Cryptocurrency daily summary:
MicroStrategy Included in Major Global Stock Indices
Worldcoin releases "Sensitive Information Protection System" and says it has deleted user iris codes
Yonsei University launches Metaverse for students to access
Let's first look at the trading activities of Bitcoin ETFs. According to Farside Investor data, on May 15, Grayscale Bitcoin Spot ETF (GBTC) continued to receive inflows of $2,700. At the same time, Fidelity Bitcoin Spot ETF (FBTC) received inflows of $131.3 million, Bitwise Bitcoin Spot ETF (BITB) received inflows of $86.3 million, ARK 21Shares Bitcoin Spot ETF (ARKB) received inflows of $38.6 million, and WisdomTree Bitcoin Spot ETF (BTCW) received a net inflow of $2.1 million.
BTC hit a local high of $64,700 after Wall Street opened. Bitcoin bulls got a boost as the latest U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data exceeded expectations for risk assets.
The largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, has been included in a major global stock index after its share price surged.
On Tuesday, MSCI (formerly Morgan Stanley Capital International), a global provider of investment decision support tools, announced that MicroStrategy is one of the three largest new additions by market capitalization to its MSCI World Index, effective May 31.
MicroStrategy's stock price has soared since the cryptocurrency market bottomed in December 2022. Since then, its stock price has risen more than eightfold and has risen more than 87% so far this year, surpassing Bitcoin's 45% gain in 2024, according to TradingView data.
MicroStrategy now holds 214,400 Bitcoins, valued at approximately $13.5 billion, since its most recent acquisition on April 29. MicroStrategy’s total acquisition cost was $7.5 billion, and at an average price of $35,180 per Bitcoin, that means the company has made a paper profit of approximately $6 billion from its Bitcoin purchases.
Given its large Bitcoin holdings, equivalent to more than 1% of the total supply of 21 million Bitcoins, MicroStrategy has been increasingly used as a proxy for Bitcoin exposure in traditional markets, especially ahead of the launch of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the United States in January.
Earlier this month, MicroStrategy announced plans to launch a decentralized identity solution based on Bitcoin.
Worldcoin seeks to set 'new standard' in data protection, says it removes users' iris codes The Worldcoin Foundation has released an open-source system it claims will improve the protection of sensitive information, including data generated when people sign up for the Worldcoin project.
A statement noted: "The system has been made available for all organizations to use in a Github repository and aims to set new standards for data protection, including biometric data." WorldCoin said the new open source system is based on secure multi-party computation.
The Worldcoin Foundation said it has migrated to this new system and in the process deleted the old iris codes that were previously collected when the Orb device scanned the eyes of users who signed up for the Worldcoin project. When people sign up and scan their eyes to prove their identity and create a digital identity, the Worldcoin project provides them with cryptocurrency or WLD tokens.
Through secure multi-party computation (SMPC), data can be securely distributed across different locations. “This can be thought of as taking a secret and sharing multiple parts between different parties for increased protection,” the WorldCoin Foundation said in a statement, and: “The WorldCoin Foundation, in collaboration with technical experts at TACEO and Tools for Humanity, has successfully built a new implementation of SMPC to solve problems that have previously hindered others due to scale and cost limitations.”
LG Uplus, a subsidiary of LG, recently launched a metaverse experience at Yonsei University in Seoul. Dubbed “Meta-Yonsei,” the metaverse experience features a recreation of the university’s Sinchon campus, including landmarks such as the school’s auditorium and library, and offers tiered access to digital resources and private meeting spaces for faculty and students.
Unlike many other Metaverse experiences, Metaverse Yonsei restricts many features to verified students. While prospective students and other visitors can seemingly walk around the virtual campus and view its features and landmarks, use of peer conferencing tools and access to certain areas of the Metaverse are limited to enrolled students. The Metaverse Yonsei experience has been well received by students on campus.
Students and faculty can also interact through structured check-ins and supervised activities. Up to 1,000 users can attend virtual events in the Metaverse auditorium (a digitized version of the university’s real facility), including the ability to watch guest speakers and experts on a virtual stage, according to a 2023 report from the project.
Market analysis: BTC surges, US CPI data better than expected
Market trend:
BTC price broke through $66,000, setting a new high, and this upward momentum also led to the overall rise of altcoins. However, the ETH/BTC exchange rate hit a new low in nearly three years, showing Ethereum's weakness relative to Bitcoin.
In terms of macroeconomics, the US stock market continued to rise, hitting a record high, while the US dollar index fell sharply. The US CPI data for April released yesterday showed a month-on-month decline, which made the market generally expect the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in September, and the market's expectations for this have exceeded 80%.
Market hot spots:
1. Meme coins related to the US election: including$PEOPLE , MAGA, BODEN, TREMP and other token prices have risen sharply. It is expected that before the US election in November, related concept tokens will continue to attract market hype.
2. AI concept tokens: including$AR , PHB, LPT, OCTA, etc. have seen large gains in this round of market. AI and Meme concepts have always been the main driving force of the market, and these related tokens have shown general strength in the rising market.
3. Solana Ecosystem:$JTO The prices of tokens such as GMX, BOME, etc. have risen sharply, which may benefit from the SOL staking activity launched by Robinhood. The tokens under the Solana ecosystem have shown a relatively active trend in the market.
4. Gate.io launched the Ton Ecological Meme Project Notcoin: The total amount of NOT is 100 billion, and the chips are fully circulated. The market predicts that its market value is around US$800 million. This move has attracted market attention to the project, and it may also become one of the hot spots in the future.
5. Popular Layer2 network Blast airdrops tokens: Blast is the Layer2 of NFT trading platform Blur, which announced that it will airdrop tokens on June 26. This move may be to stimulate trading volume on the Blur platform, especially after it was surpassed by Solana platform's Magic Eden, and it needs to attract more users to increase its trading activity.
In the current market, although BTC has hit a recent high, ETH's performance is relatively weak compared to BTC. In terms of macroeconomics, the US stock market continues to rise, but the US dollar index has shown a downward trend. Market hotspots are mainly concentrated in the US election concept, AI concept, and Solana ecology. Investors need to pay close attention to these hotspots and analyze and operate them in combination with their own investment strategies.
Macro: CPI data boosts rate cut bets, Wall Street closes at record high, Asian markets rise
On Wednesday, May 15, all three major Wall Street indices closed higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting record closes, both rising more than 1%. All three indices hit record highs during the session, with technology stocks leading the gains. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average is one step closer to the 40,000-vehicle milestone.
Data on Wednesday showed that U.S. consumer prices rose 0.3% in April, below expectations for a 0.4% gain and raising hopes that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates twice this year.
Specifically, the three major indexes: the Dow Jones Index rose 0.88%, the S&P Index rose 1.17%, and the Nasdaq Index rose 1.40%.
Tepid U.S. consumer price index data for April fueled optimism that inflation was slowing after three straight months of above-expected readings. That led traders to increase bets that the Federal Reserve will cut its policy rate in September and December.
In the Asian market, Asian stocks rose on Thursday, May 16. The MSCI Asia Pacific stock index rose 1.44%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.9%, while the Australian stock benchmark rose 1.5%.
Japan's Nikkei initially rose 1.3% but pared gains to 0.6% amid pressure from some disappointing late-season results on Wednesday, the final day of the earnings season, and unease about a sharp rise in the yen.
The dollar remained in a downtrend, falling to multi-week lows against currencies including the euro and sterling. U.S. Treasury yields extended their retreat in Tokyo trading, falling to a six-week low. This helped the battered yen continue to recover despite data showing that Japan's economy contracted more than expected in the first quarter.
Fed funds futures are pricing in 52 basis points of rate cuts this year, with the September cut now fully priced in.
Brent crude futures rose 42 cents, or 0.5%, to $83.17 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 43 cents, or 0.6%, to $79.06 a barrel, adding to Wednesday’s strong gains.
Gold prices rose 0.39% to $2,395.39, approaching their all-time high of $2,431.29 since April 12.
