Here’s What You Missed in Crypto This Week

As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week’s top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly.

MICROSTRATEGY BUYS MORE BITCOIN: In a Wednesday regulatory filing, MicroStrategy (MSTR) announced that, during the period between November 30 and December 26, it acquired approximately 14,620 bitcoins for approximately $615.7M in cash, at an average price of approximately $42,110 per bitcoin. As of December 26, MicroStrategy held an aggregate of approximately 189,150 bitcoins, which were acquired at an aggregate purchase price of approximately $5.895B and an average purchase price of approximately $31,168 per bitcoin. (read more)

On Thursday, Canaccord raised the firm’s price target on MicroStrategy to $791 from $670 and kept a Buy rating on the shares. While “BTC is acting well” in the last month and six months, MicroStrategy shares “continue to act even better,” said the analyst, who stated that as shares continue to appreciate faster than the company’s underlying bitcoin holdings, the premium at which the stock trades to underlying spot also increases. The firm believes MicroStrategy’s scarcity premium has increased over the last several months as equity investors see the shares as perhaps the best way to play potential first half of 2024 bitcoin catalysts, including potential ETF approvals and the awards halving, the analyst added. (read more)

COURT GRANTS APPROVAL TO HUT 8 MINING PLAN: The reorganization plan sponsored by Hut 8 (HUT) filed in the Celsius Network bankruptcy proceedings was approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the company announced Friday. The plan provides for the transfer of Celsius Network’s mining operations to a newly-created “MiningCo,” with Hut 8 managing MiningCo’s mining operations under a four-year mining management agreement. Under the managed services contract, Hut 8 will provide end-to-end managed services for MiningCo’s operations at five sites in Texas, overseeing approximately 12 EH/s computing capacity and more than 300 MW of energy. Hut 8 will provide managed services at four Texas locations totaling 87 MW: Rebel, 25 MW; East Isle, 30 MW; Style, 20 MW; Garden City, 12 MW. In Cedarvale, Texas, Hut 8 will be responsible for the fifth MiningCo site’s design and development, engineering, financial modeling, budgeting, accounting, construction management, procurement, logistics, RFP coordination, and the management of approximately 66,000 miners and more than 215 MW of energy once construction is complete. The effectiveness of the plan remains subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions precedent. (read more)

SPHERE 3D INITIATED WITH BUY: On Thursday, H.C. Wainwright initiated coverage of Sphere 3D (ANY) with a Buy rating and $5 price target. The analyst said a “resurrection” has Sphere 3D rising as a focused bitcoin miner. The firm sees potential in the shares for investors, stating the past 12-month window offered the company time to develop the foundation 1.3-1.4EH/s of active mining, retire all debt from the balance sheet, and shaped the opportunity to claw back some $35M in cash allocated for hosting space that its partners failed to secure for it. (read more)

TERAWULF REPORTS FULLY FUNDED 7.9 EH/S: On Thursday, TeraWulf (WULF) provided a business update. With Building 3 at Lake Mariner now fully operational, the facility’s bitcoin mining infrastructure capacity has increased to approximately 160 MW. The company said, “The addition of 18,500 Antminer S19j XP bitcoin mining machines from BITMAIN, which have a power-efficiency rating of 21.5 joules per terahash and a bitcoin mining hashrate of 151 terahash per second each, will create one of the most efficient and profitable mining fleets in the sector with a fleet efficiency of 25.7 J/TH.” While the company previously planned to convert prior deposits towards the S19j XP purchase order into 5,500 miners and host-to-own the remaining 13,000 miners for BITMAIN until 4Q24, the company now plans to utilize its entire fleet for self-mining operations. In an effort to expand its operational scope beyond bitcoin mining, since September 2023, TeraWulf has been operating a compact GPU system at the Lake Mariner Facility to support generative AI & large language model applications. Following on this, TeraWulf has initially committed a block of power at the Lake Mariner facility, capable of deploying thousands of latest generation GPUs, to support a larger HPC project expected to commence in 2024. Planning is underway for additional growth at Lake Mariner with the construction of Building 4 having already begun. In addition to Lake Mariner’s growth, TeraWulf also has the option to add an additional 50 MW of bitcoin mining capacity at the nuclear-powered Nautilus Cryptomine facility, bringing the company’s capacity at the site to a total of 100 MW. (read more)

INDIA TO BLOCK URLS OF NINE OFFSHORE PLATFORMS: India’s Financial Intelligence Unit said, in part, Thursday that “nine offshore Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers, VDA SPs under Section 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, PMLA including Binance, Kraken, Kucoin and Mexc are operating illegally without complying with the provisions of PML Act in India. Virtual Digital Assets Service Providers, VDA SPs, were brought into the ambit of Anti Money Laundering/Counter Financing of Terrorism or AML-CFT framework under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act PML Act, 2002 in March 2023.Director FIU IND has written to Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block the URLs of said entities that are operating illegally without complying with the provisions of the PML Act in India.” (BTBT), Coinbase (COIN), Core Scientific (CORZ), Greenidge Generation (GREE), Marathon Digital (MARA), MicroStrategy, Riot Platforms (RIOT), Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG) and TeraWulf.

PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin dropped roughly 2% this week to $42,961 in U.S. dollars, according to CoinDesk.