Signs of a widening embrace across the financial services industry sent bitcoin to new heights, with the cryptocurrency closing in on US$50,000 for the first time before falling back.
A week after Tesla announced its US$1.5 billion investment in bitcoin, the digital asset continues to make inroads into traditional finance, including news that an investment unit of Morgan Stanley is considering whether to bet on bitcoin. Canada also approved the first North American bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
And there is evidence that more companies are beginning to add services for cryptocurrencies — an asset class that is still lightly regulated and controversial among policymakers. On Thursday, BNY Mellon said it formed a new team that is developing a custody and administration platform for traditional and digital assets. Mastercard Inc has said it will begin allowing cardholders to transact in certain cryptocurrencies on its network.
The combination of luminaries like billionaire Elon Musk and powerhouse banks is adding fresh ammunition to bitcoin’s meteoric gains. The cryptocurrency neared US$50,000 in weekend trading before retreating. Prices are up 40 percent this month, and were at about US$46,800 as of 11am in Hong Kong yesterday.
“The key for bitcoin’s path higher is to win over more corporate endorsements,” Oanda Corp senior market analyst Edward Moya said. “Bitcoin is no stranger to massive weekend moves and the next several days could easily see some wild swings.”
There remains a fierce debate over whether bitcoin is a legitimate asset with any real purpose or value. The token has been derided for its role in money laundering and scams, and recently Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, said he is getting rid of his bitcoin. A currency is never supposed to be more volatile than what you buy and sell with it, Taleb said on Twitter, adding that you cannot price goods in the cryptocurrency. “In that respect, it’s a failure (at least for now).”
Even so, the price trend has been up, and bitcoin stands as another example of the speculative excesses that are defining this bull market — along with penny stocks and cannabis companies.
There are hints that more Wall Street heavyweights could dip into the crypto market. In an interview with CNBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co co-president Daniel Pinto said that client demand is not there yet on bitcoin, but he’s certain that’ll change.
Bloomberg reported that Counterpoint Global, a unit of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is exploring whether the cryptocurrency would be a suitable option for its investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Moving ahead with investments would require approval by the firm and regulators.
“With each major announcement like the one BNY Mellon made, other institutions are spurred to more rapid adoption and deployment of digital assets,” Patrick Campos, chief strategy officer at Securrency, a developer of blockchain-based financial and regulatory technology, said on Friday.
“Tesla’s recent announcement will embolden other large corporates and institutions to accept crypto as not just a worthy asset class, but perhaps even an essential one,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day