A New Bitcoin Legend, Gold's Rally, and Payroll Espionage!

Bitcoin price has been sideways or downwards for much this year, but luckily Klarna and Doordash are allowing us to pay our Chipotle burrito’s via installments in the interim…

This Week in Crypto

Better news here with outflows dramatically subsiding recently. March 18th an 19th saw two solid days with a cumulative $500M taken in.

In case you missed it (reasonable if you don’t spend half your waking life on X) a new Bitcoin legend was born in Josh Mandell. He predicted the exact (to the penny) price of Bitcoin on March 14th, and has publicly traded $2M to $22M over the last year:

Elsewhere, the new administration continues to give attention to the crypto space. President trump made a short address at DAS NYC where he reiterated his goal of making the US a “Bitcoin superpower”.

If you read our previous editions, we spoke about the administrations target to look into "budget neutral” ways to acquire Bitcoin. An interesting tweet from Matthew Sigel of explores some ways to do so.

All of this is still very much in the early days and speculation, a large part of the equation here is what the executive branch can do without the involvement of Congress. What we can conclude though, in my view, is that the US will acquire additional BTC for the SBR - as Bo Hines, Executive Director of Digital Assets, literally says here. The open question is just how Lutnick and Bessant go about it.

Penultimately, this thread is worth a read!

And finally, some headlines that caught our eye:

• BlackRock’s head of digital assets says staking could be a ‘huge step change’ for ether ETFs

• Trump Media execs launch SPAC to raise $179M and is eyeing US based Crypto

• Kraken to acquire US retail futures platform NinjaTrader for $1.5 billion

• Strategy Leverages STRK ATM to Acquire 130 More Bitcoin

• Ripple CEO says legal battle with SEC 'has ended

This Week in TradFi

Another volatile week for stocks in the U.S.:

• Stocks rallied on Wednesday after the Fed, as expected, kept interest rates unchanged in the 4.25%-4.50% range. The central bank has indicated that two more 25bps rate cuts are likely later this year, with many investors expecting one in June. The Dow rose 0.92% and the S&P 500 rose 1.08% as a result. 

• But today Wall Street opened lower as investors continue to navigate the new world order of tariffs. The Dow fell 0.77% and the S&P 500 fell 0.78%. 

• Gold on the other hand is on track to hit its third straight weekly gain - fueled by increases in safe haven demand as economic uncertainties continue to plague countries across the world. 

On the international front:

• Canada’s retail sales dropped 0.6% in January - a bigger drop than expected - after increasing 2.6% in december. Investors expect February sales to fall around 0.4% as well. Retail sales are considered an early indicator of GDP growth, given this sector contributes nearly 40% to total consumer spending. But as Canadian businesses and consumers deal with the ongoing tariff war between Canada and the U.S., retail sales and therefore consumer spending and GDP will likely take a hit. 

• UK shares fell today, with travel and leisure stocks especially hit, after a major power outage at Heathrow Airport caused widespread travel disruptions. British Airways owner IAG fell 1%, while Wizz Air and EasyJet fell between 1.5-2%. Overall, the travel and leisure sector dropped 1.7%.

• The Russian central bank kept its interest rate steady at 21% today, but said more rate hikes are still possible depending on inflationary pressures. The bank had last raised its interest rate in October to the 21% rate that’s persisted until today - the highest level since the early 2000s. 

And some interesting news out of South Korea - the country is fully lifting their short-selling ban in the domestic stock market at the end of the month - for the first time in five years. The country’s Financial Services Commission said, “With recent improvements and policy efforts, it is expected that concerns about short-selling trades undermining fair pricing in the market will be resolved”.

This Week in Tech

We’ve had an absolutely crazy week, with quite possibly the biggest scandal to have ever happened in tech coming out - the Rippling/Deel espionage drama.

• The scandal started right at the beginning of the week, with HR company Rippling announcing a lawsuit against Deel on Monday morning. The 50-page complaint alleges racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and aiding and abetting a breach of fiduciary duty. 

• Long story short - the lawsuit centers around a single employee that Rippling claims was working as a spy for Deel. Allegedly said employee viewed channels related to Rippling’s competitive intelligence on Deel over 450 times since they were hired, and the employee’s top 10 channel previews were all sales-related channels, unrelated to their actual job - payroll operations. 

• After alarm about this employee grew, Rippling set up what’s known as a honeypot to try and prove what was going on. The company created a fake Slack channel (with no actual Rippling company members or discussion going on), and fed the name to three Deel execs - the company’s Chairman, head of U.S. legal, and outside counsel. They also suggested that the Slack channel contained some embarrassing details about Deel (there’s your honey!). The Rippling employee then did indeed search for that channel, which Rippling believes proves that the “spy” was in direct contact with high-level Deel executives. 

• And it gets crazier - when an independent solicitor tried to seize the employee’s phone by court order, the employee locked themselves in the bathroom and refused to come out. The employee apparently flushed their phone down the toilet, then left the office and “fled the scene”. 

Deel continues to deny all wrongdoing - but we’ll keep you updated as more information comes out!

And Google is also making history, making their biggest acquisition yet. 

• Alphabet is buying cloud security startup Wiz for $32B in an (wait for it) all-cash transaction. 

• The final deal is actually $33B, with Google allocating $1B in retention bonuses to make sure employees stay on with the company post-acquisition. 

• Wiz will remain an independent platform that will work across all cloud providers, not just Google Cloud Platform. 

• TechCrunch reports that Wiz is currently at $700M annual recurring revenue and is on track to double last year’s annual recurring revenue to $1B+. 

• This deal has taken a while to close - last year, Google offered to buy Wiz for $23B, but talks fell apart over antitrust concerns, Wiz’s autonomy under Google Cloud, and the potential price tag. Clearly they’ve been able to work out those concerns (and definitely the price tag concern!), with the final deal now locked in at $32B. 

• Google’s previous biggest acquisition was Motorola Mobility for $12.5B in 2011. 

And some slightly silly news: Klarna, the buy now, pay later lender has signed a deal with DoorDash. DoorDash customers can now either pay in full at checkout or split payments into four equal interest-free installments.

(Just in case we need to say it again, none of this is investment advice!)

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• Cloud technology startup Nerdio has raised a $500M Series C, with a valuation north of $1B. 

• BuildOps, a commercial services company, has raised a $127M Series C, also with a $1B post-money valuation. 

• Munich Re is acquiring digital insurance company Next Insurance for $2.6B.

Arch is building next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.