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Something called Matrixport dumped the crypto market midweek. Was BlackRock involved?

This week’s Bitcoin flash crash was a bitter pill for crypto. Here’s how it happened, the conspiracy theory it generated, and why Bloomberg isn’t fazed.

Rob BadmanCoinhead
Matrixport's move was hard to swallow for crypto fans. Picture: Getty Images (BTC icon added by Coinhead)
Matrixport's move was hard to swallow for crypto fans. Picture: Getty Images (BTC icon added by Coinhead)
3 min read
9:34AMJanuary 05, 2024.
Updated 7:11AMJanuary 08, 2024
Stockhead

This week’s Bitcoin flash crash was a bitter pill for crypto. Here’s how it happened, the conspiracy theory it generated, and why Bloomberg isn’t fazed.

We’re only a handful of days into 2024 and Bitcoin and crypto is already showing more volatility than a Prime-chugging tween with laggy WiFi.

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Some would say this is a good thing and the return of the kind of froth that has typified crypto bull markets of yore, with monster gains followed by face-planting dumps a regularity on the ladder to the cycle top.

It seems like just a day ago that Bitcoin was flying, surging past $US45k, flipping the bird at every commodity and several securities in its wake.

And that’s because it was. So, what happened to cause its sudden plunge to under $41k?

It's been a short, rough ride for BTC. Source: CoinGecko
It's been a short, rough ride for BTC. Source: CoinGecko

Matrixport did.

Who, or what is Matrixport? And what did it do or say? Good questions.

It’s known as a crypto-financial service platform, and had actually been, on the whole, pretty optimistic about the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in January.

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Until that is, a report surfaced midweek that indicated a sharp shift in its sentiment, speculating that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may be about to reject all current BTC ETF proposals.

The Matrixport report partly based this on the fact five voting SEC commissioners are Democrats, and “Democrats don’t like crypto”.

Larry, was this you?

Tinfoil hat time. Is BlackRock involved?

That’d be tasty, wouldn’t it?

The leading spot Bitcoin ETF candidate, and its CEO Larry Fink, have been called out by a number of rando posters on Twitter/X for pulling the strings on the Matrixport thought piece to supposedly tank the price ahead of its possible ETF approval by a reluctant SEC.

We’re yet to see a single bit of evidence posted by anyone to back up the speculation, though.

Still, some mild digging of our own later and, well, look … there’s a vague degree of separation in there somewhere.

Matrixport is a spin-off company of Bitmain, a Chinese-founded Bitcoin mining-sector company (the world’s leading manufacturer of digital currency mining servers), of which Pavilion Capital was a significant investor at the venture round stage.

Pavilion Capital is a company owned and created by major Singaporean investment firm Temasek Holdings.

In turn, Temasek is a huge investor into BlackRock itself, buying a 3.9 per cent stake in BLK, worth $US3.9 billion, back in 2020.

As of November 2023, Temasek was still one of the top five institutional investors into BlackRock, with a 3.4 per cent stake in the $US9.42 trillion financial giant.

We know, we know. It’s as tenuous as an SEC lawsuit, but hey, it’s fodder for the moon bois (and girls) – not that they need it.

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Bloomberg’s ETF pundits still believe ...

Meanwhile, the crypto industry has been holding on to the words of Bloomberg ETF experts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart for some time now.

And that’s because the two analysts have been covering ETFs of all kinds day in day out for years, and they are extraordinarily bullish on a raft of spot BTC ETFs finally making it over the line in the first half of this year, giving that a 90 per cent chance of happening.

And even as soon as … maybe even next week. Yep, January 10 is the date the Gary Gensler-run SEC is slated to approve, delay or deny the majority of the Bitcoin ETF filings from BlackRock, VanEck, Fidelity among others.

... and so does market

Of course, this is crypto, so the froth has started to bubble again quite quickly.
At 9.30am Friday (AEDT), Bitcoin had bounced back impressively, and was sitting around the $US44,800 mark.

Largely on fresh whispers around the traps of ETFs being approved by Monday.

Anthony Scaramucci, CEO of American investment firm Skybridge Capital and crypto bull, is confident.

No, Jim, no. Flip back immediately

Finally, we can’t finish off without a mention of this bloke – hapless CNBC pundit Jim Cramer, who recently flipped somewhat bullish on Bitcoin. Please, just stick to the recent script and keep hating crypto, would ya? Thanks, Jim...

This content first appeared on stockhead.com.au

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/stockhead/something-called-matrixport-dumped-the-crypto-market-midweek-was-blackrock-involved/news-story/827babb6dfa4865b14761d94a12cf5bc