Why Major Cryptocurrencies Are Having a Relatively Flat Week
A relatively flat week for the three major cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple's XRP. Canaccord Genuity Managing Director Michael Graham explains the latest trends in the market and his outlook for the year ahead.
Graham cites increased regulation in South Korea and China as driving prices down from all-time highs. "For the last couple week's we've been sort-of recovering from all that," explains Graham.
This week Coincheck confirmed it suffered what appears to be the biggest hack in cryptocurrency. The Japanese exchange says around tokens worth $533 million dollars were taken from the exchanges digital wallets. "I think the fact that the crypto markets are being resilient in the face of the biggest hack ever potentially for crypto exchanges is pretty interesting," said Graham.
Bitcoin still trading far from its all-time high around $20,000. Today, Bitcoin trading about 12 percent down from last week. Ethereum hovering just over $1,000, down about 6 percent over the course of the last week.
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.
