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Tag: asset manager

  • Why Publicly Traded Caliber Is Building a Chainlink Treasury

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    Publicly traded asset manager Caliber made its first significant buy of Chainlink (LINK) this week, adding 278,0111 LINK worth around $6.5 million to its treasury, it announced Thursday. 

    The Arizona-based firm has now acquired around $6.7 million worth of LINK in just over a month since announcing its Chainlink treasury strategy. While other firms are stacking assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, or XRP, Caliber saw something unique in LINK.

    “We found that Chainlink was the obvious choice for us,” Caliber CEO Chris Loeffler told Decrypt about the firm’s new connections to crypto. “It had institutional adoption, it had utility inside our actual business, and Chainlink was starting to announce some really sizable partnerships.”

    In addition to stacking LINK, the firm will look to utilize Chainlink’s network to bring valuable off-chain data used in its every day business on-chain, potentially reducing operating costs and increasing profitability in the process. One such prominent example for the firm is in valuations. 

    “Because we’re a public asset manager, every quarter we have to produce valuation work on all of our assets and all of our funds,” said Loeffler, who added that it is typically a complex and manual process. 

    “To value an apartment complex, you may need to have 10 points of data,” he said. “Maybe that’s comparable sales, vacancy rates, and current rental rates. Those pieces of data are critical to be plugged into a financial model that is run to produce the value every quarter.” 

    Using Chainlink’s network, though, the firm believes it will be able to bring that real-world data on-chain and better validate and automate its valuations, ultimately providing more transparency to its investors in the process. Loeffler said that further use cases like automated fund administration may be possible, as well.

    Chainlink operates as an oracle network, helping securely pull verified data from off-chain sources on-chain for integration with blockchains. The network recently partnered with the U.S. Department of Commerce to bring GDP data on-chain, and founder Sergey Nazarov has teased further integrations—and hopes to help aid with election integrity, as well. 

    To pursue its on-chain goals, Caliber is looking for the right person to join the firm. 

    “Our next step, as far as the implementation, is we’re looking for a key person who would be like a strategic hire inside of the company,” said Loeffler, who said the firm is looking for someone with experience in real estate tokenization and blockchain. 

    “I’d like to have that person hired and functioning before the end of the year,” he added.

    The 7 Largest Publicly Traded Ethereum Treasury Firms

    Though relatively new to the crypto ecosystem, Loeffler said the firm has been welcomed warmly by the community. 

    “The LINK Marines and the LINK community as a whole are just excited,” he said, making note of the rabid community of Chainlink investors that rally around the asset on social media. Loeffler’s X bio indicates he’s a “new recruit” to the LINK Marines. 

    “The fact that we’re not just building a treasury and being a treasury company, but we’re also aligned to integrating our real-world assets into blockchain and to utilize Chainlink’s technology—that resonated really well,” he added. 

    Shares of Caliber (CWD) are up more than 300% in the last month.

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  • Bitcoin Hits $35,000 for First Time Since 2022 on ETF Optimism

    Bitcoin Hits $35,000 for First Time Since 2022 on ETF Optimism

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    (Bloomberg) — Bitcoin extended a rally fueled by expectations of fresh demand from exchange-traded funds, reaching the highest price since May last year.

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    The largest digital asset rose as much as 11.5% to top $35,000 before paring some of the gain to trade at $33,918 as of 7:25 a.m. in London on Tuesday, taking its year-to-date rebound from 2022’s digital-asset rout to 105%.

    The possible approval in coming weeks of the first US spot Bitcoin ETFs is stoking speculative ardor for the token. Asset managers BlackRock Inc. and Fidelity Investments are among those in the race to offer such products. Digital-asset bulls argue the ETFs would widen adoption of the cryptocurrency.

    A US federal appeals court on Monday also formalized a victory for Grayscale Investments LLC in its bid to create a spot Bitcoin ETF over objections from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

    Read more: Grayscale Gets Court Order in Fight With SEC on Bitcoin ETF

    The SEC has so far resisted allowing ETFs that invest directly in Bitcoin, citing risks such as fraud and manipulation in the underlying market. The court ruling and flurry of applications from investment heavyweights to start spot funds stoked speculation that the agency will relent.

    ETF Ticker

    Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas flagged on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the iShares Bitcoin Trust “has been listed on the DTCC” with the ticker IBTC.

    BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, operates the iShares business. The DTCC is the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., which undertakes clearing and settlement in US markets.

    “This doesn’t mean it’s technically approved,” Balchunas said in an interview. “It’s not home free. But this is pretty much checking every box that you need to check before you launch an ETF. When we see a ticker added, those things are usually right before launch.”

    Bitcoin also surged 10% intraday at the start of last week on ETF hype. On that occasion, an erroneous report that BlackRock had won approval to launch a fund caused the move and the rally cooled once the mistake came to light.

    Ether, the second-largest token, jumped 6% to exceed $1,800 in Bitcoin’s slipstream on Tuesday. Smaller coins such as BNB, XRP and meme-crowd favorite Dogecoin initially climbed sharply before moderating.

    Coinglass data shows that about $387 million worth of crypto trading positions, mostly from speculators who were betting on lower prices, were liquidated in the past 24 hours.

    SEC Clampdown

    The SEC has already allowed ETFs that hold Bitcoin and Ether futures. But the agency overall has intensified a crypto crackdown following last year’s market crash and blowups like the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange, whose co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is on trial for fraud.

    Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Elliott Stein and James Seyffart have said “approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF looks inevitable” and that a batch of funds is likely to be given the green light, though the timing remains uncertain.

    Bitcoin remains below its pandemic-era, 2021 peak of almost $69,000, squeezed by rising interest rates that hit demand for risky assets. The token’s correlations with assets such as stocks, bonds and gold have ebbed lately, stoking questions about whether mainstream investors have disengaged.

    “Liquidity is somewhat better than before,” said Justin d’Anethan, head of business development in the Asia Pacific at crypto market maker Keyrock. “Prices have now recuperated and with it a certain amount of liquidity — still nothing compared to the euphoria of 2020-2021, though.”

    Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

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