Bitcoin nears $39,000 amid Amazon payment rumors
Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman, Brian Sozzi, and Myles Udland discuss bitcoin’s recent surge.
Video transcript
JULIE HYMAN: We're watching what's going on in crypto here this morning for that action.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah. And it's always a strange story to piece together, why is anything happening in crypto. Some data out that we have, I think what? Almost $1 billion worth of shorts being forced to cover. Of course, there was also that news from FTX dropping on a Sunday morning, as usual, lowering their leverage limits from 100x to 20x. And here we have a nice big short squeeze. I guess we can call it that. In crypto at the start of the week, Bitcoin up 13%, closing in again on $40,000.
JULIE HYMAN: And then there was some speculation out of Amazon. When we talked about this, this morning, because when you get these kind of speculation, it's like what's the source of this, is it real. Apparently, Coinbase actually picked this up last week, that there was a job posting on Amazon that had to do with crypto. And so that then leads to speculation of what it can mean.
MYLES UDLAND: I think it's fine, right? It's fine. Like Amazon is exploring hiring someone to lead their exploration of digital assets. If that's worth 13% in Bitcoin, who am I to disagree?
JULIE HYMAN: Sure. A lot of things are worth 12% or 13% in Bitcoin. Sozz, what do you think here?
BRIAN SOZZI: No, this was a very important point that Myles brought up here. So $940 million worth of crypto shorts have been liquidated today. That is according to be BYB.com who tracks this data in real time. We're seeing a lot of really strong pre-market moves here. Ride blockchain up over 17%. Marathon Digital up over 17%. Coinbase up over 6%.
But guys, ultimately, who this might be good-- and talk about perfect timing, is the Robinhood IPO. 17% of their transaction base revenue comes from crypto. So talk about timing here.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, but talk about timing, like Bitcoin it all seems quite arbitrary, doesn't it? At various points, I mean, I'm sure if Jared was here-- unfortunately, he's off today.
BRIAN SOZZI: Well, he called it the bottom.
JULIE HYMAN: Yes, he did. But he looks at the charts and sees more, perhaps, logic, rationale, reason when he reads into the charts. But as a layperson looking at it, it doesn't seem to be driven by much of anything fundamental.
MYLES UDLAND: I mean, that's fine. But I think to speak to the charts specifically with Bitcoin I mean, we've talked on this program for three months now about Bitcoin being price range, or range bound, rather, between $30,000 and $40,000, give or take. And we've seen $29,000 sometimes. I don't think we've actually seen a $41,000 print in some time. But $38,000 still in that range, still kind of deciding, I think Bitcoin is, the overall direction of the trend.
Because right now, it remains flat. And I think if you want to be a long term bull in Bitcoin, you can say there's nothing that concerns me here. If you're a bear in Bitcoin, maybe you also believe that there's nothing that's so concerning. Now granted, if you lost $8,000, let's say on your short position or something overnight, you might be more concerned.
But as that chart, I think, made clear, since we saw that $60,000 top on Bitcoin, we haven't had a lot of direction on what the next major move is. And I go back to the way Coinbase described it in their s-1, they said we've seen four major price cycles and we believe we're in the fourth. Well, is the fourth over? Like are we going higher here? Are we going to consolidate for another 18 months before, Sozz, we talk six figures on Bitcoin, right?
BRIAN SOZZI: Right. And two potential near-term catalysts this week, Amazon. Amazon when they were part earnings, is Andy Jassy on this earnings call? And do they talk about Bitcoin? It's all driven by sentiment. And secondarily, when Tesla reports tonight how much Bitcoin is on the balance sheet.
MYLES UDLAND: Do you think if you're an analyst, that you're going to spend your first question to Andy Jassy on Bitcoin?
BRIAN SOZZI: It could be one of his first big moves.
MYLES UDLAND: This is the guy's first call.
JULIE HYMAN: Maybe if Sozz was the--
BRIAN SOZZI: Maybe I would. I'm willing to go back on there. Take one for the team.
MYLES UDLAND: That's valuable real estate as an analyst asking the head of AWS coming in to lead all of Amazon, how are you thinking about this, that, the other. I would be shocked if someone asked about that.
BRIAN SOZZI: But you could be the analyst that breaks that news. And you can title your research report. I mean, that is huge. That's big.
JULIE HYMAN: Maybe it wouldn't be your first question. Maybe once they get a little bit lower down in the Q, maybe it'll be somebody's question. One more thing just as we look at Bitcoin and think about sort of animal spirits here, if you're somebody who was thinking do I want to get into Bitcoin, and you see the drop and then the recovery, maybe that's the thing that tells you as a retail investor, maybe you're thinking, well, maybe all these Bitcoin bulls were right.
BRIAN SOZZI: Well that's what our Editor-in-Chief, Andy Serwer, wrote about in the week. And we'll talk more with him about it later. But is now the time to get into Bitcoin? And how do you do it? How do you play it?
JULIE HYMAN: Right.
MYLES UDLAND: It's always the time to get in Bitcoin if you're a believer.
JULIE HYMAN: Sure. It's like gold.
MYLES UDLAND: It's like stocks. It's always the time to buy. Time to go up.
