First Mover Americas: Bullish Week for Bitcoin and VeChain

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Bitcoin (BTC) had a strong week, adding 11% in the past seven days, but altcoins surged even more, with some rallying in excess of 50%. The top gainer was VeChain’s VET, which climbed some 65%. VeChain is a blockchain that aims to improve supply-chain management and business processes for enterprises. Besides following bitcoin’s pump, the catalyst for VET’s surge is unclear, though the company announced earlier in the week that "Account Abstraction" had gone live, improving interoperability and unlocking programmable smart contract wallets. According to Kenny Hearn, chief investment officer at SwissOne Capital, the chain is a close second to Chainlink (LINK) in the on-chain oracle market. "VeChain meeting multiple X2Earn projects this past week must've given an extra kick of bullish sentiment to catalyze the move,” he said. Sei Network (SEI) rose almost 50% and ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, advanced 15%.

With bitcoin's price rising to just shy of $53,000, MicroStrategy (MSTR), the largest corporate owner of the crypto, has seen its holdings climb above $10 billion, amassing a profit of more than $4 billion. According to the company’s most recent investor presentation, at the end of January the company held 190,000 bitcoins purchased for a total of $5.93 billion, or $31,224 per coin. MicroStrategy began acquiring bitcoin in second-quarter 2020, and has bought tokens every quarter since. In December last year, the company was sitting on a profit of nearly $2 billion, a figure that's doubled thanks to bitcon's more than 20% rally since the start of 2024.

Coinbase (COIN) shares surged after the U.S.-listed cryptocurrency exchange beat analysts' estimates for fourth-quarter earnings and revenue, benefiting from soaring crypto prices. The company said it earned $1.04 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $0.02 per share, according to FactSet data. Revenue of $953.8 million exceeded the analyst forecast of $826.1 million. Shares of the crypto exchange rose about 13% in post-market trading on Thursday after adding about 3% during the regular session. COIN shares had fallen about 4% this year, even as the price of bitcoin (BTC) surged about 23%.

- Omkar Godbole