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: 1. NASDAQ EYES CRYPTO: Nasdaq (NDAQ) chief executive officer Adena Friedman has said the company is open to becoming a platform for trading cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, however regulation needs to be worked out before the company would add an exchange, CNBC reported Wednesday. “Certainly Nasdaq would consider becoming a crypto exchange over time. If we do look at it and say ‘it’s time, people are ready for a more regulated market,’ for something that provides a fair experience for investors,” she said, adding, “I believe that digital currencies will continue to persist it’s just a matter of how long it will take for that space to mature. Once you look at it and say, ‘do we want to provide a regulated market for this?’ Certainly Nasdaq would consider it.” Additionally on Wednesday, the company announced that Gemini, the cryptoexchange started by the Winklevoss twins, will use its surveillance software to monitor its marketplace. 2. IRAN BANK BANS CRYPTO: Iran’s central bank has banned the country’s banks from cryptocurrency trades due to money laundering concerns amid a currency crisis, Reuters reported Sunday. “Banks and credit institutions and currency exchanges should avoid any sale or purchase of these currencies or taking any action to promote them,” a central bank circular said. 3. GOLDMAN HIRES DIGITAL ASSET HEAD: Goldman Sachs (GS) has hired Justin Schmidt, a former senior vice president at quantitative trading firm Seven Eight Capital, to be the first head of digital asset markets in Goldman’s securities division, CNBC reported Monday. 4. TAIWANESE GRAPHIC CARD SHIPMENTS TO DECLINE: Taiwan-based graphics card makers are expected to see their shipments plunge over 40% month on month in April as channel distributors and larger mining farm operators have cut orders due to the crypto mining craze waning abruptly, Digitimes reported Wednesday. Mining farm operators expect mining rewards to pick up gradually in the third quarter as bitcoin and ethereum prices may rebound. Cryptocurrency revenues have been pointed to as reasons to be bullish on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) in select research. 5. CRYPTO CHATTER: On Monday, John Pfeffer, a partner at Pfeffer Capital, presented bitcoin as his idea at the Sohn investment conference. Pfeffer said bitcoin is better than gold “on every front” and could eventually be worth $700,000. “Bitcoin is the first viable candidate to replace gold the world has ever seen,” he said. Meanwhile, venture capitalist Tim Draper, who was an early investor in Tesla (TSLA), Hotmail and Skype, said bitcoin will be “bigger than all of those combined,” CNBC reported Monday. “This is bigger than the internet. It’s bigger than the Iron Age, the Renaissance. It’s bigger than the Industrial Revolution. This affects the entire world and it’s going to be affected in a faster and more prevalent way than you ever imagined,” Draper said, adding that he expects bitcoin to hit $250,000 within four years. Additionally on Thursday, Dan Morehead, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund Pantera Capital Management said bitcoin “is a screaming buy right now” in a Bloomberg interview. Conversely, in a Tuesday Recode post, Bill Harris, former CEO of Intuit (INTU) and founding CEO of PayPal (PYPL), called bitcoin “a scam.” Harris said, “In my opinion, it’s a colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen…And some cryptocurrencies are pure frauds. Ernst & Young estimates that 10% of the money raised for initial coin offerings has been stolen. The losers are ill-informed buyers caught up in the spiral of greed. The result is a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary families to internet promoters. And ‘massive’ is a massive understatement – 1,500 different cryptocurrencies now register over $300B of ‘value.’ It helps to understand that a bitcoin has no value at all.” CRYPTO STOCK PLAYS: Overstock (OSTK), DPW Holdings (DPW), Long Blockchain (LBCC), Kodak (KODK), Seven Stars Cloud Group (SSC), Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Longfin (LFIN), Pareteum (TEUM) and Social Reality (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 9.2% this week to $9,260 in U.S. dollars according to CoinDesk. WANT BITCOIN NEWS ALERTS?: To receive alerts on stories relating to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, Fly subscribers can enter “Bitcoin” into the “Add symbols” box of their portfolios.
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