Decentral Block Post

GPT-4, the latest version of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, believes the events of the last seven days could be bullish for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Cosmos (ATOM), according to an AI-trading experiment run by Cointelegraph. 

The experiment is aimed at understanding GPT-4’s potential biases towards certain cryptocurrencies, how the events of last week could impact investment decisions, and whether it can adjust strategy to eventually turn a profit.

The experiment began on March 17, instructing the chatbot to allocate $100 to “make as much money as possible in the shortest time.” The prompt had to be written in a way so that GPT would be comfortable giving out trading instructions.

As GPT-4 knowledge and training is current only to September 2021, Cointelegraph fed it with year-end round-ups for 2021 and 2022, along with its Markets News and most read stories over the past seven days to understand how it would invest based on the most recent events.

It noted that the current state of the crypto market has been volatile, with “various factors” influencing prices.

The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)-operated golf startup, LinksDAO is primed to become the new owner of the Spey Bay Golf Club in Scotland after successfully winning a bid to buy the course initially listed for just over $900,000.

After winning the bid, the DAO has entered into an exclusivity agreement with the vendor and will look to formally close the deal in early April.

In the meantime, it is undergoing its “due diligence” phase before it officially puts pen to paper, according to CEO Jim Daily in a Twitter Spaces held on March 16.

While the initial listing was a tick over $900,000, a report from Golf Digest suggested the final sale price is expected to be higher. Links CEO Daily said that they’re not planning on revealing the purchase price until the contract is signed.

LinksDAO put in the highest offer over “several other potential buyers,” the report added.

In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Justin Kramer, CEO of Badgerland Home Crypto Mining and a long-time cryptocurrency investor. When he is not attending to his own mining rigs, Kramer provides consultation services to home-based operations and larger startups on how to set up mining farms.

We start things off with miner prices and how they have changed in the last few months. Have the prices gone up or down, and what kind of impact does Bitcoin (BTC) have on prices? Which miners are the most in-demand right now, and who is buying them — small-scale miners or larger operations?

Mining operations that paid extremely high prices for mining rigs, which are now not worth even close to the same amount, how are they managing in this market? What is their plan for getting their investments back? Is it a lost cause at this point since the prices of the coins they currently mine are not as high as they used to be? Is it still worth it to pay those high electricity costs and keep mining?

United States President Joe Biden announced a new budget recently that also includes a whooping 30% tax on the electricity used for cryptocurrency mining operations. We ask Kramer for his thoughts on this and what exactly the details are of this new tax. Could this be an attack on crypto?

Are miners gravitating more toward altcoin miners at this point because they might be able to make more of a profit as compared to Bitcoin mining? We ask Kramer if this is true, and if so, what is the reason behind it?

In Cointelegraph Markets Pro’s latest VORTECS™ Report, the institutional-grade crypto alerts platform displayed how its members could have captured a cumulative 179% gain by following four trades based on four different Markets Pro indicators. The report depicts trading alerts generated between Feb. 26 and March 4, 2023. 

The potential gains available to Cointelegraph Markets Pro subscribers significantly outperform a simple buy-and-hold strategy during the same period, which would’ve suffered a loss of 5% holding Bitcoin (BTC) and a loss of 4% holding Ether (ETH).

Cointelegraph Markets Pro used a variety of advanced data, such as its proprietary VORTECS™ Score, NewsQuakes™, Tweet Volume and the new Most Active On-Chain indicator, to alert subscribers of the potential for price changes before they occurred.

VORTECS™ Score

SingularityNET (AGIX) — 41% gain

On Feb. 26, the asset was trading at $0.39 when Cointelegraph Markets Pro members received an alert for a high VORTECS™ Score of 87. Five days later, the price reached its weekly peak of $0.55 — an impressive increase of 41%!

AGIX is the utility token of SingularityNET, a decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) network on which participants create, share and monetize AI services at scale. AGIX is used for staking, transacting and governance on the network’s decentralized applications.

The United States equities markets tumbled on March 15 after Saudi National Bank, Swiss Bank Credit Suisse’s largest investor, said it will not be able to provide any more funding to Credit Suisse due to regulatory limitations.

Investors are nervous because Credit Suisse, which has large U.S. and global operations, warned on March 14 that it had found “certain material weaknesses” in its financial reporting processes for 2021 and 2022. Shares of Credit Suisse plummeted to an all-time low on March 15.

After the events of the past few days, the S&P 500 has given back all its gains for the year and is trading flat. In comparison, Bitcoin (BTC) is holding on to a large part of its gains and is up nearly 47% in 2023.

Trezor Bitcoin analyst Josef Tětek believes the banking crisis could be positive for Bitcoin as it could emerge as a safe haven asset.

Capriole CEO and founder Charles Edwards said that Bitcoin has formed a “bump and run reversal pattern,” which has a target objective of $100,000 and higher. However, Edwards cautioned traders that the pattern could fail, hence it should not be used for building a trading or investment plan.

The investment arm of major cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is moving to support new stablecoin initiatives by backing a Chinese yuan-pegged stablecoin issuer.

KuCoin Ventures has led a $10 million investment into stablecoin issuer and blockchain-based payment service provider known as CNHC.

Announcing the news on March 16, KuCoin Ventures said that the funding round included some prominent industry investors, including KuCoin’s investor IDG Capital and Circle Ventures, the investment arm of the USD Coin (USDC) issuer, Circle.

KuCoin chief investment officer and KuCoin Ventures lead Justin Chou told Cointelegraph that the new investment in CNHC is the first time for KuCoin Ventures to invest in a stablecoin-related project.

“KuCoin is always interested in building a stronger infrastructure for the financial system,” Chou said, adding that the world is likely to see more real world asset-backed stablecoins in the near future. He added:

Ethereum-based noncustodial lending protocol Euler finance is trying to cut a deal with the exploiter that stole millions from its protocol, demanding the hacker returns 90% of the funds they stole within 24 hours or face legal consequences.

The platform was exploited for $196 million on March 13 and Euler Labs sent its ultimatum to the flash loan attacker by transferring them 0 Ether (ETH) with an attached message on March 14:

“Following up on our message from yesterday. If 90% of the funds are not returned within 24 hours, tomorrow we will launch a $1M reward for information that leads to your arrest and the return of all funds.”

The threat of law enforcement comes as Euler sent the hacker a much more civil message the day before.

“We understand you are responsible for this morning’s attack on the Euler platform,” it read. “We are writing to see whether you would be open to speaking with us about any potential next steps.”

The depegging of USD Coin (USDC) and Dai (DAI) from the United States dollar prompted a frenzy of loan repayments over the weekend, allowing debtors to save a total of more than $100 million off their loans.

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10, the USD Coin (USDC) price dropped to lows of $0.87 on March 11 amid concerns about its reserves being locked at SVB.

MakerDAO’s stablecoin DAI also depegged briefly, going as low as $0.88 on March 11, according to CoinGecko.

The depegging, in the backdrop of broader crypto turmoil, led to more than $2 billion in loan repayments on March 11 on decentralized (DeFi) lending protocols Aave and Compound — with more than half made in USDC, according to a report by digital assets data provider Kaiko. 

Another $500 million in debts were paid in DAI on the same day, it noted.

The United States Justice Department is reportedly investigating the collapse of the TerraClassicUSD (USTC) stablecoin which contributed to a $40 billion wipe out in the Terra ecosystem last May.

Two agencies within the department — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Southern District of New York (SDNY) have interrogated former staff at Terraform Labs in recent weeks, according to a Mar. 13 report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The probe covers similar ground to a lawsuit filed against Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission on Feb. 16, according to people familiar with the matter.

Among topics that investigators have asked about was the relationship between Chai, a South Korean-based payment platform and the Terra blockchain on which USTC operated.

The SEC alleged in its filing alleged that Kwon misled investors into believing that Chai transactions were processed on the Terra blockchain.

Three banks, Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature collapsed within a span of a few days. That increased demand for United States government bonds, which sent the yield on the 2-year Treasury tumbling to 4.06%, a fall of 100 basis points since March 8.

This was the largest 3-day decline since Oct. 22, 1987, following the stock market crash, when the yield fell 117 points.

Although the Federal Reserve announced the formation of a $25 billion Bank Term Funding Program to support businesses and households, the regional banks are taking it on their chin on March 13. This shows that equities traders remain nervous.

However, among all the mayhem, it is an encouraging sign to see Bitcoin (BTC) lead the cryptocurrency recovery from the front. Bitcoin climbed back above $24,000 on March 13, covering a large distance from the $19,549 local low hit on March 10.

Could Bitcoin and the major altcoins sustain their short-term bullish momentum? Let’s study the charts to find out.

Traders dumped risky assets following the crisis and failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The S&P 500 Index plunged 4.55% while Bitcoin (BTC) is down about 9% this week. 

The collapse of SVB led to a crisis in the crypto space with USD Coin (USDC) losing its peg to the U.S. dollar on reports that $3.3 billion of Circle’s $40 billion of USDC reserves were held at SVB. After trading near $0.87 on March 11, USDC has climbed up above $0.96 at the time of publication.

SVB’s failure has increased uncertainty in the short term with investors closely watching for any signs of the contagion spreading to other regional banks across the U.S.

During times of uncertainty, it is best to stay on the sidelines. However, if there is no domino effect following SVB’s debacle, select cryptocurrencies may start their recovery. The cryptocurrencies selected in the article are all trading above the 200-day simple moving average, a key level watched by long-term investors to determine whether the asset is in a bull or bear phase.

Let’s study the charts of Bitcoin and the four altcoins that may outperform if the sector witnesses a recovery over the next few days.

The death spiral of the Terra (LUNA) and TerraUSD (UST) ecosystem served as a catalyst to the 2022 bear market — causing losses in the millions, damaging investor sentiment and intensifying the regulatory spotlight over cryptocurrencies. However, the recent depegging of Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) led Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao to believe that traditional banks are a risk to stablecoins that are usually pegged 1:1 with fiat currencies, like the US dollar.

On March 11, Circle disclosed that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) did not process its $3.3 billion withdrawal request. The crypto market responded to the revelation by selling off their USDC holdings, causing the US dollar-backed stablecoin to lose its peg. Given SVB’s direct involvement in destabilizing USDC prices, CZ blamed banks for increasing the risks of stablecoins.

Supporting CZ’s sentiment, a community member pitched the idea of a crypto-backed stablecoin. CZ responded by highlighting the defunct algorithmic stablecoin launched by Do Kwon, saying:

“Do Kwon actually had the right idea, but just failed miserably on execution.”

Moreover, according to CZ, fiat currencies — in themselves — are a risk without getting crypto into the equation.

Several USD Coin (USDC) holders have fled to other stablecoins since March 10 amid fears surrounding its solvency following the disclosure that a small portion of USDC's collateral was held at Silicon Valley Bank.

However, not all of them had success during panic selling. One user paid over 2,000,000 USDC to receive $0.05 of Tether (USDT) by dumping a large amount of 3CRV (DAI/USDC/USDT) into USDT.

KyberSwap aggregation router was used in the transaction. Kyberswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that aggregates liquidity from several DEXs. In a postmortem, the protocol team explained that "since the market was undergoing a volatile period, all routes failed at estimating gas. The rate strongly fluctuated & only 0x’s route was successful but with a very poor rate."

After confirming the swap at 0x's rate in a pop-up, a bot detected the opportunity and gained 2,085,256 USDC from that Univ2 pool. The protocol is in talks with the bot creator, the bot user and third parties to assist with funds recovery.

Also moving funds to other stablecoins, Tron founder Justin Sun reportedly withdrew 82 million USDC using the decentralized finance protocol Aave v2 and swapped it for Dai (DAI), worth nearly $75 million.