Author: NBTC

Welcome to our institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week: Dovile Silenskyte provides an alternative to the “bitcoin as a risk asset” narrative. Joshua de Vos shares insights and analysis on global exchanges. Top headlines institutions should pay attention to by Francisco Rodrigues. CoinDesk 80 Leads as Crypto Outperforms Across Asset Classesin Chart of the Week. Thanks for joining us! -Alexandra Levis Expert Insights Bitcoin vs. gold: 26% relative undervaluation By Dovile Silenskyte, director of digital assets research, WisdomTree For years, markets have struggled to classify bitcoin. Currently, the dominant media narrative tends to treat bitcoin as a high-beta…

With the S&P 500 pushing past 7,000 to fresh record highs, its chart is drawing striking comparisons to the Dot-com bubble era. Notably, the index closed Friday at 7,126, up 1.2% on the day and nearly 4% year-to-date. S&P 500 YTD price chart. Source: Google Finance Analysis shows the current trajectory closely resembling the early-2000s market cycle, highlighting parallels between the dot-com boom and today’s AI-driven rally. The comparison contrasts the 2000 to 2003 peak, when the index rose to about 1,570 before plunging to roughly 830, with a projected path from 2025 to 2029. In the current cycle, the…

Shiba Inu lead ambassador, Shytoshi Kusama sparked expectations in the $SHIB community after he updated his X location to “wiring features&counting down.” Kusama resumed activity on X on April 22 after a brief silence. Aside from interacting with tweets from the crypto community, Kusama also updated his bio and X location, with the recent update marking the third location change in days. First, Kusama’s location read “Ready to reveal what’s next,” which he changed to “wiring features” before the newest update, which now reads “wiring features&counting down.” @ShytoshiKusama, Image: x.com The Shiba Inu lead ambassador continues to engage with the…

XRPL Connects With the AI Economy as x402 Brings $XRP & $RLUSD Payments to Autonomous Agents The intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence is entering a new phase as the $XRP Ledger (XRPL) joins the emerging agentic economy through its integration with x402, an open payment standard designed for autonomous AI transactions. According to t54.ai, a platform building trusted infrastructure for AI agents, XRPL is now supported on x402, allowing AI agents to make payments using $XRP and Ripple’s $RLUSD stablecoin for services such as API access, AI inference, and computing resources. Well, the integration is enabled through the x402…

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, has drawn investor attention back to bullish expectations by rising above its 200-day moving average, a crucial point in technical analysis. This technical signal was last seen in September 2020, after which Bitcoin entered a strong bull market. In technical analysis, the 200-day moving average is among the most commonly used indicators for determining the long-term trend direction of an asset. Bitcoin’s break above this level is considered a significant development, signaling a potential strengthening of the market’s medium- to long-term bullish momentum. Analysts note that this breakout has historically been associated with increased investor confidence…

Stablecoins, the $300 billion class of digital dollars, may have started as a faster way to move money across the globe, but companies are now asking a different question: what can they actually do with them? That shift is driving a new phase of adoption, according to Chunda McCain, co-founder of Paxos Labs, who says the industry is moving beyond basic infrastructure toward real business use cases. “The first step was getting a stablecoin,” McCain said in an interview with CoinDesk. “The next question is: what now?” Last week, Paxos Labs underscored that direction by raising $12 million in a…

Teucrium has officially launched a 2x long $BNB futures ETF, a groundbreaking product for cryptocurrency investors. This new fund trades under the ticker XBNB. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) announced the launch on X today. The product aims to amplify returns for those bullish on Binance Coin ($BNB). Teucrium $BNB Futures ETF: A Closer Look Teucrium, an independent ETF issuer, brings this leveraged product to market. The 2x long $BNB futures ETF seeks to deliver twice the daily performance of $BNB futures. This structure uses derivatives, not spot holdings. Investors gain exposure without directly owning the cryptocurrency. The product targets…

As AI agents become increasingly capable of completing tasks on behalf of users, one problem continues to stand in the way: payments. Most APIs still rely on subscriptions, API keys, billing accounts, and traditional payment rails that were never designed for autonomous software. The Algorand Foundation wants to change that. The organization has launched the Global x402 Challenge, a five-month competition aimed at developers building pay-per-request services powered by x402, an emerging protocol designed to allow AI agents to pay for online services directly through internet requests. The competition features a prize pool of $100,000 and 500,000 $ALGO and will…

Metaplanet (3350), Japan’s largest corporate bitcoin holder and the world’s third-largest bitcoin treasury company holding 40,177 BTC on its balance sheet, has confirmed a delay in its planned preferred share listing. CEO Simon Gerovich discussed the complexity of navigating Japan’s underdeveloped preferred equity market as the primary reason for the hold-up. The company’s planned instrument would be only the seventh listed preferred in Japan, Gerovich said, and, notably, the first-ever perpetual preferred share in the market. Metaplanet announced back in November a two-tier listed preferred share class, Mars and Mercury. The move came after Strategy launched its own preferred shares,…

The average Web3 VC pitch sounds like ours did three years ago. “We have deep relationships across the ecosystem.” “We add value beyond capital.” “Our network is our edge.” It’s not that any of these statements is a lie; it’s that everyone says them, which makes them effectively meaningless. Liquidity providers (LPs) have heard this pitch so many times that the words have lost all shape. And yet somehow, the industry just keeps photocopying the same deck. Impressive logo slide. Vague thesis. Three bullet points about “value add.” A track record that, for most emerging managers, doesn’t yet exist. Repeat…