MicroStrategy Owns 0.75% of All Bitcoin

GM friends. 

158,245 / 21,000,000 = 0.75%.

Pour your morning cup with sugar and cream, because here’s your mid-week crypto update.  ☕️📰

Here’s what’s in today’s issue:

• David shares his thoughts on Micro Strategy buying more Bitcoin, Coinbase rivalling Satoshi as the largest BTC holder, could crypto 12x within 5 years, Binance exiting Russia and a crypto hack round-up.
• Rekt Capital has the latest technical analysis for you on the market. 
• Erik has an article on the possibility of Bitcoin having ZK-Rollups.
• In case you missed it by Rebecca.

---

Thanks to Phemex for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

Phemex presents an extraordinary event, offering Active Traders a chance to win up to 1000 BTC.

Trade and Mint your PSP today, submit an accurate prediction of what the BTC price will close at on Oct 31st, and claim your crypto fortune!

Start Trading Now

---

Saylor’s MicroStrategy Buys More Bitcoin 

Michael “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” Saylor. This guy is an animal. 

MicroStrategy’s SEC Form 8-K was filed on Monday. Therein, the company disclosed that it purchased 5,445 bitcoin between August 1st through September 24th. MicroStrategy paid $147.3 million for these bitcoin for $27,053 per coin.

This latest buying round means MicroStrategy now owns 158,245 bitcoin in total, with a current valuation at $4.14 billion.

The company has shelled out $4.68 billion for its bitcoin (total average purchase price at $29,582 per coin), meaning the company’s investment currently has an unrealized loss of $540 million. 

Microstrategy owns more bitcoin than any other publicly traded company. In fact, the company now owns 0.75% of all bitcoin that will ever exist. The price implications of this are staggering. 

Coinbase Rivals Satoshi as Largest BTC Holder

Saylor might think he’s the man, but his bitcoin stack is peanuts compared to the amount held by Coinbase. 

That’s because Arkham Intelligence revealed last week that Coinbase currently holds approximately 1 million bitcoin across millions of user addresses.

To be clear, Coinbase doesn’t own 1 million bitcoin, but rather is holding this amount for its customers and clients.

Coinbase’s 1 million is currently valued at $26.2 billion, and it represents 4.7% of 21 million.

It’s believed that Satoshi Nakamoto holds about 1 million bitcoin, which means that Coinbase and Nakamoto are now tied as bitcoin’s largest holders. 

Bernstein Estimates 12X in Crypto Fund Management Within 5 Years

AllianceBernstein, the $646 billion dollar asset manager, is out with a new crypto report this week. 

AllianceBernstein corporate headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee 

In it, Bernstein analysts estimate that the crypto fund management industry in the US could grow by 12X within the next five years. Bernstein says the industry’s current size is roughly $50 billion, and they’re thinking it could reach $650 billion by 2028. 

Thus, Bernstein believes the crypto fund management industry could go from a “cottage industry” to a “fully formalized, regulated asset management sector” within the decade. 

And what’s the major catalyst, according to Bernstein? The SEC’s approval of a spot bitcoin ETF. 

The asset manager says an approval would open the institutional money floodgates because the larger financial and financial services industry would effectively dive in. 

Now, Bernstein does not think that 100% of the $600 billion would go directly to bitcoin. Rather, they think it will spread between bitcoin, ethereum, and a select number of other cryptos.

Moreover, the money wouldn’t just be invested in a few ETFs, but instead disburse between ETFs, and other private and public crypto management funds. 

Binance Bows to the West and Exits Russian Market

Binance announced Wednesday that the company is exiting the Russian market. And make no mistake, this is directly related to the proxy war between the West and Russia via Ukraine. 

The business details are as follows:

• Binance is selling its Russian business to CommEx crypto exchange (CommEx is brand new as it officially launched on Tuesday).
• Binance will have no revenue split, nor any option for future stock buybacks from the sale.
• Thus, Binance’s Russia exit is a complete and total withdrawal.

But why is this happening? 

Binance is caving to pressure from the U.S. security-state apparatus, likely hoping that obeying U.S. marching orders on Russia will curry favor for its Western businesses.

I highly doubt the latter ever occurs. 

Remember that the U.S. slapped a series of economic sanctions on Russia in response to the latter’s invasion of Ukraine. And in an effort to enforce those sanctions, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched an investigation as to whether Russians were using Binance to move money abroad. 

Then last month, the Wall Street Journal dropped a series of articles claiming that the DOJ’s suspicions were true. Binance responded by removing specific sanctioned Russian lenders from its platform. And fast forward to today, the company is exiting the market. 

The backdrop of all this is the mistreatment of Binance by U.S. regulators, as both the CFTC and SEC have lawsuits against the company. I’m not at all optimistic that these regulators will start treating Binance better in light of the Russian exit.  

And one last note. CommEx has already stated that the company will not be onboarding users from the USA, EU, or other related jurisdictions. I think we all know why. 

Crypto Hacks and Scams Round-Up

Alright, we’ve discussed the good and bad. Now it’s time to cover the ugly. 

A few high-profile crypto hacks and scams have occurred over the last several days. Here’s what you need to know: 

• Mixin Network lost $200 million in a hack. The loss occurred on September 23rd, when hackers attacked the database of Mixin’s cloud service provider. While Mixin claimed it was a decentralized network, what’s not in dispute is that the protocol had a central point of failure: its Google cloud service. Mixin markets itself as a fast P2P transaction network. 
• Crypto exchange HTX, formerly known as Huobi, was hacked for $8 million over the weekend. That’s according to Tron’s Justin Sun, who also serves as HTX’s advisor. Sun said the hack was immediately identified, appropriate security measures were initiated, and that all customer funds are safe. Given the relatively small amount lost, Sun further said that the exchange will fully eat the loss so that all customers are made whole. 
• Hong Kong (HK) authorities are now working with Interpol to track down persons involved in the JPEX crypto exchange scam. It all started on September 13th when HK authorities alerted the public that they’d received more than 1,000 complaints about lost customer funds on the exchange. After the alert was issued, JPEX shuttered its yield-bearing products, raised its crypto withdrawal fee to 999 USDT, and blamed third-party market makers for freezing their funds. Then the scammers went running. Currently, HK police say 11 suspects have been taken into custody, and they’ve received 2,265 complaints with stolen funds totalling $178 million. 

---

In today’s edition of the Rekt Capital Newsletter, the following cryptocurrencies will be analysed and discussed:

• Chainlink (LINK)
• Woo Network (WOO)
• Ethereum (ETH)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Solana (SOL)
• Thorchain (RUNE)

Let’s dive in.

Chainlink — LINK/USDT

Over the past few weeks, we have periodically shared updates on LINK starting on August 16th where we assumed price would drop an additional -17% to the downside to revisit the Range Low support:

On August 23rd LINK has successfully retested the Range Low as support once again:

Here was last week’s update:

And finally — here is today’s update:

LINK has perfectly rebounded from the Range Low and has come very close to revisiting the Range High resistance.

LINK has rallied +38% since rebounding from the bottom of its range.

Technically, any upside wicking beyond this point could get closer to signalling the end of the intra-range move.

Overall, anything near, at, or just beyond the Range High resistance has been the point of maximum financial risk for Chainlink — at least over the past year-or-so that LINK has been inside this range.

Of course, at some point LINK will breakout from this Macro Range.

But until that occurs here are a few things to keep an eye on.

Number one:

Is LINK forming a new Lower High and Higher Low within the range?

What this may precede is lessening volatility within the range due to price compression within this emerging triangular market structure.

Price compression precedes volatility which is good for long-run as that would probably precede a breakout from the Macro Range.

However this may change the complexion of the intra-range swing trades that we’ve been publicly and consistently performing here in the Newsletter.

That is, instead of rebounding from Range Low and rejecting at Range High, price may transition to a rebound from Higher Low to reject at the Lower High — and price could continue this consolidation within the blue pattern as price coils in towards the apex of the triangle in preparation for a breakout move.

The other thing to keep in mind — number two:

Is Chainlink on the cusp of breaking its Macro Downtrend?

A Weekly Close above the Macro Downtrend and a successful retest of it as new support would confirm an end to the Downtrend and the beginning of a new Macro Uptrend.

And if that occurs — then the above analysis on the blue triangle could become invalidated as price would have a better chance at breaking out from the Macro Range.

However — if LINK fails to confirm a breakout beyond the Macro Downtrend then price may have to drop lower inside its Macro Range for further consolidation.

Failure to Weekly Close above the Macro Downtrend would end up as an upside, FOMO wick beyond the Macro Downtrend resistance which is what happened a few months ago and that preceded a rejection.

Key takeaways:

• Monthly Close below the Range High resistance of the Macro Range would probably a) sentence LINK to further price consolidation inside the range and b) as a result, see downside within the range to revisit the Range Low over time
• Weekly Close below the Macro Downtrend would likely confirm further downside inside the Macro Range; Weekly Close above the Macro Downtrend could see price challenge the Macro Range High resistance for a Range Breakout.

Woo Network — WOO/USDT

WOO is running out of the time to reclaim the bottom of this blue triangle.

WOO needs to reclaim this blue base as support to enable a rally up to the blue diagonal resistance of the structure.

And here’s why it needs to do this in the next coming days:

Because last month WOO Monthly Close below the black $0.174 level and this month it looks like WOO has relief rallied to turn that level into new resistance.

This looks very similar to BTC:

And if both WOO and BTC can’t reclaim their respective black monthly levels, perhaps they will both act as resistance reject them into the next immediate Monthly level below.

For BTC this next Monthly level resides at ~$23300 (orange) but for WOO the next one is $0.135 (lower black).

But the reality is that if BTC indeed drops by $3000 into ~$23300, it’s quite possible WOO will downside deviate below its $0.135 black level altogether into the $0.12 bottom that WOO formed earlier this year.

---

Go Premium to Keep Reading

Subscribe to the Wealth Mastery Premium Investor Report to read the rest of this article AND gain full access to the premium archives.

---

ZK-Rollups on Bitcoin

ZK-rollups are a technology that offloads computationally intensive work from a main blockchain to a separate layer.

They bundle multiple transfers into a single proof which is then submitted on-chain.

Originally developed for the purpose of scaling Ethereum, it is now conceivable that they come to Bitcoin too.

It would scale Bitcoin without compromising on decentralization.

TO READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK HERE – “ZK-Rollups on Bitcoin“

---

Crypto Market News

• MicroStrategy has bought another 5,445 bitcoins for $147M bringing its total holdings to 158,245 bitcoins for a cost of $4.68 billion. Source
• Huobi’s HTX crypto exchange has been hacked and seen $7.9 million drained from the platform. Source
• Morgan Creek Capital CEO has said a spot Bitcoin ETF would bring $300 billion into the market. Source
• US chain Walmart plans to “reinvent retail” by expanding its metaverse strategy to combine physical and digital shopping experiences. Source
• Standard Chartered’s crypto arm Zodia Custody is set to offer staking services to institutions in partnership with OpenEden. Source
• European crypto asset manager, CoinShares, has launched a new hedge fund division which expands its reach to US investors. Source
• Billionaire investor Tim Draper has launched a crypto accelerator called Draper Goren Blockchain. Source
• Bybit will suspend its UK operations on October 1 due to the new ad regulations kicking in from October 8. Source
• Coinbase has received its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance registration from the Bank of Spain. Source
• Kraken has received money license registrations from the Central Bank of Ireland and the Bank of Spain. Source
• Google Cloud has expanded to 11 new blockchains including Avalanche, Arbitrum, Ethereum’s Gorli testnet, Fantom, Polkadot and Polygon. Source
• JP Morgan’s Chase Bank will no longer allow crypto transactions in the UK via a debit card or bank transfer. Source

Coins and Projects

• The Bitcoin Network gets a Friend[.]tech lookalike with the launch of Alpha, a community-based social token. Source
• Bitcoin mining power can now be traded on Arbitrum following the launch of Lumerin, a hash power marketplace. Source
• Bitcoin Ordinal’s creator has proposed to change the protocol’s numbering system to simplify the code. Source
• Bitcoin is being used to fight election fraud in Guatemala as the Supreme Election Tribunal is timestamping documents on the blockchain. Source
• Mt. Gox trustee has extended the repayment deadline of its 142,000 bitcoins by a year to October 31, 2024. Source
• Tether has acquired a stake in a German-based Bitcoin miner called Northern Data Group. Source
• Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade will be delayed until early next year if it’s not deployed on the public testnet in November. Source
• Paypal’s Venmo app will soon offer its USD stablecoin, PYUSD. Source
• Polygon Labs has proposed facilitating Celo’s migration to Ethereum using its Chain Development Kit (CDK). Source
• Coinbase’s Base network has introduced a security monitoring system for the Optimism ecosystem called Pessimism. Source
• Coinbase Pay has been integrated into Aptos’ Petra crypto wallet to make converting fiat into crypto and vice versa much easier. Source
• Arbitrum DAO has taken $56M in unclaimed ARB tokens from its airdrop to its treasury. Source
• Binance wallet has spent almost $1M in ETH gas fees in 24 hours according to Etherscan. Source
• Binance is planning to delist stablecoins in Europe by June 2024 in order to comply with the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) law. Source
• Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) has launched on Arbitrum. Source
• Chainlink is downplaying worries from the community after quietly reducing the number of signers required on its multi-sig wallet from 4-of-9 to 4-of-8. Source
• Near Foundation CEO Marieke Flament has resigned and will be replaced by Near Foundation’s general counsel, Chris Donovan. Source
• Polkadot developers are planning an update that will expand the number of parachain ecosystems to 1,000, up from its current limit of 100. Source
• Solana’s Friend[.]tech fork called Friendzy has seen $920K in cumulative volumes in its first week. Source
• Balancer has been hacked for $238K due to what the team believe to be a social engineering attack on its DNS service provider. Source
• Wormhole has integrated Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) allowing USDC to be transferred between Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Source
• Mixin network has been hacked for $200M and the founder has outlined a compensation plan which only reimburses users up to 50% of assets. Source

Macro News

• The US Federal Reserve has kept interest rates the same between the range of 5.25-5.5%. Source
• Pressure mounts on US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to avoid a government shutdown. Source
• JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said the world may not be ready for US interest rates to rise to 7%. Source
• The CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act is one step closer to preventing the US from issuing a CBDC after being passed in the House Financial Services Committee. Source
• The Bank of England has kept its interest rate the same at 5.25% for the first time since December 2021. Source
• Christine Lagarde, chief of The European Central Bank (ECB) has said its digital euro CBDC is at least two years away. Source
• Digital yuan has added prepaid Mastercard and Visa top-ups as payment options. Source

---

Thank you so much for your support, and I truly hope that today’s issue will give you insights needed to help you master your wealth.

If you are reading this it means you are on the free version of the Wealth Mastery Investor Report, which is great for news and tips on the crypto markets.

If you really want to take advantage of fastest growing asset class EVER, I highly recommend you to check out my new Altcoin course: Mastering Altcoin Investing

In this course we’ll teach you all about how to spot, choose and acquire the winning altcoins of the next bull market. 

Learn how to build your portfolio so that growth is ensured and risk is mitigated. Let me help you build a strategy that’ll change your life forever in the upcoming bull run.

Are you ready to make it?

See you next time!

Lark and the Wealth Mastery Team

---

💰 BINANCE: BEST EXCHANGE FOR BUYING CRYPTO IN THE WORLD 👉 10% OFF FEES & $600 BONUS

🚀 BYBIT: #1 EXCHANGE FOR TRADING 👉 GET EXCLUSIVE FEE DISCOUNTS & BONUSES

🔒 BEST CRYPTO WALLET TO KEEP YOUR ASSETS SAFE 👉  BUY LEDGER WALLET HERE

📈 TRADING VIEW: BEST CHARTING SOFTWARE ON THE INTERNET 👉 JOIN NOW

1️⃣ COINLEDGER: #1 CRYPTO TAX SOFTWARE 👉 IF YOU OWN OR TRADE CRYPTO YOU NEED THIS

---

Wealth Mastery (Lark Davis, and the Wealth Mastery writing team) are not providing you individually tailored investment advice. Nor is Wealth Mastery registered to provide investment advice, is not a financial adviser, and is not a broker-dealer. The material provided is for educational purposes only. Wealth Mastery is not responsible for any gains or losses that result from your cryptocurrency investments. Investing in cryptocurrency involves a high degree of risk and should be considered only by persons who can afford to sustain a loss of their entire investment. Investors should consult their financial adviser before investing in cryptocurrency.

You can find a full disclosure of all my crypto & venture investments here.