A rebound in the price of bitcoin has sharply narrowed losses for MicroStrategy’s (MSTR) holdings of the cryptocurrency. When Michael Saylor stepped down almost exactly a year ago as CEO of MicroStrategy to become its executive chairman with a sole focus on investing in bitcoin, his digital-asset strategy was looking pretty bleak. He had already spent billions of dollars of MicroStrategy’s money to purchase bitcoin — and his paper loss amounted to about $1 billion. Today, though, MicroStrategy’s position looks brighter as bitcoin’s price has rebounded to above $29,000. Saylor has bought more. MicroStrategy now owns 152,800 bitcoins, up from 129,699 when he surrendered the CEO job. Those new purchases have lowered MicroStrategy’s cost basis to $29,672. Bottom line: MicroStrategy, a software company that has become a proxy for bitcoin’s price because of its largest holdings of the cryptocurrency, is nearly back in the black with bitcoin. ( The full story will be available on CoinDesk at 9:30 a.m. ET.)
MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor (Getty Images)
A spokesperson for Huobi is denying reports that several executives were arrested in China as outflow from the exchange picks up. Over the weekend, financial media in Hong Kong reported that several executives at Huobi had been taken away by police in China. According to data from Nansen.ai, Huobi’s stablecoin exchange balances have dropped by 33% in the last week, with traders withdrawing $49 million. Earlier, Colin Wu of Wu Blockchain had posted that “a large number of senior executives of offshore cryptocurrency exchanges … have been detained and investigated by the Chinese police” without adding specifics.
Curve Finance has recouped 73% of the funds stolen during a hack, which saw the platform lose over $73 million worth of various tokens. Over the past week, all $22 million in ether and ether derivatives stolen from Alchemix were returned. Curve, which lets users cheaply swap stablecoins on its platform, was hit by a reentrancy attack that allowed attackers to steal tokens from Curve, and lending and borrowing platforms Metronome and Alchemix.
Market Insight: Some Bet Against Volatility
There is a lot of market chatter about an impending volatility explosion in bitcoin. Still, some crypto traders retain a bias for shorting volatility — that is setting up strategies that bet against price turbulence.
Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, has primarily traded in the range of $29,000 to $30,000 since July 24. That’s below the $30,000-$32,000 range of the preceding four weeks. The cryptocurrency’s price hasn’t risen more than 4% in a single day since June 21.
As such, key metrics gauging bitcoin’s backward-looking realized volatility and estimated or implied volatility have tanked to multiyear lows.
Because volatility is said to be mean-reverting, and because increased volatility boosts options prices, some market participants are anticipating sudden and notable price turbulence and are considering buying BTC call or put options, which offer protection against bullish or bearish moves, to profit from the change. That’s known as the long volatility trade.
The chart shows monthly changes in the turnover on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange, by trading volume and open interest.
As the volatility meltdown continued, the cumulative turnover in crypto options, perpetual futures and standard futures segments declined by 27% to $37 billion in July.
Still, the exchange accounted for 88% of the global crypto options activity.
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Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments.
