First Mover Americas: Goldman to Spend Big on Crypto Post-FTX

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Investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS) is looking to spend tens of millions of dollars on crypto firms whose valuations have been hit after the implosion of crypto exchange FTX. Goldman sees a need for trustworthy and established players in the crypto market. "We do see some really interesting opportunities, priced much more sensibly," Mathew McDermott, Goldman's head of digital assets, told Reuters.

Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped the most since July 2021. Miners are caught between rising costs and the declining price of bitcoin. The difficulty of mining a bitcoin block fell by 7.32% Tuesday. The adjustment at block height 766,080 is the biggest downward change since July 2021, data from mining pool BTC.com shows. That was when hordes of miners dropped off the network following China’s ban on the industry.

Gridless, a bitcoin mining company, has raised $2 million in a seed funding round led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s payment company Block (SQ) and venture firm Stillmark. Gridless helps generate new sources of energy in East African rural communities. The investment will support the company’s expansion of bitcoin mines across African markets. In its first year, Gridless has contracted five project pilots in rural Kenya with African hydroelectric energy company HydroBox.

Chart of the Day

(Source: TradingView/CoinDesk)
  • The chart shows the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury inflation-indexed security going back to July 2021.
  • The so-called real or inflation-adjusted yield has pulled back to the bullish trendline representing the rally since March.
  • A potential turn higher from the trendline might lead to renewed risk aversion to traditional markets and add to the gloom and doom in the crypto market.
  • Like gold, bitcoin moved in the opposite direction to the real yield early this year.

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