The Breakdown First Five - Saturday, October 21, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Stripe All In

Stripe has closed their acquisition of stablecoin payments company Bridge for $1.1B, the largest crypto acquisition in history. This is also Stripe’s largest acquisition, cementing their strategy to go all in on crypto payments. Bridge provides software tools to assist companies in accepting stablecoin payments. The firm was last valued at $200M during their series A, making this a gigantic markup and a solid exit for founders and investors. 

4. Bitcoin Pushing $69,000

It’s the fourth week of Uptober and Bitcoin is making a push. BTC touched $69,000 twise over the weekend and traders are looking towards a breakout. Last week the ETF’s clocked $2.1B, their best week since March and fourth best overall. Bears have cleared out of the timeline, but technical analysts think the chart looks pristine. With Gold, Nasdaq and the S&P500 at all time highs, is this Bitcoin’s week?

3. Time For Options

The SEC has approved the rest of the Bitcoin ETF options, suggesting it’s almost time. The products still need approval from the CFTC and the Options Clearing Corp, but now everything else is lined up. Traders have waited over 9 months for something that normally takes days or weeks. Analysts believe the ETF options will be extremely positive for liquidity and some are still suggesting they could enable a massive short squeeze. 

2. Prediction Markets Not Manipulated

Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour has pushed back on claims that prediction markets are being manipulated in favor of Trump. He showed a chart that matched moves in the market to major headlines along with data that showed 60% of bets are going towards Trump. If anything, Harris bettors are slightly larger on average. The controversy has gotten way out of control, with major stories in the New York Times, the FT and the Wall Street Journal. 

1. Bitcoin Will Destroy Society

The ECB has triggered outrage across the Bitcoin community with a new paper that claims rising Bitcoin prices would cause the “impoverishment of the rest of society, endangering cohesion, stability and ultimately democracy.” While the arguments were pretty bad faith and willfully ignorant, the paper firmly placed Bitcoin as a social revolution, not just a monetary asset. ‘Then they fight you’ will only escalate as Bitcoin adoption continues.