what smart contracts are they don’t care what you know decentralized applications are well if we talk about looking ahead I mean you mentioned in this report the idea of Bitcoin layer 2os being a real Focus

Going forward where do those fit into that idea that you know we have uh we want to make things easier for consumers or for retail investors or for whomever we we want to sort of remove some of that jargon but at the same time you really want to add to this idea that

Bitcoin can be more useful it can go beyond just an asset to invest in where do you where do you see that going yeah so Bitcoin is an interesting one because we’ve been hearing a lot you know about Bitcoin especially you know this year with the approval of the spot Bitcoin

ETF so what that means is we have you know traditional asset managers in the space who are able to buy and hold Bitcoin directly for their clients which means you’re going to start seeing a lot of liquidity move into the Bitcoin space and at the same time you’re seeing a lot

Of research teams um discovering ways to scale Bitcoin and really you’re seeing Bitcoin uh shift from a traditional digital store of value only to more of computing platform and what that means is you’re able to build applications on bitcoin which historically you’re not able to do so this is going to be very

Similar to how we see ethereum you know uh you have all these layer tws all these applications that were being built on ethereum and now you’re starting to to see that come to bitcoin and it really starts with the fundamental infrastructure of the L2 scaling Solutions because Bitcoin itself cannot

Have Smart contracts or cannot have programmability built in just just how the the the technical AR architecture is built but these L2 solution can enable that so you can have nfts and Defi and stable coins and gaming all on bitcoin and you’re starting to see that happen what are your expectations for companies

Going public this year you know we had Circle filing confidentially to go public um should we expect more crypto companies to legitimize themselves by going public is that even a Focus right now uh what are your expectations there yeah it’s a timely question Jordan because we actually are just starting

Research on um just showcasing who we think are the top IPO candidates in our specific vertical so this is my team and so um I’m starting to think about crypto obviously we know circle is is the prime candidate right now they confidentially filed um a few weeks ago so you know

Ripple might be one you know we’ve heard Brad talk about um maybe iping in a different jurisdiction outside of the US because how the SEC is unfriendly to them here so um but we have more to share with you once we uh publish that rep play okay that’s all for crypto world

Today but we’ll be back again tomorrow and we’ll see you then