Markets
First Entrant in America: Bitcoin Falls $60,000
Bitcoin traded around $57,000 during the European morningafter a pullback to the $60,000 resistance level on Thursdaydown 2.4% in the past 24 hours. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) fell 2.3%. Bitcoin climbed above $59,000 on Thursday after the U.S. reported its first consumer price cut in four years, a positive sign for the prospect of a Fed interest rate cut. Bitcoin’s inability to sustain a sustained rally, despite positive macroeconomic news, suggests further price weakness is ahead.
Iris Energy’s Childress, Texas, site is well-suited to the company’s focus on bitcoin mining, although analysts have determined it is not suited to AIBernstein said in a report. IREN shares fell nearly 14% Thursday after a short-selling report from Culper Research highlighted the site’s shortcomings as a potential hub for AI and high-performance computing (HPC). “Iris Energy has not stated any plans to upgrade its Childress bitcoin mining site for AI,” wrote Bernstein analysts led by Gautam Chhugani. The brokerage estimates that 65% of the company’s value comes from bitcoin mining and the remaining 35% from AI/HPC. Iris Energy’s current capex metric of $1 million per megawatt reflects bitcoin mining capex, the brokerage said. Comparing it to AI/HPC capex is not meaningful.
Partior, a blockchain payment joint venture Banking giants JPMorgan, DBS and Standard Chartered have 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 build unified blockchain-based interbank payment rails for instantaneous clearing and settlement. Using blockchain technology to speed up these banking processes is now quite common. JPMorgan’s Onyx network has settled hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions since it went live a few years ago. Last month, Fidelity used Onyx to tokenize shares in a money market fund.