These crypto-related stocks have soared as much as 200% this year. here’s why

But Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, called for a crypto ban in the US

Find me on Twitter at @FrancesYue_ to share your thoughts on crypto, this newsletter or your personal stories with digital assets.

Gathering of miners

Bitcoin mining stocks are soaring, having suffered a tough year in 2022 thanks to high energy costs, lackluster bitcoin prices and high mining difficulty.

Riot Platforms Inc. RIOT,
+9.18%
shares are up about 119% so far this year, and rival Marathon Digital Holdings MARA,
+6.38%
shares jumped 132% over the same period. Ebang International Holdings Inc.EBON,
+8.44%
has seen its shares soar nearly 200% since the start of the year. Hive Blockchain Technologies HIVE,
+11.02%
shares jumped 183%, and Hut 8 Mining Corp. HUT,
+11.57%
has grown by 179% since the beginning of the year.

The rally echoed the rally in other risky assets – the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite COMP,
+3.25%
increased by 16% since the beginning of the year. It could also be attributed to improving fundamentals for crypto miners, analysts said.

While bitcoin is up 45% year-to-date, miners have seen their profit margins widen significantly, according to Andy Long, chief executive of White Rock Management. “Margins were very tight in December. Many miners had production costs that were uncomfortably close to the price of the coin,” Long told Distributed Ledger on a call.

Meanwhile, although bitcoin mining difficulty hit an all-time high on Wednesday, it hasn’t increased as much as some miners had expected, Long noted.

Mining difficulty measures how difficult it is to find a block of bitcoins – as the number increases, miners have to put in more computing power to mine a coin. The difficulty level is programmed to increase when there are more miners, and vice versa, to keep the bitcoin mining pace steady.

Global energy prices, which soared last year after Russia invaded Ukraine, have also fallen, thanks in part to a relatively mild winter in Europe and the continent’s conservation efforts. . “We look forward to a possibly more peaceful summer in terms of energy prices,” Long noted.

Phil Harvey, Managing Director of Sabre56, said while he doesn’t think the bear market is over, most miners will see breakeven or profit as long as bitcoin is trading above 18,000. $.

quote of the week

Munger once again slammed the crypto, this time in an op-ed in the the wall street journal Wednesday. He blamed the “miserable excess” of cryptocurrencies that are issued by private companies but then become publicly traded without prior government approval of the disclosures, and suggested the US should follow China to ban crypto.

Sometimes large chunks of crypto are sold to a promoter at a low price and inflated as the public buys “without fully understanding the pre-dilution in favor of the promoter,” Munger wrote.

MarketWatch’s Anviksha Patel write more here.

Doge jumped

Dogecoin has gained 9.6% in the past seven days, as the Financial Times reported on Monday that Twitter has advanced its efforts to build a payment system and crypto could be part of it.

Twitter applied regulatory licenses and built the software it needed to enable payments through the site, the report said. Musk expects the payment system to use fiat currencies first, but be designed in such a way that crypto functionality could potentially be added later, according to the report, citing unnamed sources.

The news reignited hopes among some crypto enthusiasts that the social media giant would provide more use cases for digital assets, especially for the Dogecoin meme token, of which Musk has been a longtime supporter.

Crypto at a Glance

Bitcoin prices have risen 3.9% over the past week and were trading at around $23,848 on Thursday, according to data from CoinDesk. Ether ETHUSD,
+1.89%
gained 3.8% over the same period to reach around $1,678, according to data from CoinDesk.

The biggest winners	Price	return within 7 days
To return	$1.75	97.9%
dYdX	$3.35	73.2%
Ghost	$0.63	53.8%
Base	$0.06	45.2%
Loop	$0.43	43.3%
		Source: CoinGecko as of February 2

The biggest declines	Price	%return in 7 days
Amount	$147.31	-5.5%
LEO token	$3.35	-5.5%
BitDAO	$0.55	-4.5%
Lido CAD	$2.42	-4.2%
Aptos	$17.72	-4.5%
		Source: CoinGecko as of February 2

Crypto companies, funds

Coinbase Global Inc. COIN Shares,
+23.99%
rose 49.6% for the week to around $79.37. MicroStrategy Inc. MSTR,
+9.04%
is up 18.8% so far on the week, to $291.50.

Crypto mining company Riot Blockchain Inc. RIOT,
+9.18%
jumped 20.8% to $7.41 on Thursday. Shares of rival Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. MARA,
+6.38%
fell 8.1% to $8.02 over the past week. Ebang International Holdings Inc.EBON,
+8.44%
rose 8.3% over the past week and was trading at $8.89.

Overstock.com Inc. shares OSTK,
+3.12%
were trading up 1.6% to $24.78 on the week.

Shares of Block Inc. SQ,
+5.40%,
formerly known as Square, gained 7.7% to $87.49 for the week so far. Tesla Inc. shares TSLA,
+3.78%
rose 17.8% to $189.14.

PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL,
+4.88%
advanced 6.7% during the week, to trade at around $86.18. Nvidia Corp. NVDA,
+3.66%
added 8.3% to $214.51 last week.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. shares AMD,
+4.34%
climbed 16% to $87.20 for the week.

Among crypto funds, ProShares Bitcoin Strategy BITO,
+1.35%
rose 2.6% on the week to $14.91 on Thursday, while its counterpart Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF BITI,
-0.81%
fell 3.7% to $26.96. Valkyrie Bitcoin BTF ETF Strategy,
+1.17%
edged up 0.9% over the past week to $9.48, while VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF XBTF,
+0.96%
climbed 4.4% to $24.32.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC,
+2.17%
rose 5.4% over the past five days to hit $12.82 on Thursday.

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