Markets
First Mover Americas: BTC Drops From $60,000
Bitcoin traded around $57,000 during the European morningfollowing the pullback from the $60,000 resistance level on Thursdaydown 2.4% over the past 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) is down 2.3%. Bitcoin surged above $59,000 on Thursday after the U.S. reported its first drop in consumer prices in four years, a positive sign for the prospect of a Fed rate cut. Bitcoin’s failure to maintain a sustained rally despite positive macro news suggests further price weakness is ahead.
Iris Energy’s Childress, Texas site is suited to the company’s focus on bitcoin mining, though analysts deemed it unsuitable for artificial intelligenceBernstein said in a report. IREN shares fell nearly 14% on Thursday following a short-selling report from Culper Research that highlighted the site’s flaws as a potential hub for AI and high-performance computing (HPC). “Iris Energy has not said it intends to adapt its Childress bitcoin mining site for AI,” Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote. The brokerage estimates that 65% of the company’s value comes from bitcoin mining and the remaining 35% from AI/HPC. Iris Energy’s current $1 million/megawatt capital expenditure metric reflects bitcoin mining capex, the brokerage said. Comparing that to AI/HPC capex is not meaningful.
Partior, a blockchain payment joint venture of Banking giants JPMorgan, DBS and Standard Chartered raise $60 million in Series B funding. The investment was led by Peak XV Partners with contributions from Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group. Partior aims to establish unified blockchain-based interbank payment rails for instant clearing and settlement. Using blockchain technology to speed up such banking processes is now fairly common. JPMorgan’s Onyx network has settled hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions since it launched a few years ago. Last month, Fidelity used Onyx to tokenize shares of a money market fund.