Crypto stocks across the board took a dive at Monday’s open after Bitcoin failed to maintain its early weekend momentum, but some are starting to rebound as the day goes on.
At 9:45 am ET, Coinbase (COIN) fell 4% to $156.63. MicroStrategy (MSTR), the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, dipped by 5% to about $133, while the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) fell by the same amount to a price of nearly $16.
By comparison, the S&P 500 traded flat, and the Nasdaq 100 traded 0.5% down at Monday’s open. Meanwhile, after surging above $60,500 on Saturday, Bitcoin has now fallen below the $58,000 mark as of this writing. It’s down nearly 4% over the last 24 hours.
Coinbase has ticked back up to almost $162, down less than 1% on the day, while WGMI rose above $17, putting its daily loss at nearly 2%. However, MicroStrategy has recovered only slightly as of this writing, down almost 4% on the day to a current price of $136.
Coinbase has underperformed Bitcoin year to date, rising just 3.5% as of Monday versus Bitcoin’s 31% rise. Similarly, despite its exceptional early-year performance, fading hype around CleanSpark (CLSK) over the past several months has driven WGMI into negative territory compared to January 1.
By contrast, MSTR is up 91%, outpacing Bitcoin’s gains during the crypto explosion in early March. MetaPlanet, a much smaller company based in Japan, is up a whopping 544% after adopting its own MicroStrategy-inspired Bitcoin strategy in April.
Both companies have doubled down on their BTC-centric strategies in recent weeks, with MetaPlanet announcing another $2 million BTC purchase last week, and MicroStrategy buying another $1.1 billion in BTC shortly after.
In a Sunday report, Canaccord Genuity placed its price target for MSTR at $173, up 30% from today’s price. “Our price target is derived by assuming 20% one-year appreciation to BTC versus current spot, a 15% increase in value to the software business, and our assumption that the current sum-of-the-parts premium remains intact.”
DeFi Technologies, a Canadian fintech company with multiple cryptocurrencies on its balance sheet, is also up 283% this year, and bucked the bearish trend on Monday with a 1.5% rise.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve is expected to announce its first interest rate cut in years, which could have complex implications for the crypto and stock market. As of writing, futures markets are split on whether the cut will be for 25 or 50 basis points, and are increasingly favoring the latter.
Edited by Andrew Hayward