As bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies get increasing attention from investors, Wall Street and its traditional banks continue to adjust to the shift.  Here's the weekly recap of the news of that transition.

CITI LAUNCHES CRYPTO UNIT

Frank Chaparro of The Block tweeted Thursday, "SCOOP: Citigroup (C) has officially launched a crypto/blockchain unit within its wealth management division, according to a memo obtained by The Block." He also tweeted an image of a small excerpt of the memo that said, “Given the exciting new developments we are seeing around cryptocurrencies, tokenization and other advances powered by blockchain technology, we are pleased to announce the formation of the Digital Assets Group within Citi Global Wealth Investments. Focusing on all aspects of this fast growing space of blockchain enabled finance, we have asked Alex Kriete and Greg Girasole to lead this effort.”

BITMAIN SUSPENDS MINING MACHINE SALES

China’s largest maker of cryptocurrency mining machines Bitmain announced that it is suspending sales of its products in the spot market amid Beijing’s ban on bitcoin mining.

In a Friday blog post, the company said: 

“In recent times, Chinese customers have been reselling miners to withdraw funds or reduce the time that their mining hardware remains in China. However, the setup of mining farms does not happen overnight, and the second-hand market is under pressure. To assist the industry towards a smooth transition, Antminer has temporarily decided to suspend global spot sales. Kindly note that customers who have already placed previous orders will not be affected. Bitmain will continue to sell futures orders from September onwards. The suspension of spot sales shall be from June to August…Faced with the difficulties during the pandemic, Bitmain employees have risen to the recent challenge and urgently traveled overseas to the US, Canada, Australia, Russia, Belarus, Sweden, Norway, Kazakhstan, Angola, Congo, Indonesia, and other countries to help customers source high-quality power resources for the industry.”

FISERV ANNOUNCES INTEGRATION WITH NYDIG

Fiserv (FISV) announced Wednesday that financial institutions "of all sizes now can enable consumers to buy, sell and hold bitcoin through their bank accounts" via an integration between Fiserv and NYDIG, a bitcoin technology and financial services company. "This will enable banks and credit unions to meet growing mainstream interest in bitcoin, retain and grow their customer base, and increase non-interest income opportunities. An extension of the Fiserv commitment to open banking technology, the integration with NYDIG will allow consumers to manage bitcoin transactions directly within their financial institution's online and mobile banking portals, providing users an easy way to buy, sell and hold the popular digital asset through their trusted financial institutions," Fiserv stated.

NYDIG, Q2 TO OFFER BITCOIN SOLUTIONS

 NYDIG and Q2 Holdings (QTWO) announced Wednesday they will collaborate to provide the more than 18.3M registered users on the Q2 platform with the ability to buy, sell and hold bitcoin. "According to a December 2020 study by Cornerstone Advisors, 15 percent of U.S. consumers own Bitcoin or some other form of cryptocurrency," said Jonathan Price, EVP of Emerging Business, Corporate and Business Development, Q2. "The consumer survey also revealed that the majority of these crypto owners would use their banks to invest in cryptocurrency if they had the choice to do so. We are excited to work with NYDIG to enable financial institutions to take advantage of this market opportunity and meet the demands of their account holders."

MICROSTRATEGY PRICE TARGET LOWERED 

Citi analyst Tyler Radke lowered the firm's price target on MicroStrategy (MSTR) on Tuesday to $360 from $450 and kept a Sell rating on the shares. The analyst updated his model following the company's latest round of debt financing of $488M that was used to purchase additional bitcoin. Bitcoin has faced extreme volatility recently with the value cut in half, Radke said.

CRYPTO STOCK PLAYS

Cryptocurrency revenues have been pointed to as reasons to be bullish on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA) in select research. Overstock (OSTK), Ideanomics (IDEX), Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Pareteum (TEUM) and SRAX (SRAX) are other stocks that have been touted, or promoted themselves, as a way to play the crypto theme.

PRICE ACTION

As of time of writing, bitcoin dropped roughly 5.6% this week to $33,111 in U.S. dollars, according to TradeBlock.