August 7, 2023

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.

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.

Source: Deribit

- Omkar Godbole

It is now more important than ever to set industry standards and align on practical short-term and long-term objectives through pointed conversations with the best legal minds and Washington D.C.’s most important decision makers. 

Join us at State of Crypto: Policy and Regulation on October 24 in Washington D.C. for an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate, dissect and ultimately shape crypto regulatory frameworks that support a vibrant, secure and healthy future for the digital economy. 

Save 10% with code FM10. Learn more and register.