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First Mover Americas: Bullish Week for Bitcoin and VeChain
The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for Feb. 16, 2024.
Updated Mar 9, 2024, 5:52 a.m. Published Feb 16, 2024, 1:28 p.m.
This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter, putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.
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Bitcoin 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 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 surged about 23%.
Chart of the Day
- The chart shows a collection of bid and ask orders in dollar terms within 2% of the mid-price across cryptocurrency exchanges.
- The ratio of asks to bids rose to the highest in over a year early this week.
- When the ask is higher than the bid, the price is more likely to move higher than lower.
- The ask is a price the seller is ready to accept, while the bid is a price the buyer is willing to pay.
- Source: Kaiko
- Omkar Godbole
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What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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Bitcoin’s Deep Correction Sets Stage for December Rebound, Says K33 Research
K33 Research says market fear is outweighing fundamentals as bitcoin nears key levels. December could offer an entry point for bold investors.
What to know:
- K33 Research says bitcoin’s steep correction shows signs of bottoming, with December potentially marking a turning point.
- The firm has argued that the market is overreacting to long-term risks while ignoring near-term signals of strength, like low leverage and solid support levels.
- With likely policy shifts ahead and cautious positioning in futures, K33 sees more upside potential than risk of another major collapse.
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