Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung discusses the price of bitcoin as it heads for the worst monthly drop since May.
Video Transcript
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ZACK GUZMAN: Brian too, when we broaden out and look at maybe some of the crypto action, similar story. I think it has been trading similar to a levered tech stock recently. When we think about cryptocurrencies writ large, and you know, it’s not exactly the way you want to see Bitcoin’s year-end, if you are a HODLer out there, with the weakest month since that big sell-off we saw in May. Although, I would point out there are some altcoins out there showing some strength to wrap up the year, despite the fact that Bitcoin’s been selling off. And I think you know, that’s something that might be lost in the story of 2021, the bifurcation of some of these crypto assets.
BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah, certainly no Santa Claus rally for Bitcoin itself at least, headed into the final trading week of 2021. But what’s interesting is that whatever happens to Bitcoin, also happens to the Bitcoin adjacent companies as well. It was interesting to see that with the sell-off yesterday in Bitcoin, you also saw a lot of the Bitcoin miners, I’m thinking Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain, kind of take a big hit as well, Coinbase also fell. And it’s interesting to see, I think we’re going to have another Bitcoin miner on the show later on today. We can ask him certainly about how he feels about all of that.
But what’s interesting to me is kind of the macro trend, there’s been a lot of kind of pinning of Bitcoin’s fall as of the last– later part of this year to Fed policy even, and perhaps normalization of Fed policy in 2022 perhaps taking some steam out of risk assets like Bitcoin. And if it is indeed the case as you kind of lined out there, Zack, that it is kind of trading like a highly volatile or leveraged tech stock, then maybe that kind of makes sense. But kind of interesting to see FOMC meeting starting to headline the likes of CoinDesk and other Bitcoin publications as well.
ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. I will say you know, I wonder how much– obviously, I think NFTs being so big probably prompted a lot of the moves at Coinbase to get on board with that and start supporting it. So a lot of people are looking forward to what that’s going to bring for Coinbase in 2022. I think the other thing too though as I was saying, we got– well, we’re going to have a clip today from the CEO of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, which you chatted with back in October right before we saw that crypto really start to take off. Up– more than doubled now since I think when we chatted with him just a few months ago. That’s one example of I guess one of the altcoins out there that has seen some strength here outside of the weakness we’ve seen in Bitcoin.
The other one that we keep hearing a lot of people talk about too is Fantom. And that’s one of those, we use the term Ethereum competitor but basically they all kind of work in the same realm when we talk about supporting NFTs. So even if you don’t believe that some of these NFTs will be holding their value, there are bets out there that investors are making on other crypto chains that support, that are the backbone of what these NFTs are built on. And Fantom, FTM– I think we’re having some trouble with our data and graphics right now so we won’t show the chart, but that’s one of those names that continue– are getting floated out there in terms of other L1s, layer one chains that maybe haven’t seen huge run-ups in 2021 but could be poised for some of that in 2022 if it spills over. And Brian, you kind of come at this story from the bank perspective, maybe the regulator perspective too, but you know, the adoption that we’ve seen from some big names, I think has also been just a big story in 2021 about where crypto is going because you got some huge players really diving in this space.
BRIAN CHEUNG: Yeah. I mean, when you talk about Fantom, I mean, you really clearly pointed out, it’s that there’s going to be asset allocation within not just the cryptocurrency space itself but even inside of NFTs. And I don’t think we’re really all that close to kind of thinking about how the banking regulators might think about how whether or not certain portfolios that are managed by the bank can have a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs inside of them but it certainly is a salient point. You’re seeing some NFT collectors rotate in and out of certain types of just NFTs alone in their OpenSea portfolios.
And what is interesting is that even outside of the currencies that you had kind of already outlined, consider that SOS drop at the OpenDAO, which isn’t exactly OpenSea, but they were working with OpenSea to help anyone that had an OpenSea wallet that had made transactions in NFTs over the course of 2021 get some SOS tokens that have very much ballooned in just the last few days. They dropped it on Christmas Eve, I believe it was and it’s really ballooned just over the last few days.
So very interesting to see how people kind of look at these assets and say, hey, it’s not just Bitcoin versus equities anymore, it could be NFTs other– against other NFTs or certain types of tokens over other types of tokens. So it’s going to be a very interesting trend to see in 2022 whether or not the number of assets that are available out there in the cryptocurrency space get bigger or smaller. Certainly going to be a very interesting trend to watch next year.
ZACK GUZMAN: I don’t want to brag or anything, Brian, but I claimed my SOS. I got $75 worth.
BRIAN CHEUNG: I heard.
ZACK GUZMAN: Of SOS tokens now rocking along for the ride.
BRIAN CHEUNG: [? I don’t have any. ?]
ZACK GUZMAN: So we’ll see where that goes.