First Mover Americas: Michael Saylor's Wager on Bitcoin Looking Better

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A rebound in the price of bitcoin has sharply narrowed losses for MicroStrategy's (MSTR) holdings of the cryptocurrency. When Michael Saylor stepped down almost exactly a year ago as CEO of MicroStrategy to become its executive chairman with a sole focus on investing in bitcoin, his digital-asset strategy was looking pretty bleak. He had already spent billions of dollars of MicroStrategy’s money to purchase bitcoin — and his paper loss amounted to about $1 billion. Today, though, MicroStrategy’s position looks brighter as bitcoin’s price has rebounded to above $29,000. Saylor has bought more. MicroStrategy now owns 152,800 bitcoins, up from 129,699 when he surrendered the CEO job. The new purchases have lowered MicroStrategy’s cost basis to $29,672. Bottom line: MicroStrategy, a software company that has become a proxy for bitcoin's price because of its largest holdings of the cryptocurrency, is nearly back in the black with bitcoin.

A spokesperson for Huobi is denying reports that several executives were arrested in China as outflow from the exchange picks up. Over the weekend, financial media in Hong Kong reported that several executives at Huobi had been taken away by police in China. According to data from Nansen.ai, Huobi’s stablecoin exchange balances have dropped by 33% in the last week, with traders withdrawing $49 million. Earlier, Colin Wu of Wu Blockchain had posted that “a large number of senior executives of offshore cryptocurrency exchanges … have been detained and investigated by the Chinese police” without adding specifics.

Curve Finance has recouped 73% of the funds stolen during a hack, which saw the platform lose over $73 million worth of various tokens. Over the past week, all $22 million in ether and ether derivatives stolen from Alchemix were returned. Curve, which lets users cheaply swap stablecoins on its platform, was hit by a reentrancy attack that allowed attackers to steal tokens from Curve, and lending and borrowing platforms Metronome and Alchemix.

Chart of the Day

• The chart shows monthly changes in the turnover on Deribit, the world's largest crypto options exchange, by trading volume and open interest.
• As the volatility meltdown continued, the cumulative turnover in crypto options, perpetual futures and standard futures segments declined by 27% to $37 billion in July.
• Still, the exchange accounted for 88% of the global crypto options activity.

- Omkar Godbole

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