Bitcoin Daily: Bitcoin Loses $119B In Q1, John McAfee’s $105K Crypto Tweets

Bitcoin – along with Ethereum – experienced its worst first quarter ever, CNBC reported. The cryptocurrency dropped from around $13,400 to just under $7,000 in the first three months of the year, wiping out nearly $120 billion in market capitalization. Over the past quarter, bitcoin has faced challenges from advertising bans on internet platforms to regulatory pressures. Bitcoin was trading at $7,359.58 as of 1:42 a.m., according to CoinDesk.

And Overstock.com is pulling the plug on its secondary stock offering, CoinTelegraph reported. While Overstock’s stock jumped last fall amid news that it was working on an initial coin offering (ICO) trading platform, the company has seen its shares fall as reports surfaced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was looking into its cryptocurrency subsidiary as part of its ongoing probe.

If you want John McAfee to promote your digital coins or initial coin offering (ICO), his tweets are going to come at a cost. The software magnate charges $105,000 for each crypto promotional tweet, The Verge reported. But McAfee purports to offer a targeted audience: The McAfee Crypto Team claims that McAfee’s nearly 260,000 Twitter followers have more than 50 percent of their total assets in cryptocurrencies.

And crypto hedge funds aren’t as lucrative as they used to be. Demand is slowing – and profits are taking a hit – for cryptocurrency hedge funds, Bloomberg reported. “New capital has slowed, even for a higher-profile fund like ours,” Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, told Bloomberg. While some funds experienced gains greater than a whopping 1,000 percent last year, returns this year are down 23 percent per the Eurekahedge Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund Index.

In other news, Litecoin jumped as much as 15 percent on Tuesday (April 3) after the founder of an American Express-backed crypto startup emphasized his decision to use Litecoin smart contracts, Business Insider reported. While Abra CEO Bill Barhydt promoted the move in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Monday (April 2), the decision was first shared at the end of March. The company has notched $40 million in funding from Fidelity’s venture capital arm and Foxconn, in addition to American Express.