And YOU Get An All-Time High!

The news from Planet Ruby—Friday, March 8, 2024

• Signal: Digital gold
• Noise: Boomer rocks

ATHs For Everyone

First, let's get the bad news out of the way. Facebook and Instagram went down in a global outage, allowing Elon Musk to troll Zuck. Meta's share price wobbled slightly, but still put in a fresh all-time high yesterday.

A major loser was New York Community Bancorp, which put in new lows under $2 following devastating losses on its commercial real estate portfolio, before raising $1 billion in emergency funding. Meanwhile the DXY has dropped below 103, its lowest in almost two months, though interest rate cuts are not as forthcoming as the markets previously expected, meaning more pressure for banks is likely.

But that hasn't stopped the markets going bananas.

We've grown accustomed to seeing all-time highs in the major markets on a weekly basis. This time, it was gold's turn, with shiny rocks trading well above their prior high of $2,149. However, the jealously around the world's #1 asset is palpable.

Bitcoin Passes $69,000

Crypto has seen very strong price action this week. Bitcoin has put in a new all-time high, and much faster than in any other cycle. The next ATH usually takes around two years from the bear market low, and has never happened before the Halving.

Upon hitting $69,200, bitcoin immediately rejected the obvious resistance level and crashed $10k. This move was driven purely by leverage and retail (including a 2010 whale whale who dumped 1,000 BTC at $69,000), since the ETFs had their highest ever day for volumes, and one of the largest days of inflows. Peter Schiff couldn't help himself, of course.

Others noted that a pullback from all-time highs is perfectly normal and to be expected.

The question is how fast the rejection dip gets bought back up and the new ATH is properly established. In previous cycles it has taken between two and six weeks. Is this cycle different?

Coinbase Falters

The ETFs and price action continue to dominate the news. As BlackRock and Fidelity hoover up coins, Grayscale continues to lose market share. GBTC is down a third of their holdings (over 200,000 BTC) since conversion to an ETF. However, the price increase means they still have the same AUM, and are therefore collecting the same fees.

Grayscale Enjoys The Magic Of The Bull Market Subsidy

By treating their captive customers with utter contempt, Grayscale have more than tripled their potential annual income.

REX WireBender Smort

Michael Saylor has raised another $700 million for Microstrategy's bitcoin purchases: Over 10,000 BTC at current prices, though that's changing all the time. This will put Microstrategy's holdings at well over 200,000 BTC.

Coinbase has repeatedly suffered outages, apparently unable to withstand the volume of traffic that accompanies market peaks. Like Elon with Meta, Bitstamp felt the need to draw attention to this.

What's New In The SKALEVERSE?

Gas fees on Ethereum mainnet have been exceptionally high in recent days, often exceeding 100 gwei. Ethereum's Dencun update is set to go live next week, and should reduce gas, especially on L2s.

SKALE uses a completely different model, which means there will never be any gas fees at all for end users!

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