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Bitcoin prices steady after plunging over the weekend

Bitcoin prices recovered some losses after plunging swiftly over the weekend. The cryptocurrency sank as much as 15% on Sunday, and other major coins like Ether and XRP also dropped.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: But first, let's get into the action in cryptocurrencies. Indeed, we did see a pullback this weekend, Bitcoin dropping as much as 15% over the weekend after regaining some of those declines. And remember, of course, cryptocurrency is one of the few things that trade all the time, including over the weekend. So, we tend to see volatility at times when other things aren't open and can't be volatile.

And as usual, with crypto, right, guys, there's not usually sort of one catalyst reason. There were a lot of fingers being pointed over the weekend to concerns about regulation in various places. Turkey saying it's not going to allow the use of crypto as a payment. So perhaps that fit into it. But just generally, sort of a lot of concern about where things kind of go from here. But for the crypto believers, a pullback like this doesn't seem to be a big source of concern, Myles.

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MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, and I mean, I said it on Twitter half jokingly, but I actually do mean this, that everyone we talked to in crypto, right, they come on and one of the main things they reiterate is that cryptocurrency can be extremely volatile and it's not suitable for everybody, so on and so forth. I mean, I take that to be when a crypto calls-- I means crypto falls 10% on a Saturday night, do not call me and ask why. Because no one's really going to be able to tell you a satisfying answer. So let's just not talk about a 10% or 15% pullback.

And I think that's sort of how the space is going to move forward from this. We'll probably be Bitcoin 70,000 in a couple of weeks, and no one will really care what happened on the weekend after Coinbase went public. Maybe it was, you know, some of the data from Open Insider, which is, you know, a great website. And it tracks insider buys and sells of various stocks. And there was a chart or table they had that showed Brian Armstrong selling about 291 million shares' worth of Coinbase.

And the way that it went to that site via SEC filings calculated his stake, it implied that Armstrong sold 70% of his position in Coinbase when, in fact, he sold the equivalent of about 1 and 2% of his position in Coinbase. So he really didn't sell any of his position at all, right, effectively. So maybe that played into it. But I think we could all throw out different ideas around why crypto went up, down, why Doge is doing whatever Doge is doing.

And Sozzi, to me, ultimately it comes back to no one knows, no one cares, and don't ask because it's just going to end up in a circular, non-productive conversation wherein those who are bullish say they're still bullish. And those who hate crypto are going to come out and say they hate it for all these different reasons.

BRIAN SOZZI: I would say, Myles, this weekend of activity is a good learning lesson for all those folks that got caught up in the craze last week. They saw Coinbase IPO. They saw potentially paying off their kid's college future over the course of a day. They're out there buying Dogecoin. They're out there buying Coinbase. They're out there trading Bitcoin, have absolutely no clue what they're buying, why they're buying it. They're simply buying it because everybody else is buying it. And those people are telling them to buy it.

So this weekend, I think, is a wake up call that you have to do more work on Bitcoin. You have to drill down into what our fundamentals are there, in fact, in Bitcoin. You have to also do a lot of work on terms of sentiment. It's not OK to just go to one Bitcoin website and read up what's going on and pull the trigger on a trade. I mean, there's a lot of nuances into this. It's not like investing in a public company. It's just not. There's no corporate financials here. It is what it is. It's sentiment driven. And you can get burned very quickly. And a lot of people likely did.

JULIE HYMAN: Come on, Brian Sozzi. Dig into the fundamentals? Come on.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: People are buying it because it keeps going up. That's why people are buying it. And I think you can't-- I don't know. How do you even-- like, I don't even know how you would dig into it. It's just-- it's a psychological phenomenon. I don't know. I think there's a-- not that-- I'm not saying people should be putting all their money in this thing. But it-- there's-- I don't even know how you would do that.

BRIAN SOZZI: And that's a problem. And that's a problem for investing in this stuff.

JULIE HYMAN: Maybe, maybe not. It has--

MYLES UDLAND: It's 2021.

JULIE HYMAN: Myles, please.

MYLES UDLAND: It's 2021. You could just-- yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that-- Sozzi, I think the reason that people like it is because, yeah, OK, so let's-- you read the Bitcoin white paper, right? That's, like, nine or 10 pages so-- and that doesn't really take a whole-- it takes a half hour, maybe 45 minutes to get through that thing. That's most of the fundamental work underlying a lot of what's happening in the space. And I know that people are not going to like hearing that.

But the reason that people are attracted to crypto and why it's fun, Soz, is you actually can go read one thing on one site and say, sure, I'll take my chances. And, like, if you do that for a stock, you are clearly ignoring thousands of pages' worth of fundamental data on a public company or a public debt or something like that that you should be familiarizing yourself with. When it comes to crypto, you can absolutely justify saying, hey, I'll take a flyer. And I think that's why people think it's fun. I think that's what has attracted a lot of people to the space. I don't really see that changing.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, as long as you're not pouring your life savings into the thing. Now, on the plus side--

MYLES UDLAND: And everyone says, don't do that, so.

JULIE HYMAN: Right, exactly. I think that's a hopefully a consensus.