Crypto Weekly: steady as she goes

STORY: From bitcoin’s surprisingly stable quarter, to why Binance is teaming up with Elon Musk, these are the week’s big stories in the world of virtual money.

Bitcoin just enjoyed a surprisingly strong third quarter.

Sure, it was down 1% over the period. But that compares well with a 5% drop for the benchmark S&P 500 stocks index.

The token has been relatively stable around the $20,000 mark.

Sanders Morris Harris chairman George Ball says cost-of-living worries may actually have helped:

“If you expect inflation to continue, and to be a threat in the future, then bitcoin, or cryptocurrencies, are something that the government itself cannot debase.”

Rival ether did even better over the period, jumping 25% thanks to the long-awaited upgraded to its underlying blockchain.

The steady quarter comes as bitcoin shows signs of breaking its close relationship with stocks.

The two have been strongly correlated, sometimes moving in near unison.

But last week saw its correlation with the Nasdaq hit its lowest since the start of the year.

Fans say that’s good news, and a sign that investors are looking to crypto for growth as many tech stocks fall.

And Binance could be teaming up with Elon Musk.

The world’s largest crypto exchange says it will set a team to work on how blockchain and crypto could help Twitter.

Binance was a co-investor in Musk’s $44 billion deal to purchase the social network.

It could help the billionaire deliver on his pledge to cut the number of spam-bots on Twitter.