First Mover: Bitcoin Struggles Near $67,000 as Cryptos Lag Behind Stocks

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Bitcoin wavered near $67,000 early Friday as the crypto market consolidated. BTC is stuck in a sideways channel after previous attempts for rallies earlier this week fizzled out. In a sign of diminishing investor confidence, U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds suffered $226 million of net outflows on Thursday. Fidelity's FBTC led the outflows with only BlackRock's IBIT recording positive, albeit minor, inflows. BTC declined 1.3% over the past 24 hours, while the broader crypto market was also down nearly 1%, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20).

Bitcoin will hit $1 million within 10 years, brokerage company Bernstein said while setting a massive price target for MicroStrategy. BTC, the largest and oldest crypto asset, could reach a cycle-high of $200,000 by 2025 en route to the 2033 forecast. The firm also initiated coverage for Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy (MSTR), the biggest corporate owner of bitcoin, setting a price target of $2,890 per share with an outperform rating. That would translate to an almost 100% rally for the stock, which closed Thursday at $1,480.

Former Goldman Sachs executive Connie Shoemaker joined the board of directors of crypto custody firm Anchorage Digital. The company is the only crypto bank chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the U.S. In a Thursday announcement, the company said the addition was part of an effort to “meet rising institutional demand for safe, secure and federally regulated digital asset infrastructure.” Shoemaker was Goldman Sachs’ global head of strategy during the 2008 global financial crisis overseeing the growth of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), and later served as chief administrative officer.

- Omkar Godbole