Bitcoin $119K, Rate Cut Hopes, & Sora

Uptober did not disappoint - Bitcoin blasted past $119K, exactly as advertised.

This Week in Crypto

Bitcoin bulls came out swinging this week.

• Bitcoin surged above $119K for the first time since mid-August, briefly touching $119,455 yesterday.

• The rally was fueled by $676M in institutional ETF inflows on October 1. 

• Turns out October really is the most wonderful time of the year for crypto - historically, Bitcoin has a 73% chance of closing October in the green, with the last six consecutive Octobers all positive, delivering an average return of +27%.

And BNB continues to make headlines:

• BNB smashed through to a new all-time high of $1,111.61 today, up 7.45% in 24 hours and almost 18% for the week.

• The surge followed BNB Chain validators reducing minimum gas fees from 0.1 Gwei to 0.05 Gwei and slashing block intervals from 750 milliseconds to 450 milliseconds, making it one of the cheapest networks around. 

• And Kazakhstan’s state-backed Alem Crypto Fund named BNB as its first investment asset. 

October could be a big month for XRP.

• The SEC has final decisions due on eight XRP ETF applications from asset managers including Grayscale, WisdomTree, and Franklin Templeton.

• Analysts estimate that just $3-5B in first-year inflows could double XRP’s market cap and push it toward $5. 

This week’s wildest story is that the UK Metropolitan Police confirmed the largest cryptocurrency seizure in history. 

• UK police seized 61,000 Bitcoin currently worth about $7.2B. 

• Chinese national Zhimin Qian, nicknamed the "Bitcoin Queen," pleaded guilty after running a massive Ponzi scheme from 2014-2017 that defrauded over 128,000 victims in China.

This Week in TradFi

Wall Street’s main indexes jumped today, after some volatility due to the U.S. government shutdown.

• The federal shutdown has notably disrupted the flow of economic data, including the nonfarm payrolls report that was supposed to be released today.

• The report has been postponed, but investors are seeing a softening in the labor market, keeping hopes for another rate cut alive. 

• As of this morning, the Dow rose 0.59%, the S&P 500 rose 0.18%, and the Nasdaq lost 0.03%. 

On the international front:

• European shares saw their best weekly showing in five months, with healthcare and miners leading advances today - fueled by rising bets on the next Fed rate cut. 

  • The STOXX600 closed 0.5% higher at a record high for its third session in a row, bringing its weekly gains to nearly 3%.

• London’s FTSE 100 also saw its biggest weekly jump since April, closing at a record high today.

  • It finished 0.7% higher today, gaining 2.2% for the week.

• However, UK business activity grew at its slowest pace in five months in September, with companies and consumers putting big spending decisions on hold until the November budget, when they’ll know if there will be tax increases.

• Gold prices rose today, holding around record highs and heading for a seventh consecutive weekly gain - fueled by growing concerns about the economic impact of the U.S. government shutdown.

  • Spot gold was up 0.7% this morning, and up more than 3% this week.

This Week in Tech

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the release of Sora 2, an audio and video generator, succeeding last  year’s Sora. 

• The company also launched a social app called Sora, where users can generate videos of themselves and their friends to share, similar to TikTok.

• The app comes with an “upload yourself” feature, which allows users to drop themselves into Sora-generated scenarios. 

• Interestingly, the app considers a user’s Sora activity, their location, past engagement, and their ChatGPT conversation history when curating someone’s algorithm.

• The app was immediately a hit, despite being invite-only right now, immediately skyrocketing to the number 3 overall app on the Apple App store. And today it became the number 1 app on the App Store. 

Continuing the OpenAI news, the company sold $6.6B in shares held by current and former employees, pushing the company’s total valuation to $500B.

• This is the highest valuation ever achieved by a privately held company.

• Purchases of the shares included SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, and more.

• The cash went to individuals holding shares or options in OpenAI, potentially used as a retention tool in an era where Meta is poaching engineers with gajillion-dollar-offers. 

Tesla had its best quarter of deliveries ever, due to buyers rushing to take advantage of the $7.500 federal EV tax credit before it expires.

• Tesla delivered a little over 497,000 vehicles over the past three months, a 29% jump from the previous quarter and a 7% increase over this quarter last year. 

• This is great timing for the company. Before this, Tesla was on track to see a fall in global deliveries for the second straight year. 

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

• Anthropic has hired a new CTO, former Stripe CTO Rahul Patil.

• Perplexity has acquired AI design startup Visual Electric.

• Security compliance startup Oneleet has raised a $33M Series A, led by Dawn Capital.

• Gusto has acquired Guideline, a startup offering retirement plans to businesses, for around $600M.

Arch is building a 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.

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