First Mover Americas: BTC Retreats From $60K

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Bitcoin traded around $57,000 during the European morning, following a pullback from the $60,000 resistance level on Thursday, a decline of 2.4% in the last 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) fell 2.3%. Bitcoin climbed above $59,000 on Thursday after the U.S. reported its first drop in consumer prices in four years, a positive sign for the prospect of an interest-rate cut by the Fed. Bitcoin's failure to maintain a sustained rally, despite positive macro news, suggests there is more price weakness ahead.

Iris Energy's Childress, Texas site is well suited for the company's focus on bitcoin mining even if analysts have determined it unsuitable for AI, Bernstein said in a report. IREN shares fell almost 14% on Thursday following a short-selling report by Culper Research which pointed out the site's flaws as a potential hub for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) purposes. “Iris Energy has not claimed it intends to retrofit its bitcoin mining site in Childress to AI,” Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote. The broker estimates 65% of the company's value is derived from bitcoin mining and the remaining 35% from AI/HPC. Iris Energy’s current $1 million/megawatt capital expenditure metric is a reflection of bitcoin mining capex, the broker said. Comparing it to AI/HPC capex is not meaningful.

Partior, a blockchain payment joint venture of banking giants JPMorgan, DBS and Standard Chartered, has raised $60 million in Series B funding. The investment was led by Peak XV Partners with contributions from Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group. Partior aims to establish unified blockchain-based interbank payment rails for instant clearing and settlement. Using blockchain-based technology to expedite such banking processes is now fairly commonplace. JPMorgan's Onyx network has settled hundreds of billions of dollars of transactions since going live a few years ago. Last month, Fidelity used Onyx to tokenize shares in a money market fund.

Chart of the Day

• XRP's bitcoin-denominated price (XRP/BTC) is up for the third straight day and at the highest in two months.
• On Thursday, CME and CF Benchmarks announced the debut of indexes and reference rates for XRP and Internet Computer (ICP).
• Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of blockchain payments firm Ripple Labs Inc., said the benchmark reference rates will boost institutional adoption.
• Source: TradingView

- Omkar Godbole

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