Cheddar's weekly program "The Crypto Craze" tracks the latest trends in the cryptocurrency space. Cheddar Anchors Hope King and Brad Smith track the biggest movers of the week, and new ways investors might be able to capitalize on this market.
Coinbase users took to social media and Reddit to complain about glitches on the platform. Coinbase says the root of the problem is credit card processing managed by Visa. But, Visa says they didn't cause the problem. Russell Brandom, Reporter at The Verge, explains the implications of these problems on the platform.
"This was going on for three weeks, and we're talking about thousands of dollars disappearing from people's accounts. That's kind of the worst thing that could happen for a service," said Brandom. "Coinbase has to take a lot of blame for this."
Bitcoin rebounded this week, trading above $10,000 for a short time. It still remains far from its all-time high of $19,000.
Brandom says Coinbase is getting most of the pie right now, but it should expect more and more competitors to emerge as this market continues to grow.
There's a new way to invest in Blockchain technology. Amplify ETFs launched a blockchain-based technology fund under the ticker "Blok" in January. Amplify ETF explains the opportunity he sees in this market, and responds to criticism facing one of the companies in this ETF's holding.
"The smallest position in the fund is Riot Blockchain," said Magoon. "The fund is actively managed so I expect the fund portfolio managers are adjusting the portfolio. This was a controversial company that we did some research in." Shares of Riot Blockchain plummeted after CNBC released a report suggesting the re-branding of the company was done for personal gain.
"Now that news has come out it really seems like the momentum of this stock is going downward, and I'm expecting that come tonight when we update our holdings I wouldn't expect to see that stock in the portfolio based on this report," said Magoon.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
