Stephen Alpher

Stephen is CoinDesk's managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.

Stephen Alpher

Latest from Stephen Alpher


Finance

Saylor's Strategy raises cash reserves to $3.2 billion, leaving bitcoin holdings unchanged

For the second consecutive week, the firm kept bitcoin holdings steady, choosing to use the raised capital to boost cash for paying dividends on its preferred stock.

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor standing. (Nikhilesh De/CoinDesk))

Tech

Live updates: Bitcoin rises to one-month high of $65,700 before pulling back with stocks

Equity markets await second-quarter earnings reports from key tech firms, which begin this week.

CoinDesk

Markets

Bitcoin faces fresh headwinds as China’s Kimi beats Claude, GPT in coding benchmark

Moonshot's Kimi K3 took the top spot in frontend coding away from Claude and OpenAI, and it's free. Semiconductor stocks fell, and crypto fell with them.

A wall of code. (Pexels/Pixabay)

Markets

Live markets: Bitcoin returns to $63,000 as Nasdaq trims large early loss

A deepening global selloff in chipmakers dragged risk assets lower, pulling bitcoin back from the $65,000 level it reached on this week's soft inflation print.

Ether, XRP flat as chip stocks steady on Samsung's 250-fold pr

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Finance

Stripe’s $53 billion PayPal bid is a high-stakes play to own the future of digital payments

If Stripe acquires PayPal, the real prize could be consumer wallets, stablecoin issuance or the infrastructure powering the next generation of digital payments.

Paypal headquarters in the Silicon Valley, San Jose, California. (Getty Images)

Markets

Bitcoin pulls back to $64,000 after hitting monthly high as bears take control

Profit-taking after bitcoin hit a $65,500 monthly high combined with fresh Iranian strikes on U.S. bases sent crypto lower, with bears leading price action across most tokens.

Bitcoin price (CoinDesk data

Markets

Live updates: Bitcoin holding $64,000 as AI momentum stocks continue to tumble

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT came down heavily on hardware wallets. BTC traded steady near $65,000 after South Korea's rate hike.

Bitcoin's 24 hour performance. (CoinDesk data)

Tech

Live updates: Bitcoin rises near $65,000 as markets get more good inflation news

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in about $181 million on Tuesday, a day after shedding roughly $425 million, per SoSoValue data. Ether ETFs added about $58 million.

Crypto 24-hour performance heatmap. (TradingView)

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Policy

U.S., UK move to align rules for tokenized finance across world's largest financial markets

The joint roadmap aims to reduce regulatory friction for tokenized assets while strengthening ties between the world's two largest financial centers.

U.S. Department of the Treasury headquarters in Washington (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

Finance

Hut 8 price target hiked to $165 at Benchmark as AI pivot reshapes valuation

Mark Palmer said Hut 8's Beacon Point project transforms the company into an AI infrastructure platform with a long growth runway.

Data center (Taylor Vick/Unsplash)