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⚡JPMorgan's Bombshell🕵️

Croxroad

27 Aug 2023 — 4 min read

☕️ GM Dear Plebs!

Here is Crox Road, your daily dose of orange pill that will turn you into a Bitcoin Maxi.

The menu for today:

⏳ Bitcoin Resurgence: Prediction for Bitcoin's Short-Term Fate by JP Morgan

Yesterday, some folks at JPMorgan talked about how they're feeling positive about where the crypto markets are headed in the near future. They looked at some data about Bitcoin's future contracts and it seems like the crypto markets might not go down much in the short run. In simpler words, they think things might not get too bad for crypto in the coming little while.

Last week, things got a bit tough for the market. There was news that Elon Musk's company SpaceX sold off some of the Bitcoin it had, and a big company in China that deals with real estate went bankrupt. Because of these happenings, the prices of cryptocurrencies went down a lot, like a rapid drop. This caused people to sell off around $1.04 billion worth of contracts for future Bitcoin deals. This was a really big sell-off event, the biggest since the FTX fiasco.

Presently, if we look at Bitcoin, there's something called "future open interest." This is like a way to see how many deals for Bitcoin's future are still active. Right now, all those active deals add up to $8.4 billion. It used to be even higher, like $11.6 billion on August 17. So, it dropped down by 27% since then. This info comes from The Block, a place that collects data like this.

“JPMorgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote that we've mostly seen the end of long-position liquidations.”

Bitcoin is hanging out at $26,004, but it went down just a tiny bit, like 0.1%,in the last 24 hours. And if we look back over the past month, this big digital currency thing lost about 12% of its value.

A lot of folks still feel good about Bitcoin overall. Back sometime this year, there was a big surge of excitement when a huge financial company called BlackRock said it wanted to do something called a Bitcoin spot ETF. And just recently, Pantera, a big crypto fund worth $3.5 billion, said something interesting. They mentioned that if things go like they did before, the next time Bitcoin goes through a halving, its price could go up to $35k before that event, and shoot up to $148k after it's done. LOL this seems like a dream coming true.

👨‍💻 North Korean Hackers Could Unload Nearly 1,600 Stolen BTC: FBI

The FBI found out that a group of hackers from North Korea, called the Lazarus Group, has been up to some shady stuff. They've been stealing cryptocurrencies for quite a while, and it's added up to millions of dollars.

Now, these hackers might be getting ready to turn their stolen loot into real money. They could sell about 1,580 Bitcoins, which is worth almost $41 million right now. It's like they're trying to cash in on their dirty illegal grains.

Lazarus, that North Korean hacking group, has been linked to a bunch of cryptocurrency robberies in recent years. They pulled off some big ones, like the massive $600 million heist from Ronin Bridge. The FBI says these guys were also behind the theft of $60 million from Alphapo back in June this year. And not too long ago, they managed to breach Harmony's Horizon bridge in 2022, causing losses of around $100 million. So, they've got quite a record of sneaky actions in the crypto world.So, while the digital world offers opportunities, it seems Lazarus is turning them into a masterclass in high-tech mischief.

A person from the White House made a pretty serious claim this year. They said that North Korea was using money stolen by the Lazarus Group to pay for around half of their missile experiments. Chainalysis, did some math and estimated that this Lazarus group managed to steal about $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency in the year 2022 alone. It's like they're making quite a fortune through their activities. 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times’ rings a bell?

🏧 Bitcoin vs. Digital Payment Processor

So, there's this cool thing called online payment processors. They make it way easier for businesses to sell their stuff to people all around the world. Think of it as a way to set up shop on the global financial stage. These processors work with regular money (like dollars, euros, etc.) and also with Bitcoins, which is a type of digital money.

There are different payment processors out there. Some are like all-rounders, handling both regular money and Bitcoins. But then, there are special ones, like Speed, that are all about Bitcoin. They focus just on handling Bitcoin payments and all the stuff that comes with it. So, these processors make it super smooth for businesses to deal with money from all over, whether it's traditional or digital.