₿itcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

The infamous meme-crypto dogecoin has seen double-digit gains in recent days after Tesla’s Elon Musk tweeted about his upcoming Saturday Night Live appearance on May 8. On Wednesday, Musk tweeted “The Dogefather SNL May 8,” and a great number of people assume dogecoin will be mentioned to some degree on the show. Dogecoin Captures a $50 Billion Market Cap This weekend, dogecoin (DOGE) has started to surge again, as the token featuring the likeness of the Shiba Inu dog is nearing the asset’s all-time high (ATH). The last dogecoin ATH was two weeks ago when the cryptocurrency reached $0.44 per token. DOGE has jumped more than 45% during the last seven days, and 30-day stats show dogecoin gained 537.92% against the U.S. dollar. In recent times, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was asked about dogecoin at a press conference, and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban talked about DOGE with Ellen Degeneres. Just before the weekend, Tesla’s Elon Musk, who tweets about dogecoin often, mentio...

A chief economist at UBS, the largest bank in Switzerland, sees a number of problems with bitcoin. In attempting to answer the question of whether the cryptocurrency defies the zeitgeist, he claims that “bitcoin is denied to those minority groups who have reduced online access.” UBS Chief Economist Sees Multiple Problems With Bitcoin Paul Donovan, Chief Economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, published a weekly update entitled “Does Bitcoin defy the Zeitgeist ?” on the UBS website Friday outlining a number of issues he sees with the cryptocurrency. UBS is the largest bank in Switzerland. “There is something weird about Bitcoin. Bitcoin seems to specifically defy the spirit of the age, in a way other cryptos do not,” he began, adding: Some suggest bitcoin is a safe haven from runaway inflation. But controlling supply does not guarantee value … Bitcoin has a history of extreme price fluctuation. “We cannot keep living on environmental credit and must become increasingly sustai...

Visa CEO Al Kelly says that the payments giant is leaning into the cryptocurrency space “in a very, very big way.” He outlines five key areas of crypto opportunities that Visa is focusing on, stating that his company is “extremely well-positioned.” Visa Is Focusing on 5 Crypto Areas During Visa’s earnings call for the period ended March 31 last week, the payments giant outlined its commitment to the crypto space, highlighting five key areas the company is focusing on. Al Kelly, Visa’s chairman and chief executive officer, began by noting that there are “two market segments” his company sees in the crypto space. One is bitcoin, which he described as “primarily” an asset held by people. “We kind of think of them as the digital gold,” he continued. “Then there are digital currencies, including central bank digital currencies [CBDCs] and stablecoins that are directly backed by existing fiat currencies.” The CEO further revealed: Our focus is on five different opportunities that we s...

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has compiled a list of 19 large-cap stocks with cryptocurrency exposure that have massively outperformed the S&P 500. “On average, these stocks have dramatically outperformed the S&P 500 during the last several months alongside the surge in the price of bitcoin,” the firm wrote. 19 Stocks With Crypto Exposure That Outperformed S&P500 Goldman Sachs released a research note last week listing 19 large-cap U.S. stocks with blockchain and cryptocurrency exposure that outperformed the S&P 500. Ben Snider, the bank’s strategist and managing director, said: “Our screen yields 19 stocks with market caps greater than $1 billion … On average, these stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 by 34 percentage points year to date (+46% vs. +12%).” He noted that during the same time period, the price of bitcoin rose by 86% and Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index increased 156%. The Goldman Sachs strategist elaborated: On average, these stocks have dramatic...

Fundstrat Global Advisors’ most recent “Weekly Crypto Briefing” and the company’s lead digital asset strategist, David Grider, opines a target bitcoin price of $100k per coin is still “intact.” Moreover, Fundstrat believes that the price of ethereum will reach a $10k target, while the entire crypto-economy is “on pace to hit $5 trillion.” Fundstrat Maintains $100K Target for Bitcoin The independent financial research firm Fundstrat has a very bullish view of the current trajectory of cryptocurrency markets in the future. Fundstrat’s digital asset strategist, David Grider explains in the company’s weekly briefing covering digital assets that bitcoin (BTC) has rebounded after a “healthy cooling-off period last week.” Grider’s report further says that “the macro backdrop remains accommodative [and the] bull market remains intact.” The Fundstrat briefing stresses: We believe the bull market remains intact, and we are maintaining our $100k Bitcoin price target. One of the accommo...

During the Second 421 Wet Season Festival and Mining Ecology Conference the Chairman of the Bitdeer Group and cofounder of Bitmain, Jihan Wu spoke about institutions flocking to cryptocurrency mining. During the event Bitdeer outlined the company’s computing partnerships and its plans to make digital currency mining greener. Bitmain’s Cofounder Jihan Wu Is Optimistic About the Future of Cryptocurrencies and Mining Two weeks ago, Bitdeer Group, the corporate organization behind the web portal bitdeer.com , announced the firm has been granted funding for $12 million from the Hong Kong subsidiary of Genimous Technology , Genimous Investment. The funding aims to be allotted toward the development of Bitdeer’s cloud mining services. Bitdeer was founded by Jihan Wu and is backed by Sequoia Capital, IDG, and other financial institutions. At the Second 421 Wet Season Festival and Mining Ecology Conference, Jihan Wu, spoke to the crowd about institutions stepping into the digital currency...

The American billionaire entrepreneur and television personality, Mark Cuban, has waged a bet with Creative Planning’s founder Peter Mallouk over the performance of cryptocurrencies versus the S&P 500. Cuban said on Twitter that the two should put $1 million into a stablecoin-based smart contract, in order to place a bet over the return performance of either ethereum or bitcoin in ten years against the Standard and Poor’s 500 index. Mark Cuban Backs His Statements With a $1 Million Bet With Peter Mallouk One of the investors on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank, Mark Cuban has been talking about cryptocurrencies a lot lately, and recently the billionaire told Ellen Degeneres about the potential of dogecoin (DOGE) . Being the owner of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Dallas Mavericks, Cuban now has the Mavs accepting digital currencies for goods and services. Just recently, however, Peter Mallouk the founder of Creative Planning, a financial management g...

Actress Mila Kunis has revealed that she and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, started investing in bitcoin more than eight years ago. She initially thought that investing in bitcoin was “a horrible idea.” However, now she is using cryptocurrencies and said she has never been happier to be wrong. Mila Kunis Is Happy to Be Wrong About Bitcoin Famous film and TV actress Mila Kunis, who is married to actor Ashton Kutcher, talked about bitcoin on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday. She explained that before making an investment, Kutcher would run them by her. “The best part about him is he is really smart about including me in everything and making sure that I am aware of everything that is happening,” Kunis shared. She started dating Kutcher in 2012 and the pair married in July 2015. “He is also really smart at knowing that, sometimes, you shouldn’t listen to your wife,” she opined. “Early into our dating, two things came up,” Kunis described. They were Uber and Bitcoin. After...

Bitcoin use cases in African countries continue to expand with the latest one being its use as an alternative source of retirement income. On a continent plagued by high inflation and unstable currencies, bitcoin, which is decentralized and censorship-resistant, is seen “as a safer source to contribute to for retirement.” According to a local report , this shift towards bitcoin is more profound in countries like South Africa where traditional pension funds “have historically had issues of fraud and instability.” The report, which relied on an analysis by a crypto startup, Yellow Card, explained: This has been especially noted in countries such as South Africa, where a high number of users reported utilising Bitcoin savings as a safer source to contribute to for retirement. Nevertheless, the report still notes that bitcoin is yet to be proven a reliable investment for a long-term horizon. Consequently, the report cautions long-term savers to consider all the possible scenarios and...

Russian authorities have recently labeled one of the leading independent media outlets in the country as a “foreign agent.” Such a maneuver led Meduza to set up a fiat and crypto fundraiser to survive the consequences of labeling. Fund Will Accept Donations in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin According to an editorial statement published by the outlet, the Russian Justice Ministry added Meduza on April 23 to its “foreign agent” media list. It implies that every news piece or social post they do should be accompanied by a message, notifying their readers about its new status. However, the Meduza team says that Kremlin considers them an “enemy of the state” with such labeling. It will make the journalistic routines more complicated, such as looking for sources or reporting any news, the statement added. Afterward, advertisers stopped their business ties with the news outlet, which cut a financial flow that keeps alive to the outlet, and they expect a further loss of a “significa...