Bitcoin Prices Steady After Crypto Heist. A Prominent Whale Is Getting Bigger.

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Bitcoin
and other cryptocurrencies were mostly steady on Wednesday, holding onto recent gains and shaking off pressure on the sector from a major digital asset heist. 

Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, was down less than 1% over the past 24 hours but holding above $47,200. It was trading around $42,000 this time last week, surging above the key technical level of $45,000 late Sunday and realizing more gains into Monday.

Bitcoin prices have now notched year-to-date gains, having traded around $46,200 on December 31, 2021.

Smaller peer

ether
exhibited similar price action, down less than 1% to around $3,400. The token underpinning the Ethereum blockchain network is still trading around its highest point since early January. Bitcoin and ether remain well off all-time highs of $68,990 and $4,865, respectively, reached in early November.

Bitcoin prices dropped into the $46,000 range overnight amid news that hackers stole around $600 million worth of cryptocurrency connected to the popular blockchain-based video game Axie Infinity. 

In what was one of the largest-ever crypto heists, hackers appeared to target the Ronin Network, which acts as a bridge for transferring funds into and out of Axie. Ronin said that 173,600 ether and 25.5 million USDC had been taken.

“The dip has been bought up as bitcoin remains above $47,000, showing great strength amongst the news of the hack,” said Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at digital asset broker

GlobalBlock

(ticker: BLOK.Canada). 

The analyst noted that one factor supporting prices was news that

MicroStrategy

(MSTR) had secured a $205 million loan from Silvergate Bank in order to, primarily, purchase more bitcoin.

MicroStrategy
,
a U.S. business intelligence company, has held bitcoin since 2020 and its CEO, Michael Saylor, is a high-profile proponent of the crypto space. The

Silvergate

loan is collateralized by bitcoin.

The loan “gives us an opportunity to further our position as the leading public company investor in bitcoin,” Saylor said in a statement. “Using the capital from the loan, we’ve effectively turned our bitcoin into productive collateral, which allows us to further execute against our business strategy.”

MicroStrategy is just the latest major bitcoin holder, or “whale,” to announce plans to continue growing its crypto holdings.

Terra, an ecosystem of so-called stablecoins, which have their prices pegged to underlying assets such as a national currency, plans to purchase significant amounts of bitcoin for its reserves. Founder Do Kown said last week that Terra would be buying up $10 billion worth of bitcoin; more than $3 billion has already been purchased.

“The buy pressure of MicroStrategy and Luna Foundation Guard is understandably contributing to a strong uptrend [for bitcoin prices] in the short term,” said Sotiriou.

Sentiment on smaller cryptocurrencies, or “altcoins,” proved similar to larger ones.

Cardano
fell 2% and

polkadot
was 1% lower, with

solana
gaining less than 1%.

“Meme” cryptos —called that because they are mostly based on internet jokes rather than significant blockchain projects—were also slightly in the red, but holding onto recent gains.

Dogecoin
and

shiba inu
both lost less than 2%.

Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]