RESEARCH
BEQUANT Crypto&Coffee
The market was abuzz with excitement after it was reported that business intelligence firm MicroStrategy upsized a convertible-note offering to $900 million from an originally announced $600 million, with plans to use the proceeds to purchase more bitcoin. As a result, Bitcoin reclaimed the $50,000 level, while Ethereum also benefited from the risk on flow, advancing ever so closer to testing that elusive $2,000 level. Still, despite the overwhelming focus on Bitcoin, small and mid-cap assets continued to outperform. So much that year-to-date, MVIS small cap index is up 233%, while mid-cap index is up 162% and large-caps index is up a “mere” 87%. On that note, it was reported that Bitwise Asset Management has launched a decentralized finance (DeFi) index fund, hoping to capture deep-pocketed investors' bets on the corner of the crypto markets challenging traditional financial rails. Initial constituents include the following: AAVE, UNI, SNX, MKR, COMP, UMA, YFI, ZRX and LRC. It is worth noting that Uniswap makes up 25% of the index, followed by Aave at just over 23%, while LRC is the smallest at 3.6%. Interestingly, the index does not include Sushiswap. CoinDesk reported that Coinbase, which is preparing to trade publicly in the next few months, is being valued at $77 billion, based on trading of the company's privately held shares on a secondary market. Those shares in the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. are changing hands on the Nasdaq Private Market at $303 a piece, according to two people with knowledge of the auction. That implies a total company value of about $77 billion – greater than Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the owner of the New York Stock Exchange. In other news, a release date and activation timeline are set for Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade, but developers and other stakeholders are still debating the best method to coordinate Bitcoin's biggest upgrade since SegWit. Per a public IRC chat discussion, the code for the fully primed-and-ready Taproot upgrade will be deployed sometime between March 17 and March 31 (or April if necessary), but the actual signaling that kick-starts the activation process probably won't start until July. Also of note, mining machine manufacturer Ebang to start mining Bitcoins. The new venture is expected to increase revenue and "optimize" its product offering structure. The company also plans to build data centers for its mining farms. The proprietary mining venture is the latest expansion for Ebang. In late December 2020, the company announced its plans to launch a cryptocurrency exchange by April 2021. In related news, Cointelegraph reported that global cryptocurrency mining operators are increasingly moving their equipment to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States as they chase lower energy prices. Igor Runets, founder and CEO of Russian crypto mining firm BitRiver, told local news agency Kommersant Thursday that the company is actively building up its power capacity to meet increasing demand from American and European investors.
