Welcome to this week’s crypto update.

It’s been an interesting week in the crypto and NFT worlds. Bitcoin just broke the all time high this morning getting close to $67,000 as of this writing. Bitcoin is up around 20% in the last week, largely on the heels of the first Bitcoin Futures ETF launching in the US on Monday. More on that below. 

One NFT collector turned down almost $10 million for an NFT. Younger people are getting more into crypto building, mining and creating. Check out this very inspiring video by young, Teresa Melvin but don’t worry. Older billionaires and old school corporate-types are also jumping on the bandwagon.

https://twitter.com/teresamelvinart/status/1450403648471769100?s=21

News

  1. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn thinks Bitcoin may be the best hedge for inflation
    Billionaire investor Carl Icahn warned Tuesday that the next market crisis may be on the horizon, and Bitcoin (BTC) could be the best hedge against inflation.“In the long run, we are certainly going to hit the wall. I really think there will be a crisis the way we are going, the way we are printing money, the way we are going into inflation. If you look around you, you see inflation all around you, and I don’t know how you deal with that in the long term,” Icahn said on Monday with CNBC.
  2. Bitcoin futures ETF debuts with highest-ever first day ‘natural’ volume of $1BProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy ETF saw around $1 billion in volume on its opening day, with 24.313 million BITO shares changing hands.
  3. Mariah Carey buys Bitcoin, hopes to empower fans through educationPop icon Mariah Carey is the latest celebrity to embrace Bitcoin (BTC) through the Winklevoss-led Gemini cryptocurrency exchange, offering another sign that digital assets are becoming mainstream.
  4. Chicago Board Options Exchange to aquire cryptocurrency market ErisX
    The news of institutional interest in the crypto market continues to gather steam with the announcement of the CBOE acquiring ErisX. The CBOE looks like they’re going to continue iterating on the Bitcoin futures product they launched in 2017 with this acquisition.
  5. Morgan Stanley CEO says he respects cryptocurrencies and praised blockchain
    Morgan Stanley CEO says he respects cryptocurrencies and praised blockchain
    “I don’t think cryptocurrencies are a fad. I don’t think that goes away,” he said on the bank’s third-quarter earnings conference call with analysts yesterday morning.
    “I don’t know what the value of bitcoin should or shouldn’t be, but these things aren’t going away. And the blockchain technology supporting is obviously very real and powerful.”

Meme / Tweet of the Moment

Some of you may have been hearing about DeFi lately. “DeFi” is short for “decentralized finance”. It threatens to upend how banks, money lenders and many other aspects of the financial system around the world works. If you would like a quick primer on DeFi, check out this article on Investopedia.

This post also appears on my Invest Stream Substack