As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift. Catch up on this week's top stories highlighting the intersection of these old guard and new school areas of finance with this recap compiled by The Fly.
AMC TO TAKE CRYPTO FOR TICKETS: AMC (AMC) CEO Adam Aron said Wednesday that the movie theatre operator expects to accept ether, litecoin, and bitcoin cash as payment, in addition to bitcoin, by the end of the year. The executive said via Twitter: "Cryptocurrency enthusiasts: you likely know @AMCTheatres has announced we will accept Bitcoin for online ticket and concession payments by year-end 2021. I can confirm today that when we do so, we also expect that we similarly will accept Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash."
MICROSTRATEGY REPORTS Q3 BITCOIN PURCHASES: In a Monday regulatory filing, MicroStrategy (MSTR) announced that during the third quarter of the company's fiscal year to date, the company purchased approximately 8,957 bitcoins for approximately $419.9M in cash, at an average price of approximately $46,875 per bitcoin. As of September 12, the company held approximately 114,042 bitcoins that were acquired at an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.16B and an average purchase price of approximately $27,713 per bitcoin. As previously disclosed, the company entered into an Open Market Sale Agreement with Jefferies as agent, pursuant to which the company may issue and sell shares of its class A common stock, having an aggregate offering price of up to $1B from time to time through Jefferies. On September 13, the company announced that during the third quarter of the company's fiscal year to date, the company had issued and sold an aggregate of 555,179 shares under the sale agreement, at an average gross price per share of approximately $727.64, for aggregate net proceeds to the company of approximately $399.9M.
AULT GLOBAL TAKES ANTMINER DELIVERY: Ault Global Holdings (DPW) announced Tuesday that its wholly owned subsidiary, Ault Alliance, has taken delivery of 1,000 S19j Pro model Antminers. On February 1, the company announced that it was resuming bitcoin mining through the acquisition of 1,000 new S19 Pro Antminers. The new Antminers will be deployed at the company's Michigan data center, which will begin during the current month and is expected to be completed on or before October 15. Alliance Cloud Services, a majority-owned subsidiary of Ault Alliance, acquired the Data Center in January.
COINBASE SELLOFF ‘OVERDONE’: Piper Sandler analyst Richard Repetto said in a Tuesday investor note that despite holding an 86% correlation to the price of bitcoin since the company's initial public offering, Coinbase (COIN) shares have fallen 4% quarter-to-date while bitcoin and ether prices have risen 28% and 43%, respectively. The underperformance for Coinbase accelerated in the past six trading days after news broke of the Wells notice from the SEC, added the analyst. He believes the recent selloff is overdone and reiterated an Overweight rating on the shares with a $335 price target. Repetto said the company's decision to delay the Coinbase Lend product launch until October does not impact his estimates. He also thinks the Q3 consensus earnings estimate is too low.
MARATHON, RIOT PRICE TARGET RAISES: B. Riley analyst Lucas Pipes raised the firm's price target on Marathon Digital (MARA) to $87 from $54 and kept a Buy rating on the shares on Wednesday. He also raised the firm's price target on Riot Blockchain (RIOT) to $82 from $51 and kept a Buy rating on the shares. The analyst increased estimates for digital asset mining companies. The changes reflect the slower than anticipated increase in the total network hashrate following the crackdown on digital asset mining in China earlier this summer, Pipes said. The analyst assumes that the majority of Chinese miners taken offline during this summer are re-domiciled by the middle of 2022. Due to the combination of a higher price assumption and a lower network hashrate assumption, he raised price targets materially.
CRYPTO STOCK PLAYS: Cryptocurrency revenues have been pointed to as reasons to be bullish on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) in select research. Overstock (OSTK), Ideanomics (IDEX), Riot Blockchain, Pareteum (TEUM) and SRAX (SRAX) are other stocks that have been touted, or promoted themselves, as a way to play the crypto theme.
PRICE ACTION: As of time of writing, bitcoin rose roughly 4% this week to $47,344 in U.S. dollars, according to TradeBlock.
Bitcoin
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Bitcoin
+
Bitcoin
+
Ethereum
+
Dogecoin
+
Litecoin
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AMC Entertainment
-0.225 (-0.49%)
MicroStrategy
-5.32 (-0.84%)
Ault Global Holdings
-0.045 (-1.80%)
Coinbase
-1.9 (-0.78%)
Marathon Digital
-0.25 (-0.69%)
Riot Platforms
+0.17 (+0.58%)
AMD
-0.8 (-0.75%)
Nvidia
-0.09 (-0.04%)
Overstock.com
+1.705 (+2.42%)
Ideanomics
+0.015 (+0.69%)
Pareteum
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Srax
+ (+0.00%)