Skip to main content

Bitcoin ‘ascendant’ as GameStop saga unfolds, Bitfinex CTO says

The GameStop short squeeze and Bitcoin have a lot more in common than appears at the surface, according to Paolo Ardoino.

The sudden rise of stocks like GameStop (GME) have shined a positive light on Bitcoin (BTC), as more retail investors look to “rail against” the financial status quo, according to Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino.

Bitcoin’s price peaked north of $38,500 on Friday, just as U.S. stocks concluded their worst week of trading since October. The divergence between BTC and stocks was partly due to a massive short squeeze of institutional investors by a Reddit group called r/WallStreetBets. The Reddit buying frenzy was centered around GameStop, the video game and consumer electronics retailer.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, also added the Bitcoin symbol to his Twitter page, possibly signaling his newfound support of the digital currency.

Paolo Ardoino believes the GameStop saga is only the beginning of a mass revolt against the financial status quo and that Bitcoin stands to benefit significantly from this narrative. 

“Bitcoin is ascendant again as the GameStop issue takes center stage,” Ardoino tells Cointelegraph. “As advocates for retail investors rail against the current structure and practices of financial markets, it is important to note that much of the work being done in the blockchain space has been inspired by these barriers.”

He continues:

“Removing obstacles to normal, everyday working people that are building and seeking wealth growing opportunities has always been part of the ethos of crypto.”

The retail crowd was dealt a significant blow last week after Robinhood – a trading platform that supposedly empowers the little guy – suspended trading of GME and other stocks over fears of extreme volatility. A class-action lawsuit was filed against Robinhood shortly thereafter. 

Ardoino isn’t the only one who thinks Bitcoin will benefit from the GME short squeeze. Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of billion-dollar hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, believes GME is “more proof of concept that Bitcoin is going to work.”

Meanwhile, Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz called the GME melt-up a “giant endorsement of DeFi,” or decentralized finance, which represents one of the largest use cases for blockchain technology.



from https://ift.tt/3alKrNq
https://ift.tt/36t5VXD

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DeFi isn’t dead, it just needs to fix these 3 critical problems

It’s been a rough year for DeFi, and it may not get any better until projects focus more on security, regulation and usability. The persistent challenges  decentralized finance  face have been well documented by a handful of analysts and the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem re-enforced the fact that something is critically wrong with DeFi. I think DeFi today is completely broken for 99% of the population. The promise of a more transparent financial system has been overtaken by greed. UST/LUNA is just the latest in a string of bad developments: — Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 11, 2022 Let's take a look at what experts say DeFi needs to do in order to have another revival.  Improved usability To date, the promise of open and uncensored access to a global decentralized financial system has been largely hampered by the complicated interface, confusing multi-step staking processes and lack of clarity surrounding the yields on various tokens. What do you thi...

ENS DAO delegates offer perspective on DAO governance and decentralized identity

AlphaWallet CEO and Spruce co-founder talk about their roles as contributors to the Ethereum Name Service following the project's recent airdrop. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for the ENS community.  Cointelegraph spoke to two ENS DAO delegates who applied for the opportunity to represent the community and stay involved in the decision making process: Victor Zhang, CEO of AlphaWallet, an open source Ethereum wallet, and Gregory Rocco, co-founder of Spruce, a decentralized ID and data toolkit for developers. Zhang spoke about his experience as an external contributor to ENS and an early supporter since 2018. Zhang initially sought to help ENS by offering Alpha Wallet as a user-friendly tool for  resolving .eth names and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Essentially, if a user inputs an .eth name in the AlphaWallet, it will show the wallet address, and vice versa using reverse resolution. Alpha...

National Futures Association adds rules for members handling digital assets

The CFTC-linked self-regulatory organization (SRO) has disclosure rules for members engaging in activities with BTC and ETH; now, standards of conduct are being added. The National Futures Association (NFA), the United States self-regulatory organization for derivatives markets, has issued a new compliance rule addressing members’ conduct. The new rule complements requirements issued in 2018. The NFA has “well over 100” members that engage in activities with digital asset commodities, but no way to address fraud or misconduct committed by those members, the organization explained to secretary of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Christopher Kirkpatrick in a Feb. 28 letter as it submitted the proposed new rule for approval. The new rule is modelled on the NFA’s antifraud rules for exchange traded futures and swaps transaction and retail foreign exchange. The NFA is the only registered self-regulatory organization that has delegated authority from the CFTC, giving it a...