Bitcoin (BTC) is riding high on a wave of positive sentiment as it prepares to take on $50,000. After a volatile weekend that saw a new all-time high, expectations are putting Bitcoin back in the spotlight as a fundamental level comes into play — what’s in store? Cointelegraph considers five factors that could serve to move the market in the coming days. Stocks gain while the dollar dives Stocks are climbing, building on a record-breaking rally that has seen many indexes already shoot higher than ever. Despite warnings that the good times may soon end, including from Warren Buffett’s market …

Electric car manufacturer Tesla has seen more than $55 billion wiped from its market cap since announcing the purchase of $1.5 billion in Bitcoin four days ago — but Twitter and MasterCard have headed in the other direction. Since Tesla’s announcement on Monday, the electric car giant’s stock price has dropped 7% from $869.52 ($834.6 billion market cap). It is currently trading at $811.66 ($779 billion market cap). While there may be other factors behind the share price drop, some investors, such as Baker Avenue Wealth Management chief strategist King Lip, are concerned that holding 8% of the company's cash …

Executives from companies involved in the recent controversy between hedge funds and retail investors from Reddit may be testifying at a House Financial Services Committee hearing next week. According to a Reuters report, two people familiar with the matter said executives from trading app Robinhood, investment manager Melvin Capital, and hedge fund Citadel are expected to testify in a congressional hearing scheduled for Feb. 18. Bloomberg reported that Citadel founder Ken Griffin is likely to be in attendance, as is Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. However, it is unclear at this time whether Melvin founder Gabriel Plotkin or anyone else from …

It seems to be the season of giving, and Bitcoin is doing just that, at least for its institutional backers, such as MicroStrategy, Galaxy Digital, Square and Marathon Patent Group, which got in somewhat early on the BTC gravy train. In this regard, PayPal revealed on Feb. 4 that its fourth-quarter profits for the year 2020 had increased by 200% as compared to the previous fiscal cycle, citing its two new offerings — i.e., a cryptocurrency tool and a “buy now pay later” feature — as being the primary drivers for its monumental growth. And even though PayPal did not …

Cryptocurrency markets have hit a significant milestone shortly after Elon Musk’s Tesla officially announced their investment in Bitcoin (BTC). For the first time in history, the crypto market has surpassed Alphabet’s GOOG and GOOGL in terms of market capitalization. On Feb. 10, the total crypto market cap hit $1.413 trillion, overtaking the market cap levels of Google class-A and class-C shares. At the time of writing, the market capitalizations of GOOGL and GOOG amount to $1.39 trillion and $1.404 trillion, respectively. Crypto market capitalization has been gaining momentum amid an ongoing crypto rally this year, breaking the $1 trillion mark …

The rise of interest in cryptocurrencies amid Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) bull runs often goes hand in hand with the proliferation of scams and manipulation schemes related to various altcoins. One of the main manipulation schemes running in the crypto markets is pump and dumps. These schemes artificially inflate the price of the asset to enable a select few to sell it at a higher price before it ultimately comes crashing down. What makes crypto markets more vulnerable to such schemes when compared with traditional equity markets is that cryptocurrency is an asset class that is void of underlying …

What happened to GameStop’s stock at the end of January will be remembered by investors for years to come, as it was probably the first time in the history of the “free market” that a group of self-described internet “degenerates” outsmarted a bunch of Wall Street pros at their own game. As a recap, on Jan 27, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply by over 2% — in large part due to the United States Federal Reserve announcing its move to maintain interest rates around the zero percent mark — shares of video game retailer GameStop (GME) and …

Was last week’s Reddit versus Wall Street stand-off really the “beginning of the end for centralized finance,” as Gemini founder Tyler Winklevoss described it? Or was it just a one-time instance of individuals coming together to right a perceived wrong — with no long-term economic consequences? As GameStop, a struggling videogame retailer, came under attack by hedge-fund short sellers, a coalition of individuals spearheaded by r/Wallstreetbets, a Reddit forum, jumped in to save GameStop by buying its shares, driving its stock price from $20 to as high as $483 — and doing some real damage to short traders in the …

The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies surged to $1.139 trillion on Feb. 4, just short of silver’s total market cap at $1.5 trillion. While the crypto market cap is still way below that of gold, Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone said in a report that Bitcoin (BTC) has found strong support at $30,000 and it may now rally to $50,000 and higher. However, some institutional investors who had invested at lower levels and are sitting on huge profits are taking some money off the table. United Kingdom-based Ruffer Investment Management said it had initially invested about $600 million in …

One of the most enduring cryptocurrency-related narratives revolves around the search of crypto’s definition as an asset class. Is Bitcoin (BTC) more of a digital currency or digital gold? Do its unique properties warrant viewing it as something completely distinct from the established categories of financial instruments? A recently published report by JPMorgan Chase’s strategists has sparked yet another round of such debates. The conclusions that the report presents are at odds with the “Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset” trope that has become somewhat conventional wisdom lately. The authors contend that the original cryptocurrency is actually not that great of …

Robinhood’s decision to halt the trading of several stocks, including GameStop and AMC, underscores a “huge flaw” in the way the internet exists today, according to Anne Fauvre-Willis, COO of the privacy-focused Oasis Labs. Control is at the crux of the issue, Fauvre-Willis tells Cointelegraph, referring to the way Web 2.0 interfaces require that users relinquish command of their assets. She explains: “At the end of the day, users of Web 2.0 are never in control – they don’t own their assets, they don't control their data, they’re simply renting space until whatever centralized service they use decides otherwise.” “For …

The U.S. dollar lost about 7% of its value in 2020, while Bitcoin rallied about 300% during the same period. As Bitcoin’s institutional adoption increases, United States companies may start to diversify their treasury with other stores of value, and Bitcoin (BTC) stands a good chance to garner a portion of it. Ark Invest’s latest report, "Bitcoin: Preparing for Institutions," shows that even a paltry allocation of 1% by companies from the S&P 500 could boost Bitcoin’s price by $40,000. However, analysts at Ar believe that the allocation is likely to be in the range of 2.5% to 6.5%, which …