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Brooker Group to Invest Almost $50M in DeFi, Dapp Startups
The Brooker Group, a publicly listed financial consultancy based in Thailand, plans to invest nearly $50 million in decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized application (dapp) projects.
- Brooker will invest in more than 15 high-growth companies including Binance, Uniswap and Filecoin, according to an emailed statement Tuesday.
- The company plans for digital assets, DeFi and dapps to make up around 50% of total assets.
- Varit Bulakul, head of Brooker’s digital-asset division and international business finance advisory, said there is a responsibility to invest emerging technologies “or risk being left behind as the sector matures.”
- The company also holds bitcoin(BTC, -0.89%), reporting first-quarter holdings of 122.315 BTC at an aggregate value of around $6.6 million.
- Brooker’s digital assets will be held at exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance until it chooses a custody provider, according to the announcement.
Bitcoin Has Crashed: What’s Next After The ‘Extreme Fear’ 50% Price Plummet?
Bitcoin investors have been rocked by a price crash that’s wiped more than 50% from bitcoin’s all-time high.
The bitcoin price, after nudging $65,000 per bitcoin in April, dropped to just under $30,000 this week before rebounding slightly, falling after Tesla billionaire Elon Musk expressed doubts about bitcoin and fear gripped the market China could crack down hard on bitcoin operations in the country.
Now, as bitcoin market sentiment plummets to lows not seen since the March 2020 coronavirus-induced crash that sent the bitcoin price to around $4,000, traders and investors remain upbeat that a recovery is on the horizon.
This week, the bitcoin and crypto fear and greed index, where a value of 0 means “extreme fear” while a value of 100 represents “extreme greed,” fell to 11—down from over 90 earlier this year.
The index, calculated by Germany-based software comparison company Alternative using market volatility, volume, social media sentiment, media trends and bitcoin’s dominance over the market, currently suggests “investors are too worried,” which “could be a buying opportunity.”
Despite the bitcoin price crash and the fear that’s currently gripping the market, many in the bitcoin and crypto community feel this correction is a “healthy” rebalancing, needed for the market to move higher over the long term.
“The large falls in valuations seen this week are, in one way, healthy as they enable the market to clear excess speculative positions and consolidate before its next phase of expansion,” Anatoly Crachilov, the chief executive of investment manager Nickel Digital, said via email, pointing to bitcoin’s “122% gain from the beginning of the year” through to April.
“We have seen this pattern time and again across multiple cycles and expect this to remain in place until the market matures and achieves a larger involvement of institutional capital.”
The bitcoin price rally over the last few months has been partly driven by the long-awaited emergence of institutional investors, with bitcoin traders upbeat this latest crash won’t have diminished Wall Street interest in bitcoin.
“We see the current price volatility and speculation as a short term correction in a booming market,” Varit Bulakul, president of investment banking and digital assets at financial consultancy and capital management company Brooker Group, said in emailed comments."
“This sharp dip, brought on by bitcoin’s nosedive, highlights the critical need for asset diversity and a well-researched investment portfolio. After a strong bull run, companies and funds that over leveraged on bitcoin alone will now have confused shareholders and board members to answer to.”
Bitcoin analysts point to previous crashes and recoveries to support their belief the bitcoin price will bounce back. Following bitcoin’s late-2017 peak of around $20,000, the bitcoin price lost almost 90% of its value in the following year before charging far higher at the end of 2020 and into 2021.
“Crypto has had a breathtaking run over the past couple of quarters, so a strong pull back and consolidation now isn’t surprising—it’s what we’ve seen in all other previous bull markets,” Pete Humiston, manager of Kraken Intelligence, part of the U.S. bitcoin and crypto exchange Kraken, said in comments sent via Twitter DM.
Bitcoin rallies 11% back above $42,000 as a multi-day sell-off subsides
- Bitcoin rallied as much as 11% back above $42,000 on Thursday as a multi-day sell-off subsided.
- One analyst says Thursday’s rebound is only a recovery within a downward trend.
- But other experts have shrugged off concerns over bitcoin’s week-long plunge, adding that pullbacks are to be expected
Bitcoin rebounded as much as 11% back above $42,000 on Thursday as a multi-day sell-off subsided.
The price of the cryptocurrency plunged to just above $30,000 at one point on Wednesday, a more than 50% drawdown from its all-time high of nearly $65,000 in mid-April, before paring losses in the afternoon.
“The rebound in bitcoin today is exactly that, a rebound, not a turnaround,” Julius de Kempenaer, senior technical analyst at StockCharts.com, told Insider. “[Wednesday’s] price hit the support zone near $30,000 after bitcoin accelerated lower upon breaking below support that was located in the $42,000 to $43,000 area.
He added: “That former support area is now expected to return as a resistance level.”
The senior analyst also said that even if bitcoin would be able to push higher, “the way up is cluttered with resistance levels, which will make any advances much harder than we have seen so far this year.”
The trend on the daily chart is still down, he said, which suggests that this rally is only a recovery within a downward trend.
The Wednesday plunge, which spilled over other cryptocurrencies, was sparked by the announcement of the People’s Bank of China that digital tokens cannot be used as a form of payment by financial institutions anymore.
Binance Coin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum’s ether all nosedived more than 30% each.
“The current market drop is to be expected after a run-up over the last year of 10 times for most cryptocurrencies,” Charlie Silver, CEO of Permission.io, told Insider. “Bitcoin a year ago was trading at $7,000 and it ran up to $60,000. A pullback of half of the gain is to be expected.”
Prior to this news, the cryptocurrency space has already been experiencing multiple headwinds, from Elon Musk’s surprising bitcoin reversal due to environmental reasons to the Colonial pipeline cyberattack that brought in over $90 million in bitcoin ransom payments.
“We see the current price volatility and speculation as a short-term correction in a booming market,” Varit Bulakul, president of investment banking and digital assets at The Brooker Group said. “In the long term, we remain bullish on digital assets.”
Wednesday marked a seven-day sell-off, wiping out nearly 50% of cryptocurrency market valuation. But on Thursday, the market cap for global digital currencies came in at $1.86 trillion, climbing 37% from the previous session’s low of $1.35 trillion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.