35 Burst results for "$1 Million"
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1418: Bitcoin ETF Will Send BTC Price to $1,000,000 - Cathie Wood
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis as Bitcoin recaptures 27 ,000. And quoting Max Keiser, BlackRock agrees with my $220 ,000 interim price target for Bitcoin. Send it. Also in today's show, former US President Donald Trump may change crypto stance dramatically, says ex -SEC official. I'll be breaking this down for you, as well as Gary Gensler explains why the SEC is taking litigation with a heavy strategy to regulate crypto, better known as Crypto Choke Point 2 .0. We'll also be discussing the XRP highlights and the major takeaways from the Ripple victory party. As of recent, as well as Rich Dad, Robert Kiyosaki expects the Bitcoin price to become priceless. Let's freaking go. When the Fed launches their central bank digital currency, which we all know is around the corner, we'll also be discussing, it was eight years ago this week, ARK Invest became the first US ETF to invest in Bitcoin when it was trading between $200 and $300. And Kathy says Bitcoin is still on a trajectory to hit her target between $1 million and $1 .5 million per coin. I'll be breaking down her timeline. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show.
The Crypto Conversation
A highlight from DAIM - The Investment Advisor Dedicated to Crypto
"Hi everyone, Andy Pickering here, I'm your host and welcome to the Crypto Conversation, a Brave New Coin podcast where we talk to the people building the future in the Bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Hey team, we have a new sponsor here at the Crypto Conversation, BitGet, one of the world's leading copy trading cryptocurrency exchanges, yes indeed. What happens if you've got the funds to invest but you don't have the time to keep track of the market? You still want to make smart money moves? What do you do? Well, copy trading is a popular choice for beginner traders. You can shorten your learning curve by uncovering tips and strategies from more experienced traders. BitGet's copy trading platform has over 80 ,000 elite traders to choose from and 380 ,000 followers just like yourself who are already using the BitGet copy trading platform as a potential passive income stream. All it takes is one click, you can subscribe to an elite profitable strategist, set your limits, automate your orders and monitor their trades. I've got some links in the show notes below, one link will take you through to the BitGet sign up page, give you a VIP discount. So learn all about it for yourself, thanks to BitGet. And now it is on with the show. My guest today is Brian Courchene. Brian is the founder of the Newport Beach based DAIM. I believe it's one of the first US registered investment advisors dedicated to crypto. I will learn more about this today. Welcome to the show, Brian. Hey, thanks for having me, Andy. Glad to be here. Glad to have you here, Brian. Let's do what we do at the beginning of the show. Big, good if you could please introduce yourself, I really love to hear a little bit about your personal and professional backstory and the lead up to founding DAIM. Yeah, yeah. So we're here in the United States in California, specifically in Newport Beach. And where I come from in the background is I got my start on Wall Street, actually on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I got with a guy and started writing paper tickets and backing up their floor traders. And then I went on to be a trader in the pit there on the options side. So I was there for 13 months. And then from there, I worked at different broker dealers in New York City, specifically as a vol sales specialist. And that was great. And in 2014, I came across Bitcoin on my own research. October, I made an allocation to it. It was the first one. And from then on, I was kind of the go -to guy. Maybe nobody had a position on the floor, nobody had a position in the building. And I was a guy that people came to when they had questions about the space and this grew and grew and grew. And then in 2017, in the early part of the year, pre -ICO run -up, I had realized that there was a need for a properly licensed advisor and asset manager in the space. Everything that was out there was self -directed. Coinbase, for example, you go on Coinbase, it's all up to you to move your own money, decide what to buy, when and how, and people just needed a human help to this. And so what I realized was that there was also a larger allocation that people wanted to make to the space and they wanted to do it with someone that maybe had some kind of licensing that they could fall back on or recourse. And so I left the firm that I was working at in New York City and moved here to Newport Beach to start building this business to be the first of its kind licensed registered investment advisor in the United States to advise and manage assets for individuals. And so as fast track as that sounded, as simple as it was, it was a bit more of a challenge than that at the time when we were dealing with the regulators and getting the business approved, it took us into 2018 and for people who know prices, the price of Bitcoin had come off from the all -time highs in 2017. January 1st, it was $13 ,500. And then by the time we got into May, it was sub $10 ,000. And so the regulators kicked back a little bit saying they didn't want to license the first of its kind advisor in the space. That was kind of defeating because I'd spent quite a bit of money in my own Bitcoin to build this and get it going. But I didn't stop there. And I basically made a case with them saying, look, you got to approve this business. There's nothing like it out there that can actually help people. And I'm probably the most qualified thing you can get right now. I had the Series 4, which is an options principle. I had the Series 24, which is a compliance officer. I had owned Bitcoin again since 2014. I had the Series 65 and I said, people need help in this space. And we ended up getting the license. It was actually the next day after that phone call. May 31st, 2018. And since then now, yeah, we advise and manage crypto positions for individuals in the United States and corporations. Yeah, fantastic. So DAIM, of course, just stands for Digital Asset Investment Management. You say then that you are helping individuals with their crypto positions and allocations and maybe even their decision making. Just talk us through a little bit more about what that means, Brian. Who are the kind of different target markets or customer segments that your firm services? Yeah, so a typical client for us is generally a business owner in the United States, quite busy with what he's got going on, but wants to have an allocation to the space. Generally, something much larger than a few thousand bucks or 10 grand that somebody would on typical a exchange, Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, they want to make a larger allocation, maybe something in the hundreds of thousands or even millions to the space. And so they get with us. Things look very familiar from kind of an onboarding standpoint to what their traditional investment advisor might look like. And then we have the license check where they can look us up on the SEC's website. And then we take them through a new client profile where we get to learn a little bit about and them we can then go with them about, okay, this is the allocation we think you should make. Maybe sometimes we've got to walk them back from being too big. And then this is the portfolio we want to put you in. And then from there, it leads to usually a transfer of some sorts from like a traditional investment management firm, Schwab, Fidelity, stuff like that. So we handle the transfer, the funds land, and then we put in place our model portfolio, which is our best thesis on the space. And then we manage their assets according to that. And we actually run that across all of our discretionary clients. So our clients, not only do they get an advisor and a manager sitting on top with a license, but also a portfolio that gets professionally managed, kind of like a fund. The difference is that we run a flat fee and we don't add the performance fee on top of it. And so from there, once they're onboarded and invested, they get 24 seven view access into the account. They get regular statements. If it's a taxable account here in the United States, we work on things like tax loss harvesting. Should that be needed? 10 99 beneficiaries. And then we go into the tax advantage accounts. So we can do things like IRAs, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, SEP IRAs, Roth 401ks. And then we even do a corporate 401k where a business can put in place a plan for their employees that gives them the ability to have up to 10 % in pure Bitcoin alongside traditional mutual funds. And this is something actually we're really excited about coming out of like a pilot program. And it's something we want to expand into market. Yeah, I mean, but to jump into their first thing, Brian, I guess, yeah, the idea of having a even a small allocation into people's 401k funds would be obviously a good thing for Bitcoin and presumably a good thing for individuals that do have Bitcoin in their 401ks if over time Bitcoin does appreciate. But do you see, is there a demand for this and you can see this growing over time? Yeah, so the 401k market is quite large. The addressable market is just massive and there's just nothing servicing really alternative investments. And that's where Bitcoin comes into being kind of like a liquid easier alternative investment instead of something like real estate or VC funds. And so when we put the plan out and we went and looked for pilots for this, we thought that it was going to come from mostly crypto native companies or tech startups. But what we found was quite different. We found that interest came from traditional businesses, law firms, construction companies. And when we put the plan in place, when you look at like who wants to participate and who elects for Bitcoin and how much, you actually see it's kind of the crowd that's over 40 and professional and people that you wouldn't think would be so technology native, but it's people that kind of understand like you got to take a little bit of risk and Bitcoin's been around for a while and why not go for that? Because it actually does improve the Sharpe ratio of these portfolios. And so, yeah, it's been surprising to us, which is actually a good thing, because eventually the people that are in the younger generations that are in tech startup or crypto events will get older. They'll have more money in their 401Ks and eventually they'll have the option when they're ready to participate in this. Yeah, very well said. So you said also, Brian, that you almost manage like kind of like a fund, which is DAIM's, I guess, crypto portfolio thesis. Right. So that's correct. I wonder how much of that you're prepared to talk about in terms of, I guess, what that portfolio fund breakdown in terms of crypto assets would look like. And it's notoriously hard, obviously, to beat Bitcoin just with a buy and hold strategy over a kind of long time zone. What's your approach to trying to, I guess, beat the market on behalf of your clients? Yeah, I can talk about this quite a bit. So on the structure side of it, it's set up as SMA here in the United States. Separately managed accounts. So all of our clients actually have their own accounts and the assets are not co -mingled, but we do manage them with an overlay. And that way we can get the trades done and rebalancing as needed. And the great thing about that is it gets back to us being liquid at any time, unlike having a lockup period with a fund. And so when we have that structure, then we move into being able to manage these assets quite easily and then offer our clients the liquidity that's needed. And then as the thesis, when I first started the business and we were running our model portfolio back in 2018, it was Bitcoin only. And we looked at the space as we want to have low turnover. We don't want to incur a lot of trading fees. We don't want to incur a lot of taxes in these accounts, but we also understand that being long crypto in itself is the best way to get multiples on your return. And then when you go to allocate away from Bitcoin and go to seek alpha, you got to see if you're going to have a strategic outperformance. And then what seems easy to say now, in the beginning of 2020, we had done our research on Ethereum and the upgrades that were to come, and we decided to make a 20 % allocation to Ethereum at that time from the book, which worked out really well for us. And it got to a point to where we've allocated away and Bitcoin shrunk to be a little less 60 % of our portfolio. And then we allow these assets to take course. We look at everything from a fundamental standpoint. When we do use technicals, it's really on just deploying and pulling out of positions. And so at the position we're at now, I should back up. Last year, we had closed out a majority of the Ethereum position into the upgrade and went into cash for a while, which helped us through a bit of the downturn last year and gave us capital to start redeploying at the beginning of this year. And so in our search for alpha, we haven't quite found what we like outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. So we redeployed into Bitcoin, balanced the book 90 % Bitcoin, 10 % ETH. And now we're looking to make some strategic allocations away from both of those as we see us kind of being in the trough zone here, coming out of the bear market and entering a bull market. Yeah, fascinating. And it's interesting, Brian, that you say it's very difficult to find compelling crypto asset allocations outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I suppose being so heavily overweight Bitcoin at the moment looking forward, I suppose that is probably due to the two big catalysts, two big narratives that are around Bitcoin at the moment. I'm talking, of course, of the fourth Bitcoin halving coming around March, April next year. And of course, the BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin application. So yeah, I'd love to understand just how you think about those two data points and perhaps their potential to make Bitcoin interesting again. Yeah. And there's something to touch on, too. What you started off with is looking at all the other investments outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so I'll hop into that in the second half of this answer. But when it comes to the halving and the BlackRock ETF, the halving is an event that's always on the radar. And that has tend to seem price appreciation somewhat after the event. And this stuff has become well known. But what really changed was seeing BlackRock come into the space. And that was further affirmation to us that we are entering a bull market. And there are some very big players that think that there's going to be severe demand and drastic price increases in the space. And so that's another data set to us that says, okay, we don't want to be in cash anymore. We do need to be invested even though we cannot find something at the moment outside of Bitcoin and ETH. We at least want to participate in the market and be in Bitcoin because the narrative can change very quickly in this space. And so it comes to things like this, too. If you look at like key figureheads in the space and their price predictions, you got Arthur Hayes at $70 ,000. Guy Kiyosaki at $100 ,000. You've got Novogratz at $500 ,000. Kathy Woods is at $1 million. I think she might have revised her to like $1 .3 million, but the end of 2023. And so that narrative, micro strategy, acquiring more, there's just little things on the back end. And then you could see something drastic happening. And you got to be ready for that. In the next month, there could be some sort of approval for one of the Bitcoin ETFs. If that doesn't happen in January, there's actually talk that maybe multiple Bitcoin spot ETFs in the United States could get approved all at once. You have things that maybe Gary Gensler gets recalled. Like these events could happen. What we think is that the bad events have already happened. We went through that last year. We went with that with Luna. We had FTX and we had Celsius. The bad actors have been weeded out. And so any kind of regulatory stuff that comes in, we think won't have that drastic of an impact. We saw XRP do well in its case. And we think that the setup for new news and better news is on the horizon. And then you look at the liquidity on it. It's something that can vacuum very quickly to the upside. And then all that takes is the news agencies to just flip and go from doom and gloom to price appreciation. And it will show in Google and it will start to result in prices. So, yeah, that's our thoughts. And those are two big catalysts. I'd say more so the Bitcoin ETF over the halving at this point. Yeah, very well said. And yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, Bitcoin is, it doesn't seem like it now because Bitcoin really has been kind of trading in the range that it's in at the moment, just somewhere between $26 ,000 and $30 ,000, shall we say, for well, for months, really. And so it does feel like, you can call it what you want, the sort of extended bear market, the accumulation zone of the next bull market. But it is very... There's also, there's two known sellers in the market almost at a regular basis. The US government's still selling Bitcoin. And you have FTX that's starting to unload some of their Bitcoin. And so you're getting matched up with, you know, that's why you see this almost sideways slide, you know, and it's disconnect and lack of correlation is because you got these two just unloading and acquiring and just trimming. And then any news could just set this off. But the other thing is that it's possible that our government stops selling at the end of this year and takes a break. They could continue, but if they take a break, well, there's one less seller in the market. And then who knows, maybe what needs to be done in this tranche for FTX also completes as they're projected to. And then now you're relieving sell pressure. You get a Bitcoin approval in Q1 and this thing turns into a vacuum to the upside. Do you, I mean, I wonder what it's like, Brian, to be in your position, like perhaps for, I'm sure you have clients who came in perhaps during the bull market of 2021. And, you know, it's hard for people who experience their first crypto bear market. And, you know, as much as the velocity is intense on the upside, it's also pretty disquieting on the downside. What do you say to people who have sort of started with you in the good times, but now you've got to manage not only their assets through the bear market, but I suppose, you know, their expectations and emotions as well. Yeah, great question, Andy. And it brings me back to the second half of last year and just the many conversations we had with a lot of our clients and, you know, talking about the space and reassuring about our business partners and how well they're here and how good standing they're in and us. And when we onboard clients from the beginning five years ago, even through the bull market in 2021, we go over downside slides with them and we talk about, you know, bad scenarios. You know, hey, you know, how do you feel if this is going to be down 80%, right? And we have those conversations early on when there's no money at play and there's no emotions. And we make that plan and you tend to find that most people can handle it. There could be a few that say, you know, I want to exit and close out. But, you know, now that you have that conversation and it's kind of like out of the way, you can reflect back to, hey, this is the plan we put in place and this is what we're going to do. And for some of those, you know, we can do, if they're a brokerage account, I mentioned earlier, we can do tax loss harvesting. So that's a way to, you know, take these losses and offset it, you know, against future tax payments. And there's an advantage to that. And now when they stay in the game, they allow us to tax loss harvest and prices come back, you get to see some of these get back into the green and they just had a nice, you know, discount to what they're going to be paying in future taxes. And so we try to find things like that. Other things that we do too is, you know, for IRAs, we do stuff unique. We're able to stake in those. In our model portfolios performance, we've actually outperformed Bitcoin by about 30 % by strategically allocating away and pulling back. So that helps as well too, adding units to the account. And we look at this space and can say like, hey, you know, in a year where asset prices came off drastically, we had some cash because we sold earlier. So we're waiting to deploy that. We can tax loss harvest what was down and around. And we're keeping up regular communications with you guys. You know, we're tapping the street to get, you know, insight and affirmation that everybody's in good standing. And that's what really comes to good customer services, just trying to be in front of everybody and open for human communication. Because that's something that most of the businesses in the space really self -directed. I mean, there's no one to talk to in DeFi, right? You can't call any of the businesses. And even in the typical exchanges, it can be hard to have a human to talk to. And that's where we pride ourselves in being available for our clients alongside running the model portfolio. Fantastic. And talk to us, Brian, in terms of I guess the success of DAIM, your business. I'd love to understand any sort of metrics that you watch in terms of the growth in your user base, your clients, your assets under management. I assume things are ticking along and growing over time. Yeah, so when we started the business in 2018, we started off with zero clients. That's the way the regulators wanted to do it. No assets under management. And then a few regulatory audits in 2019, because they liked that we put crypto advisor and manager on there. So that slowed some growth. But then coming into the back half of 2020, we definitely caught a groove. We were able to develop some narrative and marketing in the confines of still Facebook and stuff, not allowing to have crypto advertising, but through our word of mouth and in our network and hand -to -hand discussions. And so we grew the business to over 200 accounts. And really when we look back and we analyze the business today and we look at the AUM and how it fluctuated and the number of clients, I think a lot of companies will see a drastic drawdown in AUM and they will also see a drastic drawdown in number of accounts. Now their accounts might still have a dollar value, but I mean, meaningful accounts, anything over 10 grand. Whereas we'll see that we've trimmed flat through the back half of 2021 and now are slowly increasing. And I think the temperature changed. It felt like right around March that individuals were open to getting back in the space, kind of that really bad hangover from November was behind them. And so I think things are going to get even more favorable for us.
Telecom Reseller
A highlight from Cybersecurity attack on MGM may have begun with a ten-minute phone call: How it happened, Special Mutare Podcast
"This is Doug Greenan, I'm the publisher of Telecom Resiller, and I'm very pleased to have with us once again Chuck French of Mutari. Chuck, thank you for joining me today. Doug, a pleasure. Thank you. Well, we're, you know, we have talked in the past about cyber security, and of course on this podcast series, we've been doing a lot of work on that all year long, but this time I think it's a little bit less abstract. We're doing this literally while, even as we're recording this, MGM hospitality company is being basically hacked. You can't make a reservation on their line. There's still many operational problems that they're having. So we have the spectacle of one of the world's richest and most well -prepared companies, you know, having basically an episode about which we've talked about many times in this program. So Chuck, we're going to be sort of diving into that to find out, you know, what that's all about. And if anything can be done by, you know, the rest of us who are maybe in companies that have fewer resources, less visibility and so on. But what is Mutari? Well, Mutari is a 30 -year -old, not just more than 30 years old, but we're an independent software vendor, been focused in business communication software for all those years. We're based in Chicago, 400 enterprise customers. We enjoy a pretty good reputation for building great software and supporting it in the way that our customers enjoy, very little turnover of our employees, our customers, our partners. And as an organization, we're buying the company right now through an employee stock ownership. And I tell people this every time I meet them, because I think it's important. We're aligned and we're the most aligned company you've ever spoken to, Doug. And we're aligned around buying the company, but with a specific purpose. We need to do it around solving a problem. And then for the last couple of years, we are focused on being the leader in voice threat defense, which is why this conversation is so timely. You know, before we get off the topic of your company's core identity, I understand Mutari is actually a Latin word. Yes, it means to change in Latin. So think mutant, mutate. I always have to remind myself of that to make sure I'm saying Mutari. Pretend you're an Italian person saying Mutari, right? It's Latin for to change. And at first, I didn't know what to make of the name because everybody has a hard time with it. But I really do think it's more apt today than ever because this world, by the day, changes faster and faster and faster. And we know how to respond to that. We're agile a company that still acts like a perpetual startup. Well, let's talk about today because as we were just discussing before we started our podcast, and I'm sure a lot of our watchers, listeners are paying close attention to this. I am really just dazzled as much as we've talked and talked with you and many other people about the cybersecurity threat. I think very few of us imagined that what you guys have been telling us in terms of, gee, guys, you know, this could be really bigger than anyone could imagine. Well, here we are. It's seven days. It's still unfolding. I welcome anybody to go to our website and look in the resources column for all the content we put out there around this specific topic. Long -form articles about all of this, statistics, everything you'll ever want to know about the voice. And I'll bring it back to voice, Doug, because you didn't mention it yet. But, you know, the MGM ransomware attack, the cybersecurity attack that's happened has really brought MGM to its knees. You mentioned people can't make reservations. People can't get into the rooms right now, right? You can't, machines are not working. You know, from some estimates, MGM right now, because their systems are all offline, is losing somewhere between $3 million and $7 million a day and $1 million in pure cash. So those would be revenue and a million in cash every day because of this. And why this is so interesting to our firm is because the catalyst for all of this was a voice call. It was a telephone call from someone into the IT area, the customer service area of the IT department at MGM that allowed the bad actors to get the credentials necessary to put their software in, to allow them to take control of all of MGM, a voice call. So how about that? Well, you know what, it's very interesting because for those of you who are movie fans and like the Ocean's Eleven series, not the original with Frank Sinatra, but the more recent one from 20 years ago, there was, for those of you who are telecom fans, there was a PBX hack in that. That was part of what they did. And that was still in the era when the PBX was mostly a non -integrated system, a separate system running alongside the rest of IT. And of course, in the last 20 years, that's been departed. And now, you know, that call presumably occurred on the same set of servers, I think, that a lot of this is happening. Yeah. So, you know, so let's dive into this. So this is exactly what happened. This apparently started with a phone call. And then you were telling me that once they got in, they were able to do sort of some sort of horizontal thing. Tell me more about that, what that means. Yeah. And so I'll provide a little context around that. These are not people who, you know, stumbled upon this and, oh, I was able to get the credentials and so forth. These are large, large, sophisticated organizations, virtual organizations that are all over the world. And when I say sophisticated, and I know I've mentioned this in the past, these are, they have HR departments. They have areas where they can adjudicate conflicts. They have health plans in these organizations and they have specialization. So oftentimes what happens, and if you were to go on the dark web, you know, you can actually purchase some of these things. You can purchase the software to be able to enact these things. But there's just like in a hospital, right? You might have people whose job is the anesthesiologist, then you have the physicians and you have the nurse. They have that regarding ransomware attacks. So are there things called initial access brokers, people whose sole job is to be able to get access to a system. And that might be where their job ends. They sell that, they sell that and they put that in the marketplace. Another group picks it up, say, we're going to be the group now harvests us. That means they take the credentials and they go laterally and they infiltrate systems throughout an organization. They don't do anything. They lay late for a little while. I want to make sure that if you're backing up the copies, they're in the backups, all of their software is there. They lay in there. And then ultimately there comes a day when they say we're going to attack. And that's when someone, and I'm sure you've seen these before the screen pops up, you know, someone, some administrator that, you know, we have your data. You know, here's the information. Send some, you know, so much Bitcoin to so and so. Well, the encrypt your files and destroy them and still proof of life, if you will, to that end, and then you can continue on your way. So, yes, to answer your question, they received through three socially and through social engineering, a customer service person. It's this organization and they this group they call swirly spiders. I forget. I forget the name of these. Yeah. Yeah. They they. Yeah, that's right. That's right. They went ahead and then got access and told MGM that they had their systems in and ultimately MGM ignored them. And guess what happened to MGM when they didn't take this group seriously, everything that we're talking about today.
Crypto Critics' Corner
A highlight from Were SBF's parents in on it? Follow the Money
"Welcome back, everyone. I am Cass Pianci, and I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, not of the criminal sort, Bennett Tomlin. How are you today? I'm doing well. How are you, Cass? I'm doing good. It's been busy. It's been a very busy week for both of us. But today's episode is going to be about SPF's parents, the Bankmans and the Freeds, and their what appears to be increasingly important role that they each played in the criminal elements of FTX and Alameda Research. They called it a family business. They accepted incredibly large salaries. His father was getting a million dollars after requesting it because he was only getting 250 ,000 before. Mom pushed and tried to ensure that any money getting sent to the charity arm of the company had two steps of separation, two degrees of separation. And just really shady, weird stuff going on over there with the Bankmans and the Freeds. But those are kind of vague descriptions of what's going on. Bennett, why don't you walk us through some of the seriously criminal elements and what is happening? There is a decent amount of allegations contained in this lawsuit from the FTX debtors in possession against Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried that at a high level alleges that they were involved in specific aspects of the business and were closely connected to various alleged criminal acts and criminal acts people have pled guilty to. Starting with Joseph Bankman, he was involved with Alameda Research as early as 2018, which is when it was founded, and stayed involved throughout the entire time. The first several years, this appears to have been relatively informal. He directed FTX towards their first law firm, suggested their first accounting firm, was involved in consultations for hiring of certain executives and things like that. But none of this was documented in any kind of formal way. Eventually, in January 2021, he decides that there should be some kind of piece of paper that describes his relationship with these entities. And so he creates a document that describes his work for Alameda Research and FTX and FTX US, saying he's doing a variety of pro bono legal work and consulting work for these entities. What's interesting, of course, is that he was the signatory for the FTX entities and for himself on this entity. Really has kind of vibes of that loan agreement between Bitfinex and Tether years ago, where JLVDV and Juan Carlo was signing for both entities. And so that was one moment that really struck me as I was going through that is that he felt the need to, after providing advice for several years, finally in 2021 documents it and says he's providing this pro bono legal advice. This did not stay pro bono for very long. Later in 2021, he would take a leave of absence from Stanford University. And after he took this leave of absence, he allegedly told an FTX US employee, I'm no longer getting paid by Stanford because I'm on leave, so you should have me on salary starting December 1st. In December 2021, this is when he finally entered into a formal employment agreement with FTX US, where his nominal title was Senior Advisor to the FTX Foundation. You said it was $250 ,000. It was actually $200 ,000 a year, plus bonuses he was supposed to be getting paid. And this is where we get to the fun part that you made an allusion to before. He went to FTX's head of administration after signing this employment agreement that clearly said $200 ,000, told this person that he was supposed to be getting $1 million a year starting in December, and then he sends an email over to Sam Bankmanfried, his son, that says, and I quote, Gee, Sam, I don't know what to say here. This is the first I've heard of the $200 ,000 a year salary putting Barbara on this, meaning he cc'd in Sam Bankmanfried's mother and his domestic partner to help him deal with this contract negotiations that happened after he signed that contract. And it worked. It worked. Within two weeks, Bankman and Fried were gifted $10 million in funds originating from Alameda. Within three months, they ended up getting their $16 million mansion in the Bahamas funded entirely by FTX. And over the period after they got that mansion, they were able to expense something like $90 ,000 in various other expenses. And before he signed that contract agreement in December 2021, I do want to make clear he was also provided with an option to purchase shares of FTX US and FTX trading in November 2021. Before he was even employed with FTX, he was getting large options of shares. So yeah, I think that kind of is a good initial overview and we can get into some of the details he was also involved in, but they were receiving a lot of this type of monetary compensation. Yeah, well, I want to specifically bring up here some things that really made a red flag go off for me were, for instance, how they were keen to keep the residencies, the properties that they were acquiring with these gifted funds and all this money that they were essentially taking from customers, to be clear on that, that they wanted to ensure that that money in those properties would be shielded from a bankruptcy. And I'm just wondering, like, why, if they're so confident in this business, if they're so confident in their son, if they're so sure this is the future of finance, and I get it, you want to shield your personal property from a bankruptcy, but you just got gifted $10 million. You have to know this isn't exactly personal property, right? Like, you have to know your son is giving this to you. Your son is making money from the company. How is he making all of this money? You haven't really nailed that down yet. And you still are just letting this all transpire. Nobody was asking any questions is kind of what I'm getting to. But the questions they were asking were about, like, ensuring that they were shielded from any problems in the future. Yeah. And we should clarify the timeline a little bit here. There's a 2021 email exchange where FTX's general counsel wants to set up a meeting with their law firm to discuss how assets, including primary residence, can be structured to be bankruptcy remote. And Bankman quickly kind of responds in this email chain the next day and says it would be great, all else equal, if we could have the founders put money into property in the Bahamas and sent them a link to a description of an offshore trust structure in the Bahamas. He then discusses this with a lawyer in the Bahamas, another Stanford law professor, and his brother -in -law, and then ends up saying something we might use when we buy property in the Bahamas. And the reason I'm belaboring this point is because it happens, I think, about a year before they actually end up getting the house. And then, five months before they get the house, there's another thing that happens, and that's that they apply for residency in the Bahamas, permanent residency in the Bahamas. In order for them to get that, there's a $15 ,000 fee. That's also paid by FTX. And so I think what that kind of shows is this kind of series of planning that went into them eventually getting this mansion. They started discussing how to structure this about a year before, and I don't think they ended up using those trusts, at least not at the time of bankruptcy. They had already gotten their residency months before they got the property, and then they got the property. They wanted to benefit from this. There's no doubt about that. I mean, there is no doubt. I just want to be clear, and we're going to link to the very thorough protest article that goes over all of this, but it is very obvious. I think before we get to the crux of this, I first want to delve into this a little bit more. So Stanford yesterday decided that they were going to return all of the donated funds from this family, which amounted to $5 .5 million, which is a lot. I mean, I know that they get a shit, a metric shit ton of cash every year, but the idea that they're getting $5 .5 million in a single year from one family, one company, you know, essentially one family. That's how you get your name on a building and stuff like that. So they were donating a ton of money to this educational institution. All I want to say is that I think Stanford is disgusting. I think we see this in a bunch of these higher education, these private institutions, probably equally common in great public universities as well, but the ones that we hear about are like MIT or Harvard or Stanford accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein or accepting money from these guys, and then, oh, okay, you're returning it. Great. Well, you know why you're returning it? Because you got caught. That's why you're returning it. You're not returning it because you thought it was the right thing to do. Now that it's all coming out in these court documents, Stanford's giving the money back. They didn't do it one minute before that happened, though. Isn't that interesting? And I, you know, I think you should get into kind of the details of those donations, which there were many over this period, but like, oh, what a nasty, nasty way for a university to operate. I think the elite private colleges are at a special risk for kind of this because so much of their, like, existing structure is based around taking in cash and converting it to some vague elite authority. Speaking specifically about the donations from FTX to Stanford that appear to have been directed by Joseph Bankman, there was one that came from Paperbird directly to Stanford University. And this one was interesting because there was a lot of discussion about which entity to use. And what Bankman ends up saying is that he thought it should come from Paperbird, which was one of the entities that Sam Bankman -Fried owned that held most of the stock for FTX that investors were buying into. The corporate structure of FTX is a mind fuck. But this shows Bankman was aware of parts of the mind fuck. He says Paperbird can use the deduction. And when he discusses alternatives, he says we can have another entity loan Paperbird money, but that requires some paperwork. Eventually they get it all sorted out. FTX transfers money to Paperbird into a newly set up bank account, which immediately sends that money on to Stanford. There was another four million dollar donation to a Stanford fund for pandemic preparedness that he described as pretty much a no brainer. Bitcoin were transferred from Alameda Research's FTX account eventually. There was another series of donations where it was proposed that they give 1 .5 million from the FTX Foundation to Stanford College. However, the initial 500 ,000 for this came from an Alameda Research bank account, and the second 500 ,000 came from an FTX US bank account. There was another donation they did for a Stanford blockchain conference so they could sponsor it. That one was only 10k. But again, it kind of points towards how Bankman saw these entities as interchangeable. He said 10k is so little it doesn't really matter. So if we think that having FTX US is easier or safer for some reason, we should just do that. And what's most interesting is you talked about your name on a building. And there was a Stanford University employee who provided comment as part of this lawsuit. And this Stanford University employee apparently says that internally in Stanford, these donations were categorized as directed by the Bankman -Frieds. And like when they specifically got the big $4 million pandemic preparedness donation from Alameda, this person even reached out, should this one be categorized like the rest as from you all? Or is this one somehow different? And so yeah, I think that those donations kind of point towards how they were specifically using these commingled customer and client funds from across all these different entities in this self -promotional activity of giving these donations. Yep, there's more to where this money went, how much was spent, why they were in control of this. But I think the question that everybody wants to ask and is wondering about is how are they not being criminally charged with anything yet? And will they? I think we should hold off on that question for just a moment, because I want to talk about how Joseph Bankman also made sure other people he was related to and friends with got paid while he was in this position, because I think that's kind of fun. They talk about one example where he got a Stanford law student a free trip to the French Grand Prix tickets to the race so they could go and visit that. But I think the more interesting one was a hackathon that they had planned that was run by his sister. Bankman freed Sam's aunt. They hired her at a rate of $14 ,000 a month to prepare the FTX million -dollar hackathon and crypto summit held at the Miami Heat Arena, which was the one they put their name on briefly. They spent a total of $2 .3 million on this event, which was attended by 1 ,200 people. They were spending crazy amounts. They said she was authorized to spend like without a budget, whatever it was needed to get this event done. There was so much of this kind of like self -enrichment here that we'll get to your question as to how are they not being criminally charged. That's just grift. Yeah, obviously. The other person we need to talk about, of course, is Barbara. Barbara Freed, Sam Bankman Freed's mother. In her specific role, she, as you alluded to at the very beginning of this episode, described herself as her son's partner in crime of the non -criminal sort. And Sam made sure to sing her praises to his team, making known to her that he intended to rely on her direction regarding who to give to, how much to give to, and how it should be disclosed and told them that it would be good for them to follow her advice as well. And what seems really interesting is she seemed to have a great deal of control. The lawsuit even alleges she was able to unilaterally commit funds of Sam Bankman Freed's to her political action committee, Mind the Gap, meaning without Sam's authorization, she was able to take Sam's money donated in Sam's name to her political action committee, which is a great deal of trust. And even inside her own committee, when she had to talk about some of these donations, she would say things like, I don't know exactly what interconnected entity he sent the money from, but the business is real and revenue -generating, which again, I think, points towards kind of the interchangeability of these entities for these folks. What I think really gets interesting is Nishad Singh, who has already pled guilty for conspiracy to defraud the federal election committee, as well as a variety of other conspiracy charges. He was one of the people who appears to have served as effectively a straw -man donor for Sam Bankman Freed, and was advised in this process by Barbara Freed, Sam's mother. At one point when they were discussing donations to her organization Mind the Gap, and she suggested that, now that my connection to Sam is publicly known, because we don't want to create the impression that funding MTG is a family affair, as opposed to a collective effort by many people, including some mystery guy Nishad Singh, which is when she was suggesting that on their end, they would prefer if his name was the one that was donating to Mind the Gap instead of Sam Bankman Freed's. And similarly, she was worried about a lot of their political donations. There's a really telling one, where she's warning him in an email, And again, later, just the last one to really put kind of a cherry on top of her seeming knowledge of some of the criminal acts that Nishad Singh has pled guilty to. She said, And I think this, as well as some of the more specific tax advice that Bankman Freed was giving on FTX their specific finances and stuff like that, point towards potential knowledge of criminal acts. I tweeted out shortly after I read through this lawsuit, or as I was about halfway through reading this lawsuit, if I'm being honest, And as you alluded to previously, that is kind of what this feels like. It feels like these two law professors, who should have known better, had high -level knowledge of things that people have already pled guilty to, and were deeply involved in the business. Bankman specifically was even mentioned on an internal document as a member of the management of FTXUS, along with only a few other names. They had knowledge, they were inside the organization, and they had some amount of presence. One last thing that I think really hammers that home. When we went to consensus, and we talked about this in our episode that we did after that, Anthony Scaramucci was talking about his experiences in the lead -up to and aftermath of the FTX collapse. And one thing he said that seemed to be corroborated in the lawsuit is that Bankman was involved in them attempting to get the emergency funding. And as we said, and we shared the audio clip of Scaramucci saying it, Bankman apparently told Scaramucci, Anthony or intimated to him, that there was an asset liability mismatch at FTX. What happened to me is I was actually speaking in Sarasota, Florida. There was rumblings that day, I think it was November the 6th or something like that, or 7th. The Monday was the 7th. And then I got back to New York and I spoke to Sam's dad about the problem, and it was intimated to me that it was an asset liability mismatch, that they were leading redemptions and there were assets available, but they weren't necessarily liquid, and they needed time to get the liquidity, and they were looking for some rescue plans. And so at that time, I was a good citizen and a partner in the business. In fact, they owned a piece of my business. I was certainly trying to help them on their fundraising round.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1408: One Bitcoin Will Reach $1 Million - Strike CEO Jack Mallers
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis as Bitcoin price hits $26 ,600. Also, brand new all -time high hash rate has just come in. We'll be discussing this as well as a $50 ,000 Bitcoin price target. As top analyst says, it's unavoidable. We'll also be discussing Max Keiser making a bold claim, he says, or I should say prediction. I am calling it mortgage rates will break the 1981 high .63%. of 18 We'll also be discussing the Bitcoin short -term hodlers panic amid nearly 100 % in unrealized losses. We'll also be discussing US anti -CBDC bill moves a step closer to passing. That's what I'm talking about. We'll also be sharing Tether USDT acquires a stake in Bitcoin miner Northern Data, hinting at an AI collaboration. Let's go. I'll also be sharing with you Bitcoin's next big move up, which will be explosive, according to top crypto analysts. As always, there is a catch. I'll also be sharing the latest prediction from Jack Mallers, the strike CEO. He says the Bitcoin price is heading to a million dollars. He also recently shared that Western Union can't allow me to pay for my coffee. Visa won't allow me to remit money. Lightning does both in better and open and global. You guys come play on my court and let's see who can develop the best experience for the consumer because I bet all of my life I build a better experience on the Lightning Network than Jamie Dimon. Let's freaking go. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from Aztec Testnet For Private Smart Contracts
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday, September 20th, 2023, Aztec releases a local testnet for private smart contracts, L2B introduces a new TVL framework, Balancer suffers a DNS hijack attack, and the Holsky testnet is set to relaunch on September 28th. All this and more starts right now. The Arbitrum on Gitcoin Grants round is now live. If you'd like to support this podcast, please consider contributing to our grant by visiting ethdaily .io forward slash gitcoin. Aztec Network introduced Aztec Sandbox, a local developer testnet for creating privacy preserving applications. The release includes a lightweight local Aztec node, an Aztec RPC server, the Aztec .NR framework, Aztec .JS, Aztec CLI, and a VS Code extension tailored for NOR, along with code tutorials. Developers can use the Sandbox to experiment with private smart contract composability, private Layer 1 to Layer 2 function calls, private state management, and hidden function execution. The release represents the initial phase in Aztec's developmental roadmap to construct a fully decentralized privacy -preserving Layer 2 network. Layer 2 analytics platform L2B introduced a new framework for calculating total value locked in Layer 2 networks. The updated TVL metric on L2B will now default to include the value of native tokens deployed directly on Layer 2. Previously, L2B only accounted for tokens that originated from Layer 1, as well as chain -specific tokens like OP and ARP. The TVL calculation will now include canonically bridged assets, externally bridged assets, and natively minted assets within Layer 2 networks. L2B will also take into account the total supply of tokens on the Layer 2, the circulating supply of native tokens, and the token's CoinGecko ranking when selecting tokens for inclusion in TVL. Balancer suffered a DNS hijacking attack that resulted in the loss of over $228 ,000 worth of assets. During the hijacking incident, users accessing the Balancer frontend were deceived into approving a malicious smart contract, which ultimately transferred their assets to the attacker. Balancer has since regained control over its domain. Balancer attributes the security breach to a social engineering attack on its domain register provider EuroDNS. In response, Balancer announced plans to deprecate its use of the .vai top -level domain in favor for a more secure register. And lastly, the relaunch of the Holsky Testnet is scheduled for Thursday, September 28th at 12pm UTC. The relaunch comes after the initial Holsky Testnet launch failed due to misconfiguration issues. A launch party for the testnet will take place in Holshovice, Prague at the Bortel Hackerspace. The Holsky Testnet will feature an initial validator set of over 1 million validators and 1 .6 billion testnet ether available at Genesis. In other news, PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin goes live on Venmo, Alchemy releases an ERC4337Q3 stats report, and Friendtech releases support for desktop. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
Coronavirus
A highlight from Aztec Testnet For Private Smart Contracts
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday, September 20th, 2023, Aztec releases a local testnet for private smart contracts, L2B introduces a new TVL framework, Balancer suffers a DNS hijack attack, and the Holsky testnet is set to relaunch on September 28th. All this and more starts right now. The Arbitrum on Gitcoin Grants round is now live. If you'd like to support this podcast, please consider contributing to our grant by visiting ethdaily .io forward slash gitcoin. Aztec Network introduced Aztec Sandbox, a local developer testnet for creating privacy preserving applications. The release includes a lightweight local Aztec node, an Aztec RPC server, the Aztec .NR framework, Aztec .JS, Aztec CLI, and a VS Code extension tailored for NOR, along with code tutorials. Developers can use the Sandbox to experiment with private smart contract composability, private Layer 1 to Layer 2 function calls, private state management, and hidden function execution. The release represents the initial phase in Aztec's developmental roadmap to construct a fully decentralized privacy -preserving Layer 2 network. Layer 2 analytics platform L2B introduced a new framework for calculating total value locked in Layer 2 networks. The updated TVL metric on L2B will now default to include the value of native tokens deployed directly on Layer 2. Previously, L2B only accounted for tokens that originated from Layer 1, as well as chain -specific tokens like OP and ARP. The TVL calculation will now include canonically bridged assets, externally bridged assets, and natively minted assets within Layer 2 networks. L2B will also take into account the total supply of tokens on the Layer 2, the circulating supply of native tokens, and the token's CoinGecko ranking when selecting tokens for inclusion in TVL. Balancer suffered a DNS hijacking attack that resulted in the loss of over $228 ,000 worth of assets. During the hijacking incident, users accessing the Balancer frontend were deceived into approving a malicious smart contract, which ultimately transferred their assets to the attacker. Balancer has since regained control over its domain. Balancer attributes the security breach to a social engineering attack on its domain register provider EuroDNS. In response, Balancer announced plans to deprecate its use of the .vai top -level domain in favor for a more secure register. And lastly, the relaunch of the Holsky Testnet is scheduled for Thursday, September 28th at 12pm UTC. The relaunch comes after the initial Holsky Testnet launch failed due to misconfiguration issues. A launch party for the testnet will take place in Holshovice, Prague at the Bortel Hackerspace. The Holsky Testnet will feature an initial validator set of over 1 million validators and 1 .6 billion testnet ether available at Genesis. In other news, PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin goes live on Venmo, Alchemy releases an ERC4337Q3 stats report, and Friendtech releases support for desktop. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Is the SEC About to Go Scorched Earth?
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, September 20th, and today we're asking whether the SEC is about to go scorched earth. Before we do that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, lots to get through today, so let's dive right in. The SEC is not done going after crypto exchanges, according to David Hirsch, the head of the agency's crypto assets and cyber unit. Speaking at the Securities Enforcement Forum Central in Chicago on Tuesday, Hirsch said securities law violations within the industry extend far beyond existing litigation. Now, keep in mind, the crypto division of the SEC is currently bogged down with complex lawsuits against both Coinbase and Binance, two of the largest crypto exchanges. Hirsch said his unit is investigating similar activity across other firms and believes non -compliant business practices, quote, hold true well beyond any two entities. Hirsch warned, Now, the SEC is apparently also turning its gaze towards DeFi platforms in this crusade against crypto intermediaries. Hirsch said, quote, Now, a common theme of recent comments from SEC chair Gary Gensler is to mock, quote, so -called decentralized finance. This perhaps indicates that the SEC believes underlying most DeFi protocols, they will be able to find a company to sue. All that said, despite outlining an ambitious enforcement agenda, Hirsch did concede that the agency's resources are constrained. Over recent decades, the SEC has largely dealt with regulated financial institutions, with The SEC's campaign against crypto firms has largely presented existential threats rather than manageable fines, leading to a significant number of contested lawsuits. Hirsch admitted during the panel that, quote, Reflecting on that point, Hirsch recognized the scale of the task he was proposing, stating that, And similarly, there are a number of centralized platforms out there, some that are acting as unregistered exchanges. So in some ways here, Hirsch is begrudgingly admitting that the SEC is getting close to capacity, at least when it comes to ongoing litigation. They're dealing with Coinbase, Binance and Ripple, all as major cases, LBRY Library seems to be wanting to go to appeal, then there's Grayscale, which continues to be a legal battle, as well as the two recent NFT cases which settled. So the question is, can the SEC handle five lawsuits at once? Can they handle 10? Even if you think the answer is yes, at what point do you think the answer becomes no? Frankly, this is maybe why people like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong are encouraging the industry to take up arms effectively and actually fight these legal battles out in court. Now, of course, this brings up the other question of whether the SEC can bank on funding for additional resources to expand this endeavor or whether they need to have some alternative approach. This, of course, echoes the talking point from both the GOP as well as from Dems like The SEC's regulation by enforcement approach is reaching the end of its limits to the extent that it ever was successful at all, and that a much smarter pathway at this point might actually be rulemaking and guidance rather than just trying to sue the industry off the face of the planet. Look, crypto companies are fighting back. It's only a matter of time before we see some sort of coordinated defense fund, and it wouldn't be surprising to me if even this beleaguered industry can marshal a heck of a lot more resources than the SEC can on its own. Now, the other side of the coin is how much time the SEC actually has left to bring the industry to heel. Fox Business reporter Eleanor Teret tweeted yesterday, Only 13 days left for the SEC to bring enforcement actions that will count towards fiscal year 2023 enforcement numbers. The agency filed 760 total enforcement actions in FY 2022. I wonder if we'll see a surge of cases in the next two weeks? Now, certainly when it comes to the crypto industry, there is a broad sense of bring it on. Crypto trader Laxman writes, SEC warns of upcoming charges against crypto and DeFi exchanges. Few might think this will kill crypto. I feel like this will kill SEC. Crypto McKenna retweeted the headline, SEC warns more charges against crypto and DeFi exchanges are coming, and added the Latin phrase, if you want peace, prepare for war. Simplest of all, the Gordon Law Group just said, bring it on, Gary. Now, moving to the global sphere, a German regulator has stressed the risks of crypto and called for global regulations to apply consistently without exception. On Monday, Rupert Schaefer, executive director of strategy, policy and control at the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, Baffin, published a blog post on the importance of united global regulation on crypto. He warned of the dangers of unregulated crypto firms using a fairly labored analogy to airspace regulation. Schaefer likened the crypto regulation to air traffic control regulations, which are relatively uniform throughout the world. In this analogy, some crypto assets and DeFi projects were UFOs. He stated then that it would be negligent to simply ignore them. Schaefer warned that FTX was a major crash and there would be many more like it to come. Now, the regulator praised the recently passed MICA regulations in Europe, but argued that further steps need to be taken. He produced a long list of global proposals from the Financial Stability Board, the International Association of Securities Commissions, the Financial Action Task Force and the Basel Committee, and this he claimed was enough to establish a global consensus, stating that quote, the international regulatory principles have been adopted and the framework has been set. Now, the common principles must be implemented consistently and consistently worldwide. There should be no white spots in the flight radar. The global rules should also apply to niche financial centers. Now, this blog post comes a little over a week since the conclusion of the G20 summit, which was pitched as an opportunity to discuss global synchronization of crypto policy. G20 leaders did manage to produce an endorsement of the latest set of policy recommendations published by the Financial Stability Board. And in her article previewing the meeting, Noelle Acheson highlighted that the adoption of FSB recommendations was quote, very likely since the recommendations don't actually say anything interesting. Noelle noted that the FSB recommendations are more around notational international cooperation and vague platitudes about enforcing risk management rather than firm policy outlines. At the same time, none of the recommendations mentioned by Schaeffer actually achieved consensus approval at the G20, calling into question how the regulator can claim that there are any common principles whatsoever. Moving over to the UK. The UK House of Lords have passed a bill which would grant authorities the power to freeze and seize crypto assets associated with crime. Currently, UK authorities cannot apply for crypto assets to be frozen unless there has been an arrest or conviction. This bill would allow them to more quickly apply for freeze orders. Hundreds of millions worth of crypto linked to crime have been seized by local authorities, but experts say this new bill could help deal with situations that aren't easily dealt with under the current legal framework. Phil Aris, Director of UK Public Sector Relations at TRM Labs said, A government fact sheet suggested even more broad use, stating that quote, The creation of a crypto asset's specific civil forfeiture power will mitigate the risk posed by those that cannot be prosecuted, but use their funds to further criminality or for terrorist purposes. Isabella Chase, Senior Policy Advisor at blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs suggested that the measure could assist with police funding, stating that quote, Corker Bining was less enthusiastic about the fundraising prospects, noting that as the UK cracks down, quite, they might find that the pool of available targets quickly dwindles as suspected criminals move their assets offshore to less enthusiastically policed jurisdictions. The bill has already been passed in the House of Commons once, so will now return for a second vote before it can be given royal assent to become law. Now, I don't know what sort of free society we're dealing with here. With the big caveat that I am not a lawyer, the discourse around this is pretty wild to me. It seems like they're talking effectively about on -chain asset forfeiture without the requirement to charge anyone with a crime. This is the digital equivalent of police being able to take what they find in your trunk if they search your car and not have to give it back to you. That's an insane policy and so is this. And I hope not just for the sake of the crypto industry, but for the sake of the UK itself, some real, real limits are put around this. Staying in the UK, however, for just a moment, on Tuesday, UK lawmakers passed the controversial online safety bill. The bill requires companies to assess the likelihood of customers encountering illegal content and of children encountering harmful content. Proponents of the bill say it will be used to protect younger internet users and make the web a safer place. The government has claimed the bill would make the UK, quote, the safest place in the world to be online. Critics, however, have warned that depending on how the bill is enforced, it could require companies to do away with encrypted messaging and essentially any notion of online privacy. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram have all threatened to exit the UK if the bill was passed. Earlier this month, regulators attempted to appease encrypted messaging apps by promising to only implement text scanning if it was technically feasible, but WhatsApp head Will Cathcart appeared unconvinced, tweeting last week that, quote, the fact remains that scanning everyone's messages would destroy privacy as we know it. That was as true last year as it is today. WhatsApp will never break our encryption and remains vigilant against threats to do so. Signal President Meredith Whitaker was a little bit more hopeful that the implementation would be thoughtful. She said, quote, while it's not everything we wanted, we are more optimistic than we were when we began engaging with the UK government. It matters that the government came out publicly clearly acknowledging that there is no technology that can safely and privately scan everyone's communications. At this point, it is imperative that we press regulators to incorporate the government's safely and privately scan end to end encryption communications and push them to clearly and publicly commit to not using the unchecked and unprecedented power vested in them to undermine private communications infrastructure. Whitaker confirmed that Signal would remain available in the UK for the time being. But for content and messaging platforms, the enforcement of the bill is a high stakes issue, with the maximum penalty being up to 10 percent of global revenue. Lastly, today, an update from a story earlier in the week. We have recently talked about JPX, a crypto exchange that has come under fire from Hong Kong authorities. At the time, withdrawals were effectively halted and one influencer had been arrested for promoting the platform. Reporting on Monday morning stated that authorities had received 83 complaints related to assets worth $4 .3 million. Since then, the case has dramatically escalated. Authorities have now received over 1 ,600 complaints involving over $150 million worth of assets. Eight people have now been arrested with the expectation that more arrests are coming. Police have now stated that the arrests are in relation to conspiracy to commit fraud rather than merely promotion of an unlicensed exchange. Twenty locations have been raided across Hong Kong with police seizing cash, jewelry, computers and phones worth around $1 million. Police have frozen around $2 million held in bank accounts owned by arrested suspects, alongside about $5 .5 million in property. Authorities are currently considering the confiscation of around $8 million in criminal proceeds. On Monday, JPX blamed the Securities and Futures Commission and their counterparties within the industry for causing an illiquidity crisis. They said in a statement, When other cryptocurrency exchanges announced their entry into the Hong Kong market and began extensive promotion, JPX was subjected to continuous unfair treatment. The SFC sent letters to all of our partners requesting the cessation of cooperation with the platform. On Tuesday, however, Elizabeth Wong, director of licensing at the SFC, confirmed that the regulator had asked counterparties to step away from the unlicensed exchange. The regulator had been monitoring the platform for months and issued numerous warnings to users. She said that since those warnings were issued, JPX went from bad to worse. The events surrounding JPX could be seen either as a sign that Hong Kong authorities are serious about enforcement of new crypto regulations or an indication that the city still has a long way to go in cleaning up the industry. As we discussed before, given Hong Kong's role as a bellwether for Chinese authorities' attitudes towards crypto, this is a story that we will continue to watch. However, for now, that is going to do it for today's breakdown. I appreciate you listening, as always. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1260. Stand With Crypto! | DO THIS NOW Before It's Too Late!
"All right, so we've got a lot happening in the area of regulation, and one of the things we'll be covering today is talking about Coinbase and their whole Stand With Crypto campaign. You guys are going to like this one, and it will also help you guys make your step into supporting the crypto events that are happening and, of course, the regulation itself. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back to Tech Path. All right, so let's get into it today. I want to go into a couple of topics. This is all going to be about Coinbase and what they're doing to essentially fight for our rights to basically own and operate crypto. But before we get started, I do want to thank our sponsor, and today that is Tangem. If you guys are looking at doing self -custody, this is one of the tools you can do it with. They have a really interesting concept around self -custody. One of course, it's an NFC card. It has an app related to it, and it's very easy to use. So make sure and check out their website. If you go and decide to get one of these wallets, make sure and get the new card. This one comes out in October. There's a lot of new features and benefits. Check their Twitter for a lot of the updates. But you do get that one, and you can get the additional discount by just using our link down below. So make sure and check that out. It does help the channel out. All right, so let's get into a couple of topics today. One of the points I want to hit on is this right here, is that with regulatory scenarios really starting to heat up, the SEC has basically put out another shot across the bow, saying crypto chiefs now warns more charges coming to exchanges. And a couple of things that I think we have to be aware of is just how much the SEC is doing right now in terms of the major exchanges. The major exchanges, obviously we know about Coinbase and Binance. But what others are they trying to go into? Will we start to see actions in everything from KuCoin, etc., to potentially cause some more challenges in the exchange wars against the SEC? And the other aspect that you have to think about on this is the component around the regulation. All of this regulation is brewing now. We are in the heat of a lot of regulation coming up. In fact, right here, if you look at Patrick McHenry's website, I'll show you guys some of the bills that are going in front of a vote right now. The Power of the Mint Act, CBDC Anti -Surveillance State Act, and the Digital Dollar Prevention Act. This is basically all anti -CBDC. All of this, of course, will be going in for votes very quickly. We're going to try to do a video for you guys to cover this and give you the results of this as it starts to resolve here. So lots happening there around legislation. Now with legislation comes you and me going out and really letting our state representatives, our congressmen and women understand our position. I think one of the tools that I have found that is pretty effective is what Coinbase has done. So it's a call to action mobilizing 52 million crypto owners into an army of 1 million advocates for change. And I think if we get that many advocates for change and create enough awareness, I think this is definitely a significant program. Now what they've done is they're going after some key states here. And this will be Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and of course, Wisconsin. These are key states in all of the primaries. And of course, in most cases, contribute a lot toward the potential next president. So this is a big deal of where this is going to be going on stand with crypto. So earlier this year, they took this research project on 87 percent of Americans believe the financial system needs changing. OK, I would agree with that. 51 percent of Americans believe that America's financial system does not work fairly for everyone. And I think that would make sense based on just the demographic cut that we're already starting to see. And then 63 percent of crypto owners agree that the system unfairly favors powerful interest. That I think has been all about the evolution of what's happened here in America, especially on the business interest side. Forty percent of those who own digital assets do not do so to remit money across borders to help family members. So this is another thing that a lot of people are utilizing this to really handle their everyday function of just being able to support families outside the United States. This is a big deal. 72 percent of the 18 to 34 is believe crypto gives people direct control over their money. This is another area that is going to be very interesting for a lot of our lawmakers. And the reason is because when you look at the 18 to 34, this essentially is the next demographic that's going to run the country. It's also the next demographic that is going to do most of the powerful purchasing for companies etc. We talked to a lot of brands and this is a big category in terms of demographic. 52 million Americans own crypto. There's some of the data that they pulled from this research. Five times more than own an EV. That's pretty interesting.
Crypto Curious
A highlight from 96 - Token2049 Highlights, Binance's SEC Showdown, Yuga Labs Update & Friend.tech on roids!!
"One of the big questions is - What is money? For practical purposes, it exists in a series of heterogeneous databases, very different databases. Do you believe in crypto? Digital currency may be an answer, but it is a highly respectable disaster. I'd go on Bitcoin. There is no second best. Welcome to the Crypto Curious podcast, proudly brought to you by the Bamboo app. Crypto Curious is your go -to source for all things cryptocurrency. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the world of crypto, we've got you covered. Each week, we'll break down the top news stories of the past seven days, giving you the information you need to stay on top of the latest trends and developments. Plus, we'll share quick bites of news and insights that you won't want to miss. If you're new to crypto, we recommend starting in our early episodes, where we break down the basics and give you a solid foundation to understand the crypto world. Join us as we explore the ever -evolving world of cryptocurrency and educate ourselves along the way. On today's episode, we'll give you a complete rundown on the token 2049 event that Blake and I attended in Singapore last week. Sneak peek, it was pretty amazing. Then we'll get into a number of big stories over the past few weeks, including Yuga Labs producing a movie, Binance are in hot water again, the Friend Tech field day, and we can't miss out on more FTX shenanigans. So stay tuned. My name's Tracey, and I'm joined by my pals, Blake and Craig, as we catch up on the crypto news. Hey guys, how are you going? Very well, Trace. Back in the swing of things this week. How are you? Yeah, good. After a week off. Did you miss us, Craig? Yeah, sure. No. That convincing. was I got an extreme FOMO from the group chat photos that you were sending and the talks that you guys went to that looked like a lot of fun, and I wish I went, but maybe next year. Yeah, definitely. Definitely next year. Maybe we should just dive straight in then and talk all about the token 2049 conference, which is the largest annual digital asset events in Asia and Europe. And this year it was bringing together the leading voices and the most sensational projects in Web3. And we did. We had an awesome time. Singapore is amazing. It was my first trip to Singapore. And Blake, give us your initial impressions and what you loved about the event. Yeah, so this is probably the biggest crypto conference in Asia, really. And I think about 10 ,000 people came to the main event itself, but then there were also about 400 side events, more than you could pick, or even too many, too many, really. And really, I think it's an industry focused event. You know, there weren't that many retail investors coming along. Tickets were priced accordingly. And yeah, it was an incredible event. They brought the who's who of the crypto industry to speak, talk about where the other projects are at and what the future looks like, the state of regulation and where we are in the market cycle. And it was fascinating to be there learning and hearing about how everyone else in the industry is thinking. And there was certainly no indication of us being in a bear market. My God, no, it was money, wasn't it? It was out of control. You know, the big exchanges were, were splashing cash around. The Formula One was on at the same time. So lots of people added a bit of excitement, didn't it? Yeah, we're coming over for that. And yeah, we could probably, you know, maybe give us your high level thoughts, Trace, and then we can get into a couple of the interesting things that we learned. Yeah, look, I think it was a really vibrant atmosphere. There were some excellent speakers. I was impressed with the setup. And the event ran really smoothly trying to get 10 ,000 people in over two days. You know, you'd expect a few hiccups, but there wasn't. I thought it was pretty, it was pretty well done. You know, there was a real big emphasis on, on building. And like you said, you certainly didn't feel like you were in a bear market at all. There was just money being splashed everywhere. Lots of giveaways, you know, certainly went trying to get a bit of merch to make Craig feel jealous. Definitely got a few to pop into the chat. What about the talks, guys? Like, which one was your most impressive project, most impressive person that you saw? Yeah, there's a couple that really stood out for me. Firstly, there was a talk on stablecoins, looking at the data and the adoption rate. What was really interesting is that you're even through this bear market, the stablecoin adoption rate has is increasing as you know, the crypto prices go down and less activity happens on chain and on exchanges. And this is really pointing towards the utility of stablecoins and what they're going to mean for the future. And importantly, what was recognised in that talk was that in the US, US -based stablecoins are being used less and less and offshore and algorithmic stablecoins are being used more and more. And this is really because of the regulatory pressure in the US market. People don't want to interact with US businesses, essentially. And, you know, probably the second most interesting talk that I saw was, you know, the founders Yeah, that was my favourite. Yeah, that was interesting. I didn't think I'd love it as much as I did. But I think me and you both sat there and was like, this is really interesting. Yeah, we had the founder of Polygon, the founder of Arbitrum and the founder of ZK Sync. You can see that the ZK Sync group, probably the most technologically advanced and that's a scaling solution that uses zero knowledge protocols on top of Ethereum. And yeah, definitely the most advanced, you know, scaling solution on top of Ethereum. Secondly, your Arbitrum is very focused on research and creating a really great product that anybody could use. And of course, Polygon's focus is on business development and getting adoption from web two companies. So coming at it from three very different angles there, but all for the same purpose of increasing adoption and scalability of the layer ones. I really like that layer two talk, but much like a music festival, you had to pick who you wanted to see because they're all overlapping. There was, you know, there was a main stage upstairs, another one downstairs. There's a few different talks. I ended up stumbling into the Neo founder, do his chat, which was really interesting. I quite liked that one. And for everyone's information, Neo is a layer one blockchain that was founded in China, very much focused on, you know, being an Eastern kind of competitor to Ethereum or so on. You guys remember the Chinese Ethereum narrative and it pumped Neo like 200X? Been around for a long time. Yeah. So you just kind of, but there was a lot of stans, a lot of people, you know, shilling a lot of different things and, you know, you could kind of get lost there for a while. There was a strong push for mainstream adoption through Web3 and gaming. And I think that was on a lot of panel discussions and a lot of side events were also pushing that. I know Animoca Brands had a lot of big events as well. So I think that was a big focus also. I think we didn't get to see him, but Robbie from Immutable was over there speaking as well. Now, was there one project that you didn't hear of that sort of came across a token at the conference? Like, was there a project that you put into your watch list? Not really. Just the big dogs just reinforcing there. Yeah. Just talking about where the innovation is moving, you know. And one thing that really stood out to me is that, you know, the regulation conversation just isn't that prominent in Asia because the regulation in Asia, the regulation in Asia, there's no issues. And, you know, I think that we can easily have a US -centric point of view sometimes. But in Asia, they're ready to do business there. You know, there's lots of investment happening. There's lots of deals happening. There's lots of growth happening. And some of those stories we'll talk about in today's episode. All in all, the event was memorable one for us and worth attending for our team. And it really did reinforce, you know, our love for the industry and just how far we have all come. And so if anyone's referenced token 2049, the next event will happen in Dubai in early 2024, in April, I believe. So you can check that one out. In April? That's only like six months away. I know. I did say to Blake that I thought that was quite soon. I think they have multiple events. You know, they have them in different regions. There you go. Well, I'll go to that one for the crypto curious community. I'll fly the flag. Cheers. Now, folks, we're going to mix it up a little bit this week, and we're going to cut out our short, sharp news bites at the end, and we're going to go to a few biggest stories because, as you know, we missed our show last week. So we're going to cover off a few biggest stories, starting with Franklin Templeton, a large asset manager who has joined the race for the holy grail, the Spot Bitcoin ETF. As we've previously reported, the aim of many of these leading institutions applying for ETF is to attract large institutional investors, which could potentially bring trillions of dollars into the crypto industry. So Franklin Templeton's ETF will be based on a mix of crypto exchange Bitcoin prices to deter price manipulation. So just another big boy entering the space and solidifying the general thesis that it is inevitable that this Bitcoin Spot ETF will happen. There you go, boys. What else are we going to catch on that's happened in the last few weeks, Craig? Yeah. So last week Vitalik, the Ethereum founder, he had his Twitter or X account hacked, and he shared a malicious link, and it actually led to just under $700 ,000 that was drained from people's wallet. So it was just a scam. People connected their wallet, got drained. But it was coming from his official Twitter. Right. Okay. This was due to a SimSwap attack. Right. These big dogs, even they get hacked. So stay on it. Stay safe, everybody. Yeah, we had that story a couple of weeks ago where your people's private keys were being stolen from their password manager, which had a vulnerability. So even when you're doing best practice activities, you know, sometimes you're still not safe. Can't trust anything. All right. Next up, we have a story that came out on the 13th of September. So received FTX approval from the US bankruptcy court to sell and hedge its crypto holdings valued at $3 .4 billion. That's a lot of bloody crypto. This is when everyone was freaking out about where they were going to drop their salon. Yep. Yeah. So we talked about Galaxy Digital was engaged to help, which is a big crypto focused asset manager to help the liquidators or the administrators sell down these assets. So what they have is $1 .16 billion worth of Solana and they have $560 million in Bitcoin and the rest in other tokens. So, you know, this is a little bit concerning. I think the Bitcoin market could probably absorb, you know, the sell down of $560 million of Bitcoin over, you know, a period of time. But what's the market cap, Craig, of Solana? Well, Solana is still, you know, in the billions. Let me just fact check. They can't sell all the Solana at once or it's going to be $9 .2 million of Solana released for them to sell every month, which I think is fine. So not all the Solana will be dumped in the market, but they have an $8 billion market cap. Yeah. And Solana did take a bit of a dump. I think it dumped around 5 % off this news. It's about 20 % of 15 to 20 % of Solana's market cap. But if they're smart, they're going to do this strategically over time anyway. Yeah, well, the three biggest holdings are Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum. And then the other ones I've got is APT, Updos, Doge, Tron, Matic, Ripple and BNB. Very minuscule amount of BNB. So, yeah, this caused a bit of a shakeout, didn't it guys? Yeah. But, you know, I'm sure that they'll work on a strategy to release those tokens back into the market over time. I will potentially suppress price, but, you know, hopefully not for too long. Next one. This has happened over the last four or five days. The SEC has gone after the Stoner Cats project. I remember this one from a few years ago and mainly for its connection with Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher because it was, you could buy the rights to, it was a TV show, a cartoon Stoner Cats show. I think they only produced a couple of episodes and Mila and Ashton were the voices of the Cats. I think Jane Fonda was also one of the voices. So the SEC has charged a project for conducting an unregistered NFT offering that raised $8 million and one of the arguments the SEC used was that the entire, the entity promoted the potential for its NFT prices to increase in the secondary market, similar to all NFTs. So Stoner Cats agreed to pay a $1 million penalty and to destroy all NFTs in its possession, but they did not have to admit that it was guilty of the charges. So setting precedent there, so I'm not sure if that was the best way to go for them. And the SEC, you know, are really going for different projects at the moment. This wasn't the first one in recent weeks. So one to watch here, I know Elliot from our marketing team, who you guys see sometimes on our Instagram page, sent an article around talking about the SEC going after NFT projects and Guy from the Coin Bureau also made a big statement about it recently that he's slightly concerned. What are your thoughts, Blake? Well, I think there's a big lesson here. Don't sell cryptographic assets to Americans. Stay the hell away and you'll be fine.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1406: Bitcoin Will Hit $4 Million, Rising 100x - Peter Thiel
"In today's show, we'll be discussing Bitcoin Bollinger Bands hitting a key zone as Bitcoin price fights for $27 ,000. In breaking news just in, Bitcoin hash rate hits a new all -time high. Let's go. And quoting Stacey Herbert, Bitcoin is pumping on the news of President Bukele's speech to the UN tonight. Can't wait. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin Adoption Fund launched by Japan's $500 billion Nomura Bank. That's right. The Bitcoin Adoption Fund will have long -only exposure to Bitcoin and be available to institutional investors. We'll also be sharing Sam Bankman, Fried's father, dragged his mother into an FTX US salary dispute. You can't make this stuff up, folks. Also in today's show, Bitcoin gearing up for a post -having parabola, according to crypto analysts. I'll be sharing his very bullish all -time high target. We'll also be discussing crypto asset market cap should explode 5 to 10x during the next bull cycle, according to investor Raoul Pal. I'll also be sharing Peter Thiel's $4 million Bitcoin price prediction, and we'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market. All this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts .net. Again, that's cryptonewsalerts .net. Welcome everyone just joining us. This is pod episode number 1406. I'm your host JV. And today is September 19th, 2023. We have lots to cover as usual. Massive shout out to everyone today in the live chat. Please let me know where you're tuning in from. And at the end of the show, I'm going to be reading everyone's comments out loud. Let's kick off today's show with our market watch as we do each and every day, the entire crypto market back in the green with Bitcoin back above $27 ,100 and checking out coinmarketcap .com, the current crypto market cap on the climb at $1 .08 trillion with roughly $27 billion in volume for the past 24 hours, Bitcoin dominance at 49 .2 % and the Ether dominance at 18 .4%. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we have TonCoin leading the pack up 5%, trading at $2 .57, followed by GMX up about 5%, trading just under 36 bucks, followed by Conflux up 4%, trading at $0 .12. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past week, virtually 95 out of the top 100 cryptos are in the green. Some of the top gainers include GMX, GRT, as well as CRV and NEO. And checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're currently rated at 46 in fear, same as 37 in fear. So there you have it. How many of you are pretty stoked for this most recent pump? And how many of you agree with Stacey Herbert that this pump is due to Bukele's speech scheduled for this evening? Let me know, fam. And now let's dive into today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what's popping with the king crypto. Bitcoin could see fresh upside volatility as the price action and the strength revisits a key level according to a classic metric. In a new post, John Bollinger, creator of the Bollinger Bands volatility indicator, says Bitcoin was positioned for a breakout decision. That's right. After hitting new September highs the day prior, Bitcoin has been challenging resistance levels out of reach since mid -August, according to data from Cointelegraph and TradingView. Now for Bollinger, the signs for Bitcoin are encouraging. Bollinger Bands use a standard deviation around the simple moving average to determine both the likely price ranges and volatility. And as Michael Saylor once said, volatility equals life force. Now, currently Bitcoin is putting in daily candles that touch the upper band. And when this happens, it can signal an imminent reversal back to the center band, or conversely, an inbound fit of upside volatility. Now narrow Bollinger Bands seen on Bitcoin recently lend weight to hopes that the latter scenario will now play out, quitting him here. And then there is the first tag of the upper Bollinger Band. After the new set of controlling bars were established at the lower band, he commented alongside this chart, the question is now, can we walk up to the upper band or is it too early to answer? What are your thoughts, chat? Let me know in the comments below. Now Bollinger characterizes the current mood among seasoned Bitcoin traders and analysts on the short -term timeframes. Despite the strength seen this week, caution abounds as various trend lines previously acting as support remain above the spot price. Now discussing the situation, we had on -chain monitoring resource, material indicators share the following. We have heavy technical resistance overhead at the key moving averages and support at the lower low. It is quite possible that we round trip the range. And with any luck, we'll see a legit test of the RS levels that will give us some clarity on where Bitcoin goes from here before the end of the week. And they also shared here in update number two, as noted earlier, it appears the Bitcoin bulls are gaining some momentum, but things are not always as they seem and goes on to share that sometime after last night's candle and close open, we've seen a new trend precognition signal develop on the daily chart and it seems to be bullish. I mean, we are breaking out. We are above 27 ,000. So let's freaking go. And also more strong foundation on the technicals. You can see Bitcoin hits yet another all -time high, which virtually means the network has never been this strong and this secure. Now I'm pretty stoked to tune into President Bukele's speech to the UN this evening. What do you think he has to share besides? I told you so. Let me know, fam. And again, welcome to everyone just joining us for the live show. Lots to continue to cover. So let's continue breaking it down. Next, let's discuss this adoption fund, which is a pretty big deal coming out of Japan. Let's go check this out. Japan's largest investment bank, Numura's digital asset subsidiary, Laser Digital Asset Management, launched the Bitcoin adoption fund specifically for the institutional investors. Bring it. The official announcement noted the Bitcoin -based fund will be the first in a range of digital adoption investment solutions that the firm plans to introduce. Now Numura is a Japanese financial giant with over $500 billion worth of assets, which basically that's half a trillion, baby, offers brokerage services to leading institutional investors. The Bitcoin fund launched by its digital asset arm will now offer investors direct exposure to BTC. The Laser Digital Bitcoin Adoption Fund offers long key exposure to Bitcoin. The financial giant has chosen Kamanu as its regulated custody partner. The Bitcoin fund is a portion of Laser Digital Fund's segregated portfolio company that has been registered as a mutual fund in accordance with the Cayman Islands regulatory authority. Now, Laser Digital Asset Management head Sebastian said the Bitcoin is one of the enablers of this long -lasting transformational change and long -term exposure to Bitcoin offers a solution for the investors to capture this macro trend. Now, the Bitcoin adoption fund might be the first of its kind launched by Numura and the digital asset arm, but the Japanese investment banking giant has been investing in the digital asset ecosystem for quite some time already. In fact, September of last year, the firm launched its digital asset venture capital arm to stay at the forefront of digital innovation. And also won Dubai's virtual asset regulatory authority license to operate in the country. The long -only Bitcoin adoption fund for investors in Japan comes amid a growing discussion around Bitcoin -based investment products from regulated and mainstream financial giants. The United States SEC approved two Bitcoin ETFs, even though there is a delayed decision specifically on the spot. Bitcoin ETFs. What's up with that, Mr. Gensler? Just saying. And apart from the US, Canada and focused investment products over the past couple of years. So there you have it, mass adoption, let's freaking go, especially on the institutional level. How many of you are in Japan? I know we have some in our audience out there. Let me know. And have you ever heard of this company before? Any plans in investing through them? Let me know how you guys feel. And now let's break down the latest. It gets more surprising and shocking every day with what all is going on with Bankman -Fried and FTX. Now his parents are involved. His parents are being sued by FTX. And it's just a nightmare of a mess, to say the least. So let's break down this latest story regarding SBF. Now, Joseph Bankman, the father of the former FTX CEO, Sam Bankman -Fried, complained to his son about the salary he was receiving during his employment at FTX US, turning the issue into a family matter. In a September 18 filing with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, FTX debtors filed a complaint against Bankman and Barbara Fried, alleging that SBF's parents misappropriated millions of dollars through their involvement in the exchange's business. And according to the court documents, Bankman's contract with FTX US should have provided a $200 ,000 annual salary following a leave of absence from the Stanford Law School in December 2021. However, Bankman seemed to express ignorance about the terms of the contract, claiming to both FTX US and his son that he was expecting a $1 million annual salary. What about all that property in the Bahamas, fam? What about all that? Hundreds of millions worth of properties? Just wanted to throw that out there. The complaint states that Bankman was putting Barbara on this, suggesting that SBF's mother may have been able to persuade her son to follow through with the salary change. Things get even more interesting. So according to the complaint, Bankman's influence paid off, with SBF later providing his parents $10 million from Alameda Research. Can you talk about commingling? A 16 .4 million property in the Bahamas, funded by FTX Trading, the ability to expense roughly $90 ,000 to FTX Trading on the island nation in the Bahamas, and options to purchase company stock. Now, when reached out to the legal team representing Bankman and Fried, but did not receive a response at the time, unfortunately, the legal action brought by the debtors was the latest in the bankruptcy case involving FTX and many of its subsidiaries filed in November of last year. Bankman Fried also faces 12 criminal charges to be spread across two trials, starting in October of 2023, which is right around the corner, fam, and March of 2024, right before the halving, scheduled for April of next year. And since the federal judge revoked his bail in August, Bankman Fried has been largely confined to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Where's Brooklyn at? Before the start of his October trial, then on September 19th, a three -judge panel heard an appeal from SPF's legal team requesting the former FTX CEO to be released from jail in order to prepare for the trial, citing the lack of internet access and first amendment issues. All I got to say is this, I mean, how many people realistically have access to the internet in jail? Why should he? Million dollar question right there. But what are your thoughts, fam? How do you think this is likely to play out? And do you think that Bankman Fried's parents are just as guilty as SPF himself with the commingling and the fraud of going up north of $30 billion, making it the biggest scam in history that we're aware of? Hence why we call him Mini Madoff, because he made off with billions of dollars worth of investors' money, and Gary Gensler and the SEC was protecting him behind closed doors. So it's going to be very interesting to see how all this is likely to play out. Now let's discuss post halving. We all know there is a halving scheduled roughly six months out. We all know post halving, the price action is most likely going to reach a new all -time high and enter price discovery mode. Well, this analyst shares a very intriguing target. So let's break this down, shall we? And welcome to y 'all just joining us. Say hello in that live chat. Let me know where you're tuning in from. I stream live here seven days a week from Puerto Rico. Synonymous analyst Rhett Capital tells his followers on X that Bitcoin can rally above $80 per ,000 coin in the months following next month's event. For the halving, send it. Let's go. The Bitcoin halving cuts the Bitcoin miners' rewards in half, as we all know, expected to take place in April of next year. And while Rhett Capital is a long -term bull on Bitcoin, he notes that it is possible for Bitcoin to continue its downtrend before the halving, putting him here. Hang in there and make the most of any deeper downside in this pre halving period. You won't see the post halving parabola in the outlines here in this chart. It shows you in the yellow, the pre halving period, then in the pink, the post halving resistance, and then in the green, you can see the post halving parabola when we hit those new all -time highs. Now, Rhett notes that Bitcoin may repeat its 2019 bear market cycle when it traded within a triangle pattern before breaking out and starting off the bull market, as he shares here, if Bitcoin continues to form lower highs, could Bitcoin fill the CME, which is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gap, at $20 ,000 later this year or in early 2024? So it makes a good point. There is currently a gap sitting at that $20 ,000 psychological level. And he continues, if so, the possible path could be consolidation to the apex of the black triangle before finally breaking out to close the halving. And you can see that triangle right here in this chart. Now, looking at the chart, he seemed to suggest that Bitcoin will confirm the triangle breakout in April of 2024, followed by a rally towards his long -term target. Now, let me know your thoughts, chat. How many of you agree that Bitcoin is likely to break out to a new all -time high, entering price discovery mode in 2024, the year of the halving? Let me know. And what are some of your targets? I'd also like to point out that the Stock the Flow model and Plan B, creator of that model, he suggests a $100 to $1 million range price for the King Crypto post halving. We also have some very other bullish predictions, which I cover on a daily basis here on the channel. But I'd love to know your personal prediction. I think we reached the cycle peak personally sometime in 2025, but I think 2024, we enter that price discovery mode. But I'd love to know your thoughts and your opinions in the comments right down below. And now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the latest from the macro guru, Raoul Pal, who is suggesting that the Bitcoin market cap and crypto market cap as a whole does something between 5 and 10x for this upcoming bull cycle. Now, you do the math. We have a crypto market cap right now. I'm going to ballpark it at a trillion. We have a Bitcoin market cap. I'm going to ballpark it at a half a trillion, which is 500 billion. So hypothetically, if we were to 10x Bitcoin in and of itself, we're talking about a 5 trillion dollar Bitcoin market cap, which would be half the current market cap of gold. Now, with the entire crypto market cap, we can potentially hit 10 trillion. Now, also note, back in November of 2021, when we hit that all time high of 69 ,000 in November of last year, the total crypto market cap was just north of that 3 trillion dollar market cap. So he's so let's break this down and shout out to Raoul Pal. Here we go. Former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal says the next bull cycle can bring an explosion in the market cap of all of the digital assets. That's right. In a new interview with Altcoin Daily, the macro expert says he expects a huge increase in the adoption of digital assets, and that can cause the total market cap of crypto to skyrocket as much as 900 % from its current value during the next bull market. Quoting the analysts here, obviously, I think we'll go well through new all time highs. I think the whole ecosystem of crypto will go from 425 million users where we're at today. And I think at the end of this cycle, there'll be a billion users by that kind of use cases in which we have talked about. And let's not forget, we have got central bank digital currencies that are known as CBDCs and stable coins. There is a lot going on still. So if this entire space is going to grow 2 .5 X in the number of users, well, the market cap of the entire space is five or 10 X. Send it. Let's go. Pal also says he is closely watching development of layer two Altcoin projects for new use cases, which could boost the value of their individual market cap, quitting him again. And then let's see how people value layer twos in this. We don't really know how layer twos accrue much value. Do we have to have a massive amount of transactions in which case then you need stuff like Ticketmaster with millions and millions and millions of transactions to drive value to those chains because they batched them and batched them down to Ethereum. So there you have it. And to watch this interview, he did Raul Pal, the macro guru with Altcoin Daily entitled best cryptocurrency investing strategy into 2024. Check the show notes, blow the video in the description and let me know your thoughts on his personal prediction. Do you feel post having that the market cap for the entire crypto market can likely 10 X from the current valuation along with Bitcoin surging 10 X to roughly a five trillion market cap? And hypothetically, if the macro guru is correct, where do you think that would likely take the Bitcoin price? Well, let's run some hypothetical math. Bitcoin was the 10 X from the current price action of 27 ,000. Well, that's $270 ,000 per coin. Take that. And as we all know, Bitcoin rises like that, the entire crypto market cap would go along for the ride, including the altcoin. So please let me know in the chat, fam, which altcoins, if any, are you most bullish on in the crypto market? And what are your thoughts surrounding Raul Pal being so bullish on Solana? A few months back, I read in an interview he shared that 80 % or more of his portfolio was specifically in an altcoin called Solana. So I'd love to know your thoughts. Obviously, he has a high risk tolerance as I look at that particular cryptocurrency to be very risky, especially with all that went in with the venture capitalists and SPF and FTX exchange pumping that particular all. So I'd love to know how you feel regarding all of that. And with that being shared, fam, now let's discuss Peter Thiel and his $4 million price prediction, as well as rumor has it, and I'll be covering this as well, that he dumps most of his Bitcoin position at the top of the market practically 30 days before the crash. So let's break this down because Peter Thiel was actually one of the keynote speakers at the Miami Conference for Bitcoin. And here's what he had to share as I transcribed his speech, and then we'll discuss him reportedly making $1 .8 billion cashing out on his eight -year bet around the time he was touting these all -time high predictions. So here we go. He says, the enemy's list is a list of people who I think are stopping Bitcoin. He says there is a lot of them. They tend to have nameless, faceless bureaucratic perspectives, which of course is one of the ways they hide. He goes on to share, we are going to try to expose them and realize that this is sort of what we have to fight for Bitcoin to go up, 10x or 100x from here. Now, just FYI, to give you some perspective, at the time he made this prediction on stage at the Bitcoin Miami Conference, Bitcoin was trading at roughly $43 ,000 per coin. So you run the math. 43 ,000 times 100x is over $4 million per Bitcoin. So you know that? Let's continue with what he had to share. The central banks are going bankrupt. We are at the end of the fiat money regime. How many of you agree with that statement? I agree there 100%. The first person on the list is Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Thiel put up a picture of Buffett with two of his most famous quotes about Bitcoin. One was rat poison and the other, I don't own any and I never will. I also like to point out now since then, Warren Buffett has much indirect exposure to Bitcoin through Bitcoin mining stock companies and etc. So go figure. If you can't beat them, join them, right? And he goes on. He opined, I think the direct in it. Yeah, and I say also Charlie Munger goes along with him. Now, feel further noted that Buffett has a bias and makes him long on fiat money system and money managers who follow the Berkshire Hathaway executives advice will pretend it's complicated to invest into Bitcoin. I think we call that FUD. Fear, uncertainty and doubt. Now expect nothing less from one of the wealthiest people in the fiat money matrix Ponzi scheme. You know what I mean? So just saying. The next person on the list of Bitcoin's enemies is the one and only JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, or as Max Kaiser calls him, Jamie the tapeworm. They'll put diamonds picture up with the following quote. I don't call them crypto currencies. I call them crypto tokens because currencies have rules of law behind them, central banks and tax with authorities. Now you guys already know how I feel personally about JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. So I won't go any deeper there. But anyways, we know he's an enemy of Bitcoin and always has been. The next picture he put up was of the BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, with the following quote. I see huge opportunities in a digitized crypto blockchain related currency, and that's where I think it is going to go. Now just FYI, Larry Fink is the CEO of the largest asset management firm in the entire world, which owns a large share in virtually all the companies in the S &P 500, and that is BlackRock. They currently have over $10 trillion in assets under management. And for a long time, he was spreading FUD regarding Bitcoin. But guess what? Like I mentioned earlier, if you can't beat them, join them because they just most recently, a few months ago, they submitted their application for a spot Bitcoin ETF, which ultimately means they're going to be introducing this to the institutions which have trillions upon trillions of dollars as there's currently north of $700 trillion in total addressable market, and they want their piece of the Bitcoin pie. So he goes on to share, the PayPal co -founder added that Fink's quote is somewhat representative of the whole genre of Bitcoin attacks that need further context, stating that pro -blockchain is an anti -Bitcoin term, very typically. Feel then brought up the environmental, social, and governance, ESG standards, elaborating the following, the label they have come up with, and perhaps the real enemy is ESG. I think that ESG is just a hate factory. Also like to throw out there, Elon Musk, he stopped taking Bitcoin payments for Tesla, and he says it's because of the FUD regarding this ESG, and we all know it's not more than FUD, and it's already been proven that Bitcoin is more than 50 % clean energy. So the million dollar question, when will the world's supposedly wealthiest man, Elon Musk, when will he start accepting Bitcoin payments again for Tesla? Isn't that a great question, and wouldn't you love to know the answer to that? Maybe you should ask Elon and tag him on X and see what he says. Anyways, feel stressed. You can always ask the question, what's the difference between ESG and the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party? Well, when you think ESG, you should be thinking of CCP per H. Now, he also goes on to share, it is the finance gentocracy that runs the country through whatever silly virtue signaling or hate factory to them, just like ESG, the billionaire concluded. This is what I would call and what you have to think of as a revolutionary youth movement, and we have to just go out from this conference and take over the world. So there you have it, fam. What are your thoughts surrounding Peter Thiel's prediction that we are likely to 100X, and along with his enemies list, as it seems, a lot of the enemies have come around and now have direct exposure to BTC, but it doesn't stop there because around that time he was making this $4 million Bitcoin price prediction. He allegedly dumped most of his position cashing out and with over a billion dollars in profits for his fund. So let's also break this down as this is also very relevant. How many of you were able to watch the speech he gave at that Bitcoin conference? It was epic, to say the least. I recall it now. So here we go. Check it out. Peter Thiel's venture capital firm reportedly made $1 .8 billion closing out its crypto positions around the time when he was an early Bitcoin bull, still predicting the token's price to surge by 100X. And again, from 43 ,000 price action, 100X means over 4 million. Founders Fund had cashed out almost all of its bets on digital assets by March of 2022, according to the Financial Times report that cited people familiar with the matter. But Thiel was still backing Bitcoin, obviously, when he spoke at the crypto conference in Miami the following month. He went on to share where at the end of the fiat money regime, he said, adding that the token's price could increase 100 fold from its level at the time, which was reported at $44 ,000 per coin. That prediction was proven false and as rising interest rates and failures, the high profile firms like Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital, FTX, Terra Luna dragged the crypto sector into the prolonged bearish winter. Now Bitcoin plummeted by over 60 % in 2022 and was trading at under 17 ,000 by the end of the year. And I believe the bottom currently for the cycle is 15 ,700. How many of you feel that that bottom is in? Let me know, chat. Founders Fund first started pouring money into crypto all the way back in 2014, when Bitcoin was only trading at roughly $750 per coin. So by the time Bitcoin reached its all time high in November of 2021, it had surged 8 ,500 % from that particular level. Not too shabby for a seven year run, wouldn't you say? Now Thiel has a long track record as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent tech investors. He took early stakes in startups, which include Facebook, Elon Musk's SpaceX, and ride hailing app Lyft, and even co -founded PayPal back in 1998. Thiel is also a high profile supporter of the Republican Party and continued to voice his support for Donald Trump since the former president left office in January of 2021. The fund held around two thirds of his portfolio in Bitcoin at one time, but now not has significant exposure to crypto according to FT's sources. So there you have it. Fam, what are your thoughts surrounding his prediction and him cashing out at around that time he was making those all time high predictions of 100X? Let me know, fam. And don't forget to check out cryptonewsalerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Crypto Venture Funding is Down; But Bitcoin Building Continues
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, September 17th, and that means it's time for Long Read Sunday. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Happy Sunday. Today, we are reading parts of two pieces which on the surface aren't really about the same thing, but which I think have more in common than it might seem, as I will try to prove to you by the end of this conversation. The first piece is by L. Asher Corson, a partner at UTXO Management and was originally published in Bitcoin Magazine. The piece is titled A Bitcoin Maximalist's Ode to Ordinals. Al Asher writes, As a Bitcoin maximalist, I love ordinals. Other maximalists should also consider loving ordinals as they demonstrate Bitcoin superiority in ways not previously possible. Ordinals enable functionalities that undermine the need for other blockchains to even exist. The use cases that were demonstrated on other blockchains are now possible natively on Bitcoin. Despite Bitcoin's strengthening position, some self -proclaimed maximalists on X, formerly Twitter, bizarrely celebrated decreased network fees and declared ordinals have failed. This seemingly implies that Bitcoin might somehow benefit from a failure of the ordinals protocol and lower minor earnings. But ordinals haven't failed, and the interest isn't nearly over. To the contrary, trading volume across digital artifacts, unique satoshis, and BRC20 tokens has been historic. According to Cryptoslam, which tracks on -chain NFT volume, ordinals have done over $500 million of trading volume since they were launched at the beginning of 2023. Despite volume and prices being down currently, investors in the ecosystem are writing big checks to ordinals companies. X -verse in ordinals wallet just raised $5 million on a $50 million valuation from some of the most sophisticated investors in the ecosystem. It's far more likely we are at the beginning of this phenomenon than the end. Now, from there, the author goes into a little bit of a description about what ordinals actually are, which we will skip for the purposes of this piece, just because that's obviously something that we've covered here on the show, or if you need a refresher, you can go check out on Bitcoin builders. Continuing, however, they write, Bitcoin maximalists understand that there have never been serious contenders to replace Bitcoin as digital money. Absolute digital scarcity is unlikely to be discovered again because the circumstances surrounding Bitcoin's creation were so unique, in part because today's government understands the risks of letting a decentralized network grow too large and they won't let it happen again. On the other hand, viable altcoin use cases are related to features that Bitcoin couldn't previously support. Some of the use cases that the market has indisputably embraced include decentralized trading, NFTs, stablecoins, capital formation, borrowing and lending, and on -chain leverage. From there, the author goes on to share numbers from DEXs, from NFT trading, that reinforce their point that, like them or not, the market has validated these things as uses of digital assets that people really like. Indeed they write, Although many don't like it, these use cases will exist somewhere because the market has an appetite for them. My strong preference is that they exist primarily on Bitcoin and not on other chains. Ordinals have the potential to not only enable these use cases to be built natively on Bitcoin, but also to surpass their altcoin versions in terms of implementation. These would be better built on Bitcoin because the protocol itself is more decentralized and secure than altcoins. Bitcoin is the largest market cap compared to all the other chains that can support the development of these use cases. But also better because these use cases will be tailored to the Bitcoin community and will therefore embody Bitcoin ideals of decentralization, immutability, and permissionlessness. The author then quotes Danny Hoop describing the properties of a digital artifact. This is from July of this year. Danny tweets, A digital artifact has these properties. 1. They can be owned. 2. They are complete without off -chain pointers. 3. They are permissionless. 4. They are uncensorable. 5. They are immutable. Almost all Ethereum NFTs do not satisfy all five of these. In particular, most Ethereum NFTs use off -chain pointers, and even for the few that do not, some of them are not immutable and can be changed by the creator. L. Asher continues, Imagine a piece of digital art worth $1 million. Or imagine politically sensitive information like classified documents that detail government atrocities. Should these valuable or sensitive assets be distributed using technology that can easily disappear or that can be easily changed? The answer is obviously no. It's also somewhat obvious that over time, the best artists, developers, activists and investors will gravitate towards technology with stronger immutability that is capable of protecting their creation, information or investment for hundreds or even thousands of years. In the case of digital art specifically, they will migrate to digital artifacts on Bitcoin that store the actual artwork instead of NFTs that just point to where it's stored on an off -chain server that could go down at any time. The piece concludes, Bitcoin stands atop the world of digital money and the rise of ordinals only cements that standing. OK, so before I get into how this relates to the second piece, let's actually just go read excerpts from that second piece. This one is by Chris Cole Besswick, the founder and managing partner at Transcend Labs, which is a startup accelerator. The piece seemingly combining my daily podcasts in one is AI is Killing Crypto Venture Capital Interest. Now, the TLDR of this piece is exactly what the title says, quote, The venture capital space has lost significant momentum over the last few quarters. Global venture funding is nearly half of what it was last year. Whatever remains of the market is now being directed towards AI funds. AI has become the golden goose for VC firms after the turbulence in crypto in the last year. Now, Chris's first discussion is about just the shift in VC in general. He writes, Although AI has picked up pace, the VC market is nowhere close to where it was in 21 and 22. With higher interest rates and a sustained supply chain shortage, the global market is an ideal. In my field of startup incubation, I've experienced the shift firsthand. Back in 2020 and 2021, investors were much more likely to fund lofty ideas with very little supporting evidence. But today, even the most promising startups have a hard time gaining the attention of top VCs. According to Crunchbase, global venture funding in Q2 fell 49 % compared to the second quarter of 2022. The overall deal volume has also decreased significantly by 37%. Now, as Chris points out, the big reason for this is macro. We are living through the transition of a zero or near zero interest rate world to a world of 5, 6, 7 % interest rates. The net impact of that is that capital that previously had to flow to more exotic and risky parts of the market, private equity, venture capital, just to get yield in a zero interest rate world, now doesn't have to do that. It doesn't have to take on the same sort of risk. And so money is being withdrawn from the venture ecosystem and put to work in other places. I was myself at a venture firm for a while in the teens in San Francisco. It was remarkable the extent to which the venture capital industry didn't really understand or didn't seem to understand or at least didn't talk about how much of what was going on in our little corner of South Park was actually dictated by what was going on in the halls of the Fed. But to the extent that people didn't realize that, they are learning that lesson acutely now. And in that environment, where there isn't necessarily a next big fund to raise, VC habits aren't changing. necessarily Kevin Colleran, a co -founder at Slow Ventures, said, I haven't written any checks in the past 18 months. I have 30 portfolio companies that I need to help figure out how to survive. There is no point for me to add to the misery. Still, as Chris writes, quote, for crypto, the situation is worse. The total value of deals in Q2 of this year was $2 .34 billion compared to $12 .14 billion a year ago. So what caused this collapse? After a hype -fueled bull run starting in 2020, Chris writes, a slew of disastrous events discouraged even the most pro -crypto VCs. Now of course, Chris rightly points to the fall of SPF and FTX as the most significant factor. He writes, the FTX fiasco destroyed whatever investor confidence was left in the crypto industry, resulting in major investors moving away to greener pastures. Big VCs like Sequoia and investor in FTX are slashing their crypto funds. Now it should be noted that Sequoia had a super weird deal with SAM, where they invested in FTX, and inversely, SAM invested as an LP in them, which doesn't undermine Chris's point. In fact, it validates it that the weird things that were happening in the previous era are simply no longer happening anymore. At the same time, Chris points out that the other thing that happened in November of 2022 outside of FTX's collapse was the launch of ChatGPT. He writes, the AI dominance started the same month FTX collapsed, filling the vacuum created in the market. Since then, AI has been unstoppable. Chris then recounts a number of more personal examples of where he's seen VCs turn away from crypto and towards AI, and how crypto projects have tried to incorporate AI to try to be on trend. He also points out that while sometimes that works and integrating AI actually strengthens the project, many times it doesn't. He concludes, so is there a way out for crypto founders? Of course there is. Unlike mainstream AI, which isn't even a year old, crypto has been present for more than a decade. Thanks to the cyclical movement of the crypto economy, we can confidently predict more innovation in investor interest as the bear market ends. Lower interest rates, globalized crypto regulation, Bitcoin ETF approvals, and more TradFi involvement in crypto could all reignite VC flows. Okay, so here's why I wanted to connect the dots between this piece and the ordinals piece. It is very easy to look at overall statistics and see capital flowing into crypto being down as an inherently bad thing. Now certainly, anyone who has invested in this space should want great projects to have access to aligned capital. Capital that shares long term vision and wants to support those companies through ups and downs. The reality is, a huge, huge amount of the capital that flowed into crypto and indeed that flows into crypto at every cycle peak was wildly misaligned, wildly unproductive. Much of it was just arbitrage, taking advantage of tokens to make money faster than traditional venture capital otherwise would. This isn't to say that bull market funding didn't fund great projects too, it's just to point out that the more capital sloshing around there is, the less of a quality barrier there's going to be. We are now in a very different, much more brutal environment, one where it's going to take a lot more to peel venture capital dollars away from investors. The downside of that is that some projects that would otherwise have been great will simply not be funded. The upside is that the projects that do get funded and that do make it through this are likely to be much stronger on average than those that came out of the top of the bull market. What's more, and this is the reason that I wanted to put the ordinals piece alongside this, there is no law that says that innovation has to come from venture capital. As trite as it is to say, one project which never received any VC funding was, of course, Bitcoin itself. Yes, our author from the first piece pointed out that some ordinals projects have been able to get VC funding because of the excitement around them, but the vast majority of people that are hacking on ordinals, experimenting with it, aren't doing so with VC money backing them. They're doing it because the protocol is exciting to them because it opens up new opportunities. Whatever one thinks of ordinals, it is exemplary of what's going to come out of this bear market and the VC drought, which is interesting things that create real and new and differentiated value that people decide are worth working on, even if they're not able to get big venture capital checks to do so. I don't want to undermine how hard it is to be in this type of environment, especially in one where there's been such a big shift and where many startups are and will die because of it. But there's a lot of good on the other side too, and a lot to look forward to in the strength that comes from going through this type of environment. Anyways, guys, that is going to do it for this week's LRS. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks once again to these authors for their great pieces, and until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from 1254. SEC WARS! | Gensler vs Peirce, Mila Kunis NFTs, & Star Wars
"All right, so we're going to get into the SEC and their war on the NFT market and their recent filing, of course, against Stoner Cats. We'll break all that down for you. But more importantly, we'll get into more of a depth of why these projects are where they are and really what could be done about this for the future, because there's a lot of implications here. My name is Paul Berra. Welcome back into Tech Path. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor, and that is iTrustCapital. If you guys want to do long -term holding of your crypto assets and you want to put it in a crypto IRA, you can do that with iTrustCapital. And there's a couple of ways you can do it. Start a new one, or you can actually transfer in one of your current IRAs. So it's very easy to do. All you have to do is sign up, and you can check the platform out just by going over to iTrustCapital and seeing what they've got to offer for your particular situation. Very easy. Use our link down below. It's going to give you a $100 funding reward to get started. All right. So let's get into it today. I want to lead off with a few clips here. We'll go into a lot of lineup here, I think, that will frame up exactly what happened during the Stutter Cats. And this is very important, because you may be a brand. You may be someone that's interested in the FT market. This is something you want to watch. You don't want to miss this one. So let's go to the first clip. We were having dinner with Gary Vee at the time, and they were talking about crypto. And I was like, this is dumb. And then as the years went on, I was like, I think I'm on the wrong side of history on this one. I think I was wrong. Okay. So interesting position. I think some people kind of look at it that way. But let's continue on telling this story, because there's a lot here that breaks out where the future is going to go with this. Listen in. Hey, babe. Yeah? What's blockchain? It's like what information is stored on. So like, it's, you know, what information is stored on? Hey, babe. Yeah? What's decentralization? Oh, there's not one person in charge of anything. So it's everybody keeps everybody else in check. Hey, babe. Yeah? What's Ethereum? So Ethereum is a general purpose blockchain. All right. We had to put that one in there. What a great, great piece that is where Mila learns a little bit more about Ethereum. Let's go over to now that she's understood what's happened and how this market is really a differentiator for pretty much everyone, she wants to do something about it. So listen in. And I'll tell you why. Like all jokes aside is because it made me nervous and I felt like it was a very masculine area. Like everybody that I knew that knew anything about it at the time was always a man and I found it to be really empowering. And so through the pandemic created a form of entertainment called stoner cats that we're releasing in a couple of weeks that is an NFT and you can buy such stoner cats. And then that is your token to then watch a five minute long piece of entertainment. It sounds like a cool idea. And I know you've had experience in animation and comedy. So we have a, I think we have a picture here of the stoner cats. This is yep. And it's really cool guys, because I'll tell you, in the very, yeah, so here's the thing on it. I was going to say cats just sit around anyway. Well guess what happens when they get stoned. The people that we got to do the voice is everybody just did it because they thought that it was different and fun and we all wanted to do it for the right reasons. And it brings ownership of content back to the artist and cuts out the middleman. And so if people like the NFTs and they buy it as tokens, then more shows will be made. Look at those eyes. I mean, come on. Come on. All right, so I want to play another clip that goes into how she integrated this into Hollywood. Listen it. So Mila was surprised by how many people she was able to recruit to take part in the new medium, including Jane Fonda. We were like, who can be Mrs. Stoner? Like we should get somebody like Jane Fonda. It would be so amazing to get somebody like Jane Fonda. And I was like, OK, let's just call Jane Fonda. I know this is an incredibly weird request. Would you ever do something like this? And they're like, I don't quite get it, so I'm going to say yes. It's just different and everybody wants ownership of content to go to the artist and this kind of allows that to happen. So again, really kind of hitting on the thread that I think everybody understands what decentralization and NFTs and in general, smart contracts really mean for the future of content and they hit it on the head. There was the OpenSea launch, of course, fully sold out and it just happened in like seconds. It was a pretty fast and very successful run. The key here is that if you look at the data, this comes back from a tweet back in 2021 when they launched this. There was the Ethereum gas fees for this, so you can see it had an immediate impact on ETH in general. And overall, the gas fees were kind of a thing and so much so that we actually had a song written about this. So listen in. This is a story of superfood, how he tried to get a stoner cat, and with a snafu in the gas limit, he lost $13 ,000 right on fire. Gas fees. Now, this is back in the era of when we weren't really seeing the advancements in blockchain that we are now, especially in smart contracts, obviously gas fees were part of this. This is, I think, has really started to be evolved over the last 12 months with just so much innovation in the space. But I think this also caught a little bit of the SEC's eye, possibly. There could be some theory behind that. But the interesting thing was is just how fast this thing sold out. Listen to this clip. Thank you so much for honestly believing in this entire crazy concept and idea and being a part of it, because it has been a whirlwind and we're so excited to continue down this journey with all of you. We're so sorry that we broke Ethereum, but also, fuck it. Sorry the gas fees were high, I tried to waive them, it clearly didn't work, I'll work better, I'll try harder. We're so excited, genuinely shocked at any and all of this, and just want to say hi and thank you and welcome to the team. We're excited for you to join the team. Thanks for being aboard. So again, this is innovation at work. It's how startups go out. And I think from a content creator standpoint there, this is the right kind of vision of what Hollywood most likely is going to be doing in the future, provided they can get past these kind of scenarios that the SEC is placing on them. Let's go to the next clip, which just shows you a trailer just how much work was put in this project. I have regrets. Run, Chuckie boy, run! Run! What Ow! in the poltergeist? Fuck! All right, so many episodes lined up on this, their friends, kind of everybody got together, had watch parties. This became a bit of a community, and I think that's again another big part of how fans work, especially when you look at content and how that gets released in Hollywood today. As for Stoner Cats, they actually released all six episodes, so you can kind of see the website here, scrolling through all the episodes, all delivered as promised. And that was really the goal, and I think that's the position of where all of this starts to stem from, especially in the position of what's happening with the SEC. If you scroll further down on the website, I thought this was cool. Website Stoner Cats content will be available in perpetuity using decentralized hosting and archiving service R -weaves. So again, they were utilizing literally from the beginning all the way through the blockchain to deliver this kind of content. These are the kind of technologies that will start to shift content creation. You often wonder why and what is driving the SEC's decisions on this. If you go over to the SEC, we'll get into the actual complaint here. So they charged creator of Stoner Cats' web series on registry offering securities. I'll read a few things from it. Raised approximately $8 million from investors to finance the animated web series called Stoner Cats. $800 each, selling out 35 minutes. Marketing campaigns highlighted specific benefits from owning, including option for owners to resell on secondary market. Marketing campaign on the Stoner Cats team emphasized its expertise, and Hollywood producers agreed, leading investors to expect profits. That's a reach. Configured the Stoner Cats NFTs to provide a Stoner Cat 2, a 2 .5 % royalty, which is happening on the aftermarket. Leading purchases to spend more than $20 million in at least 10 ,000 transactions. So you had $20 million plus the $8 million, about $28 million, almost $30 million on an animated series that was done based off of blockchain. And remember, this just as a side project, so very successful. Further into the complaint right here, cease and desist order to pay a civil penalty of $1 million. The order establishes a fair fund to return the monies that injured investors. I love how they said that. Injured investors. Paid to purchase NFTs. I also agreed to destroy all of the NFTs in its position. This is a problem because, again, this is almost anything you can imagine that would go in the secondary market. I mean, comics, collectibles, luxury goods, anything and everything could be a security. So I think this continues on its hypocrisy of where this is going. Here was a course Hester Peirce and you, Ada, coming in and saying they didn't necessarily agree. Let me zoom in on this right here. Lacks any meaningful limiting principle. Creativity would wither in the shadow of legal ambiguity. She deserves clear guidance in talking about Kunis here. The fact that money is involved does not transform into NFTs, into securities. The enforcement action involves activity that we believe constitutes a fan crown funding, which is a common phenomenon used all the time. Soner Can's NFTs are not a different from Star Wars collectibles in the 1970s. So again, big problem. Toy company Kenner sold early bird certificates, redeemable for future Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and R2 -D2 action figures. So you had membership scenarios that played into this and the sales of those certificates helped build a diehard community around Star Wars.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Shockingly, Gary Gensler Doesn't Like Stoner Cats
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, September 14th, and today we are talking about stoner cats. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or, if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on The Breaker's Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Alright, friends, well, I have to tell you, at this point we really have about four archetypes of breakdown shows. There's number one, oh god, more cleanup from 2022. There's number two, hey look, a new TradFi player is getting in the game. There's number three, hey look, a judge or elected official is smacking a regulator down. And then there's number four, hey look, an unelected bureaucrat is trying to expand their power again. And today's show is indeed an example of the fourth, and the reason it matters is not just because it's another SEC enforcement action, but because I do really think that this represents and is a great example of that impulse to authority expansion. So what am I referring to? Well, of course, I am referring to the SEC bringing its second enforcement action ever against an NFT project. This time, the regulator targeted Stoner Cats, a profile picture NFT collection that was sold to finance a web series. The SEC alleged that the sale of collectible NFTs constituted the sale of unregistered securities. The production company behind the project settled the allegations without admitting to the SEC's findings. So the details. Stoner Cats sold out their collection in around 35 minutes at the height of the NFT bull market in July 2021. The project raised $8 million from the sale. Marketing highlighted materials Hollywood producers and big -name celebrities attached to the web series, and suggested that the success of the show would increase the value of the NFTs in secondary markets. The company received 2 .5 % of royalties from secondary market sales, which produced $20 million in volume. In the settlement, Stoner Cats agreed to a cease -and -desist order and a $1 million penalty. In addition, a fund will be established to refund investors and all NFTs held by the company will be destroyed. Gurbir Gural, the director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement, Regardless of whether your offering involves beavers, chinchillas, or animal -based NFTs, under the federal securities laws, it's the economic reality of the offering, not the label you put on it or the underlying objects, that guides the determination of what's an investment contract and therefore a security. As an aside, I wonder sometime if they find their own writing as clever as they seem to. Beavers, chinchillas, or animal -based NFTs, wah. Moving on, the statement reads, Here the SEC's order finds that Stoner Cats marketed its knowledge of crypto projects, touted that the price of their NFTs could increase, and took other steps that led investors to believe they would profit from selling the NFTs in the secondary market. It's therefore hardly surprising, as the order finds, that Stoner Cats sold its entire supply of NFTs in just 35 minutes, generating proceeds of over $8 million, most of which were then resold, not held as collectibles, in the secondary market within months. Carolyn Welschans, the associate director of the SEC's home office, added, Stoner Cats wanted all the benefits of offering and selling a security to the public, but ignored the legal responsibilities that come with doing so. Now, Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Ueda offered what has become their customary dissent against the SEC's actions. They claimed the enforcement represented a perverse extension of the SEC's jurisdiction and the borders of the Howey Test into the realm of art and collectibles. In a statement they wrote, The application of the Howey Investment Contract Analysis in this matter lacks any meaningful limiting principle. It carries implications for creators of all kinds. Were we to apply the securities laws to physical collectibles in the same way we apply them to NFTs, artists' creativity would wither in the shadow of legal ambiguity. Rather than arbitrarily bringing enforcement actions against NFT projects, we ought to lay out some clear guidelines for artists and other creators who want to experiment with NFTs as a way to support their creative efforts and build their fan communities. The Commissioners claimed the NFT project was more properly characterized as a fan crowdfunding. More broadly, they expressed concern that, through this enforcement, the SEC were attempting to exert jurisdiction over collectibles in a way they had never previously done with physical objects. The Commissioners likened stoner cats to a scheme surrounding the launch of Star Wars toys in Christmas of 1977. The toy maker sold early bird certificate packages in lieu of actual toys due to problems with production. These certificates were redeemable for toys in due course, but could also be resold for a profit in secondary markets at the time. The Commissioners asserted that, Using the analysis of today's enforcement action, the SEC should have parachuted in to save those kids from Star Wars mania. The main point of the dissent was that the SEC should not use its enforcement to stifle innovation in creative industries through the use of NFTs. The Commissioners said that, They argued that the SEC's More generally, it contributes to the legal ambiguity facing artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and others seeking to build a loyal, engaged following. There are a few different categories of reactions from people in the crypto community. Some honestly said that the stoner cats were not necessarily the best example to be a standard bearer for the industry. Gabriel Shapiro, General Counsel at Delphi Labs said, NFT trader, ex -lawyer, NFTs said, And the natural extension of that is any collectible that has a robust resale market — Jordans, baseball cards, comics, rare whiskey and wine, etc. — is potentially sold as a security. That is not the law, but it seems that the SEC is using essentially dicta in an order to creep its jurisdiction. Crypto criminal lawyer Carlos says injecting language like this into settlement seems to be a recurring pattern. To which ex -lawyer again responded, Obviously to us that's not true, but the SEC doesn't play fair and will take advantage of it. And indeed, this take that the SEC was overreaching here was by, in a way, the most common take. Marissa Tashman -Koppel, the Senior Counsel at Blockchain Association said, So now the SEC is in the business of regulating creatives and artists? Creating opportunities for ownership in the creative process is one way crypto and Web3 transforms how we interact online. The SEC shouldn't interrupt this process. Crypto lawyer Ujin writes, Hester Peirce emphasized in her dissent that the SEC's position limits legitimate ways for artists to make a living and she is right. Speculative sales of art are the basis for many sales of art, and that doesn't make those sales a security offering. Now still one more take was that we are seeing something of a positive pattern of dissent. Framework Ventures' Vance Spencer said, Peirce was on her own for a long time. Important to remember for something like an ETF approval, which requires three of five. Now staying on the theme of Gensler for a moment, it's like after the Senate hearing where he had to take some punches earlier this week, he had to go out and find a venue to get his own shots in. Appearing at a conference hosted by lobbyist group Better Markets on Wednesday, Gensler said, Millions of investors have been hurt in this field. It's an area that can hurt investors, but it can also hurt the broader economy because it can hurt investor confidence and finances ultimately built on trust. The conference was of course being held to mark the 15th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, giving Gensler plenty of opportunity for histrionics about financial risk. Gensler trotted out his usual talking points, although adjusted to consider recent criticisms raised in court. Still, there was one kind of awkward and sweet moment where the host suggested that the crypto do seem to be finding some sympathetic judges recently, to which Gensler was uncharacteristically silent in response. Now, Jason Franek from Alliance Dow really sums it up. He wrote, Now, somewhat related, while presenting a speech at a conference hosted by the Practicing Law Institute, CFTC Enforcement Director Ian McGinley pressed home his agency's antipathy towards DeFi. McGinley said, McGinley presented the complete list of CFTC victories in DeFi cases, including a settlement with prediction market PolyMarket and derivatives exchange operator UkiDao. He said, All of this is to say, the CFTC has brought groundbreaking actions in the DeFi space, standing for the proposition that when offering core derivatives products based on digital assets to the public, whether in a centralized or decentralized manner, you must comply with the law. The comments came just a week after the CFTC announced settlements with DeFi trading platforms Open, 0x, and Derridex for offering quote illegal digital asset derivatives trading. The enforcement actions were widely viewed as the regulator taking on easy targets in an attempt to send a message. Indeed, the attack on DeFi was so brazen that one dissenting commissioner even openly suggested that the CFTC was quote, creating an impossible environment for those who want to comply with the law. Bankless co -host Ryan Schott Adams tweeted, The IRS is attacking crypto, FinCEN is attacking crypto, the SEC is attacking crypto, the CFTC is attacking crypto, OFAC is attacking crypto. This is what the now they fight you phase looks like. Now speaking of the fight and not going down without one, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has called for DeFi protocols to take the fight to the CFTC and defend enforcement actions in court. He said in a tweet on Wednesday, The CFTC should not be creating enforcement actions against DeFi protocols. These are not financial services business and it's highly unlikely the Commodity Exchange Act even applies to them. My hope is these DeFi protocols take these cases to court to establish precedent. The courts have proven to be very willing to uphold rule of law. The only thing this is accomplishing is to push an important industry offshore. Now following last week's enforcement action against that trio of DeFi platforms, many commented that the order was a stretch of existing law. And while their cases may have been defensible, the diminutive DeFi platforms were unlikely to have had the resources to take on the US regulator, which is of course why many believe they were targeted in the first place. Now while Brian Armstrong stopped short of offering funding, many others in the space urged collective defense. Crypto law US founder John Deaton said, The industry needs to create a legal fund of some sort to help defend these winnable cases. LEO Trades amplified that, saying, Brian, if you really want to affect policy change, you and Coinbase should help create a fund for projects facing enforcement. Let's be real. Everyone is worried about the financial burden of litigation. This would honestly be a better use of resources than vague political campaigns. Now a different take was summed up by Jamison Lop, who wrote, My hope is that DeFi protocols be so decentralized that the notion of them going to court is absurd. Lawyer Jason Gottlieb wrote a thread about this as well, saying, I agree with Brian Armstrong that DeFi protocols should challenge the CFTC and SEC in court on overreaching settlement demands. The sad reality is that the agencies first attack smaller outfits for whom it makes vastly more economic sense to settle rather than litigate. We see what happens when well -funded projects go to court to fight shaky theories of DeFi liability. Cases or causes of action are dismissed, partial liability can be dropped, the dynamics are greatly changed. But the regulators start with huge advantages. They have typically worn down projects with an expensive investigation first. Even just satisfying the overbearing demands for document production in these investigations can cost six figures easily. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Every single subpoena a regulator sends to a blockchain project is one less engineering job in America and more money for lawyers. Even the lawyers who benefit from that, hi there, think that is a terrible trade -off for America. One problem is funding. The regulators can wear projects down and then offer deals that, while expensive and onerous, are better than more years of continued litigation where even if the project wins, it has massively lost time, funding runway, and momentum. Another problem is that these are people's lives. An investigation is obtrusive enough. Litigation is personally highly disruptive. For us litigators, it's just what we do, it doesn't feel bad. But for founders, devs, people just trying to build, it can feel terrible. So I would love for more DeFi projects to take the CFTC and SEC to court. And is this attorney advertising? I'd love to be the lawyer who represents them. But it costs a lot of money and it's emotionally hard. Companies that have taken on the fight have done great work protecting the space, sometimes behind the scenes in ways people won't widely know about. We need more. But not everyone is well financed and in a fighting mood. So we need to support the smaller projects financially and otherwise. Everyone who believes in the efficiency, privacy, and self -control advantages of digital assets is in this fight together. The battle over the future of crypto is the battle over the future of all digital assets. And since more and more of our lives are digital, that's more and more of our lives. This fight is far more important than when moon antics. It is literally the battle for the future of your digital life. The legal battles over digital assets are the battles over the direction of our collective future. Here, here. I think I will let Jason have the last word on that one because I can't do any better. I appreciate all you guys listening. And until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1401: FIDELITY: Bitcoin Will Hit $1 Billion Per Coin By This Date
"In today's show, we're going to be discussing Bitcoin ignoring the CPI and FTX as the price action hit us a September high of $26 ,600 as the bulls are back in control. We'll also be discussing the court approving the sale of FTX digital assets, meaning the assets will be sold off weekly with special handling for Bitcoin and Ethereum and insider affiliate tokens. Also breaking news just in, Congressman Tom Emmer launches an anti -surveillance state act with 49 Republicans in a new push against CBDCs, central bank digital currencies. Also the SEC chairman Gary Gensler says crypto is a field rife with fraud, abuse, misconduct. It's daunting. We'll also be discussing breaking news, $800 billion asset manager Deutsche Bank partners to offer Bitcoin custody for institutions. Let's go. It virtually means that the bank can now hold crypto directly for its clients. Also in today's episode, we'll be discussing, can the Bitcoin price achieve fidelities? $1 billion price target by 2038. That's right, the $4 .5 trillion asset manager is predicting that one Bitcoin will eventually be worth $1 billion per coin. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts .net. Again that's cryptonewsalerts .net. With that being shared fam, welcome to everyone just joining us. This is pod episode number 1401. So let's fricking go. Today is September 14, 2023 and the crypto market is back in the green. Shout out to everyone out there in the live chat. It's good to see the entire Bitcoin fam. So yeah, let's kick it off with our market watch. As you can see, Bitcoin is trading back above $26 ,600. We also have Ether trading back above $1 ,600 and virtually most all the major cryptos are in the green minus BNB barely in the red. And checking out coinmarketcap .com, the current crypto market cap sits just north of $1 trillion with $28 billion in volume in the past 24 hours, but the Bitcoin dominance at 49 .2 % and the Ether dominance at 18 .6%. So yeah, checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours. We have Axly Infinity leading the pack trading at $4 .73 up 11 % followed by ThorChain up 5 .5 % trading at $1 .65 followed by Conflux up a modest 5 % trading just above or I should say just shy of 12 cents. And checking out the top 100 crypto gainers for the past week, we can see virtually everything is in the green minus a handful including Scamcoin FTT down 5%. Axly Infinity leading the pack here as well up 12%. And as you can see, the alts are pumping. That's what's up. How many of you took advantage of this recent price dip? Let me know. And how many of you are gonna be hodling into the next Bitcoin halving, which is roughly six months out around the corner. Holla at your boy chat. I appreciate the interaction. At the end of the show, I'll be reading everyone's comments out loud. And how you doing today for Christ's sake? Holla at your boy. Don't be a stranger. And with that being shared, now let's dive into today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what is popping with the King crypto. Here we go. Bitcoin hit new September highs after the September 14 daily close as markets digested macroeconomic as well as crypto. Industry news, which you can clearly see here in the Bitcoin one hour candle chart. Now data from Cointelegraph and TradingView tracked the Bitcoin price highs of 26 .5 over on Bitstamp and Bitcoin had shaken off the higher than expected US CPI the day prior, which we covered here in the show, maintaining that 26 ,000 support. Subsequent confirmation that the defunct exchange FTX had received legal permission to liquidate its remaining assets likewise failed to dent Bitcoin's comparatively solid intraday performance. And a little later in the show, I'll be sharing that ruling directly coming from the courts in regards to the FTX assets being sold. Now coming up to the range highs and once we flip these levels, we can look to finally get into a safe position and long since popular crypto trader, Crypto Tony and fellow analyst, Dan Crypto Trade suggests that the overall Bitcoin market dynamics have changed versus the period of weakness seen around the monthly close. Quoting this gentleman here, market feels different this week. The dips are being bought up relatively quick and while the price keeps sweeping highs, it keeps crawling itself back and leaving the lows untouched. The spot bid is also stronger than the past few weeks, might be wrong, but I am optimistic. Let me know if you agree to disagree with the analyst and additional analysis predicts that the longer term Bitcoin price breakout should US regulators approve a Bitcoin spot ETF or which we all know is inevitable over the coming months. He also says that BTC .d is still holding on the previous range high, which is the Bitcoin dominance chart and in the CHOP region, but ultimately says, I think this would go higher in case of a Bitcoin ETF approval one day. Yeah, that's right. They can only push it back and delay it for so long. I believe the next day they have to acknowledge it is in October and more than likely Gensler and the SEC is gonna push it back till next year. That's just my two Satoshi's. Let me know your thoughts, fam. Now more cautious was Trader Sku who referenced the on -chain volume prime to cool once more after the relief rally, quitting him here. The daily structure looks fairly good here and decreasing volumes. So could definitely be looking towards a relief rally before lower as the commentary read, noting the Bitcoin was still holding the key 25 ,000 level. Now with Bitcoin up just 1 % month to date at this time, Bitcoin is nonetheless on course for its best performing September and years. As we know, it's usually September, pun intended. According to data from monitoring resource CoinGlass, the last time Bitcoin gained in September was all the way back in 2016. That's like holy moly, seven years ago, fam. That year was its best on record at a modest 6 % while its biggest red September bear month was two years prior when it lost a whopping 19%. Talk about total bloodshed, right, fam? Now in 2022, Bitcoin shed 3 % before climbing another 5 % in October, which is a popular month amongst the bulls who informally referred to it as Uptober. So hopefully, God willing, we have another Uptober here right around the corner as we're already halfway through with September. With that being shared, fam, let me know your thoughts and outlook on the current landscape of the crypto market. Do you feel we're likely to correct lower or do you think we'll continue rising back towards that $30 ,000 level psychological resistance? Let me know, chat. And now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the latest judgment coming from the courts regarding the FTX asset sales. Here we have it. This is just in, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court approved the sale of FTX digital assets. We have Judge John Dorsey who made the ruling at a hearing yesterday, September 13th. Major changes were made to the draft order authorizing the sale the previous day. Now as you know, there's been a lot of FUD of people talking about all the assets, billions of dollars worth of crypto is gonna get dumped and it's going to wreck the market. Well, there are some caveats, so it's important I share them here. FTX will be allowed to sell the digital assets excluding Bitcoin, Ethereum, and certain insider affiliated tokens in weekly batches through an investment advisor under pre -established guidelines. There will be limits of $50 million for the first week and $100 million in subsequent weeks. There will be an option to increase the limit with prior written approval of the creditors committee and ad hoc committee or to raise the limit to 200 million weekly with the approval of the court. So they can't dump it all at one time which is good for the bulls, right? Now Bitcoin and Ether and insider affiliate tokens can be sold through a separate decision by FTX. After 10 days notice to the committee and the US trustee, the US trustee is appointed by the US Department of Justice. Now I'm curious what those insider affiliate tokens are. If I was to guess, I'd guess FTT, that scam coin, Bankman Fried created out of thin air and I'd also throw Solana in there, but what are your thoughts, fam? Let me know. Those sales will also be conducted through an investor advisor. Information about the sales will be subject to professionalize only and confidentially restrictions with a redacted version accessible to the public. The sales will be subject to written objection by the committees and the US trustee. And in that case, the sales will be delayed until the objections are overcome or the court orders a sale. Quoting Bak Ubu here, FTX adapts crypto sale plan to address the US government concerns. FTX, the bankrupt crypto exchange is making changes to its proposal for selling billions in crypto assets. That's right. And I just broke down ultimately what you need to know. The conditions on the latter sales were added in the draft submitted September 12th, a couple of days ago. They were regarded as cautionary moves to ensure the market stability during the influx of FTX assets. Some observers noted that the sales will represent only a small portion of the trading volume and may not have a heavy impact. But according to a recent shareholder update, FTX has $833 million worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum collectively. FTX can enter into hedging arrangements using Bitcoin and ETH with the private approval of committees and can use them for staking according to the guidelines. The FTX token, as we know, is FTT, cannot be sold without further court authorization. Well, good for them. Glad to hear they're not authorized to sell their scam coin and dump it onto the market. That's definitely a good sign, wouldn't you think? Now let's break down the next breaking story of the day. Gotta give respect and credit where it is due. We have US Congressman Tom Emmer who made a very strong anti -CBDC stance and we know that's the central bank digital currencies which the central bankers are gonna be rolling out and I know their pilots have already began rolling out around the world. So let's discuss this anti -CBDC push because I'm all for anti -CBDC. That's why I promote Bitcoin every day here on the pod. Bitcoin is the antidote to the CBDC. Let me know if you understand what I'm saying. Now Congressman Tom Emmer is leading the reintroduction of the bill that aims to prevent the Federal Reserve from creating a digital dollar. God bless him. Emmer says on the social media platform X that if it isn't designed to emulate cash, then a CBDC would dismantle the American's right to financial privacy while also emboldening the administrative state. Facts. The majority whip says that the new bill attempts to prohibit the Fed from issuing a retail CBDC while protecting innovation and any future development of true digital cash. This bill puts a check on unelected bureaucrats and ensures the US digital currency policy upholds our American values of privacy, individual sovereignty and free market competitiveness. The administration has made it clear. President Biden is willing to compromise the American people's right to financial privacy for surveillance style CBDC. I don't believe in compromising American rights. That's the bottom line. If not open, permissionless and private like cash, a CBDC is nothing more than a CCP, which we all know stands for, right? Style surveillance tool that will be weaponized to oppress the American way of life. Preach. I couldn't have said it any better myself. I stand by what he is saying because I know it's fact. Now while official, the concrete plans for the CBDC haven't been released by the US government as opposition has already formed, which is a good sign. We also have US candidates who are running for the presidential election next year in 2024, including current governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is running as a Republican. And we also have Kennedy Jr. who is running as a Democrat who are both pro Bitcoin and anti CBDC. So we must stand strong and oppose these weapons of financial mass destruction, which are better known as CBDCs. So again, much respect to the congressmen and those making this push. Now last month we also had Ohio Republican Warren Davidson said the CBDCs pose an existential threat to the Western civilization and was committed to fighting against them. Davidson said that he wants to prohibit the CBDCs because they threaten other digital assets like Bitcoin and impede the development of the beneficial financial technology. Facts, quitting him here. Central bank digital currency poses a serious threat, tall digital assets, as I said, at flyover FinTech. Many people wrongfully conflate even Bitcoin with a CBDC. Ignorance is bliss, huh? At least most agree that CBDC is evil, the financial equivalent of the Death Star. Great reference to Star Wars there. Don't become an accomplice to anyone designing, building, testing, developing, or establishing CBDC. Banning a CBDC is essential to the American's FinTech future. So there you have it. What are your thoughts on CBDCs if they roll out, which more than likely they're going to eventually at a theater near you, are you going to participate in them, is the million dollar question. What if they give you a stimulus and they promise you, we're gonna give every American $5 ,000 of this digital dollar, AKA CBDC, central bank Ponzi scheme currency. What are you gonna do about it? I say just say no to Bitcoin, or I'm sorry, just say no to CBDCs and fight it with the antidote, which is Bitcoin, by simply stacking stats today and preparing yourself so that you can fight the tyrants who are trying to take over our country. Just saying, fam, let me know if that resonates with you. And with that being shared, now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the latest with Mr. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC and what they recently shared with Congress regarding cryptocurrencies and enforcement. Here we go. The chairman of the SEC, everyone's favorite huckster, Gary Gensler talked about cryptocurrency during his testimony before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Tuesday, two days ago. Reiterating his views that most crypto tokens are securities, Gensler told the lawmakers without prejudging any one token, the vast majority of crypto tokens likely meet the investment contract test. Given that most crypto tokens are subject to the security laws, it follows that most crypto intermediaries have to comply with the security laws as well, quoting the chief right here. In terms of crypto, I've been around finance for 44 years now, and I've never seen a field that is so rife with misconduct. It is just, it's daunting. He further described the crypto industry right now. Unfortunately, he says there's significant noncompliance and it's a field which is rife with fraud abuse as well as misconduct. Now the Senator Bill Hagerty asked Gensler during the hearing what the SEC needs to see from issuers to approve a Spot Bitcoin ETF. Wouldn't you say that's a great question? Following the recent court ruling in favor of the grayscale investments, now the court found that the securities regulator, denial of grayscale Spot Bitcoin ETF app, was arbitrary and that the SEC Chairman Gensler replied with the following, we're still reviewing that decision. We have multiple filings around Bitcoin ETF products, so it is not just the one you mentioned, but there's multiple others. We are reviewing them and I am looking forward to the staff's recommendations. So there you have it. How do you feel this will likely play out regarding the regulators and crypto choke point 2 .0 as it continues? Do you think it'll keep pushing innovation outside the United States? Or do you feel that it's just a matter of time and Gensler's no longer gonna be able to push back these deadlines for the SEC approvals? Because we all know once the Spot Bitcoin ETFs get the green light from the regulator, it's game on. There's literally trillions upon trillions of dollars right now sitting on the sideline just waiting for that freaking approval. And if it wasn't for the SEC, we'd already had a Bitcoin Spot ETF a decade ago because that's how long they've been denying them, right? In fact, the very first Bitcoin ETF application was submitted by the Winklevoss twins of the Gemini exchange literally over a decade ago. And while they keep approving these futures ETFs which aren't in the investors best interest, but to keep pushing back the Spot ETFs which benefit everyone makes no logic except they're doing what they do because that's what they do and let's leave it at that. And with that being shared, fam, now let's break down the latest breaking news regarding Deutsche Bank. This is big news coming from another major institution and then I'll be breaking down the $1 billion fidelity price prediction for the King Crypto. That's right, they're saying that one Bitcoin will eventually be worth $1 billion per coin and then we'll dive into our live Q &A. So yeah, here we go, breaking news just in. The German bank, Deutsche Bank, was one of the handful of companies to invest in a $65 million Series B fundraising round for tourists in February of this year. The company offers enterprise -grade infrastructure to issue managed custody and trade, cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets, as well as NFTs and other digital assets. Let's go. Now according to Taurus' co -founder, Lamin, the partnership underwent a thorough and very detailed due diligence process before the German bank decided to use its infrastructure services, quoting them here. It started end of 2021 and ended somewhere in 2022. We won the deal a couple of quarters ago and as previously reported, Deutsche Bank has been brewing plans to offer crypto custody and trading services to its clients over the past three years, since 2020. The bank most recently applied for a digital asset custody license from Germany's financial regulator, Baffin, in June of this year, as it continues plans to offer its customers access to crypto markets as well as assets. Now brain, aka, confirm, whoever that is, the agreement is global in scope with tourists providing custody and tokenization tech in line with the local regulatory requirements. Let's get it. Good stuff. And I appreciate the live chat right now. I am tuned in and checking you guys out. Much love. Any questions, feel free to drop them. And again, at the end of our premiere story with Fidelity, we're gonna be reading those comments out loud. Anyways, announcing the partnership, Deutsche Bank Global Security Services head, Paul Maly, said that crypto space is expected to grow to trillions of dollars of assets and is likely to become a priority for investors and institutions. Preach, that's a given, right? Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank's asset management arms, DWS Group, had reportedly been in discussions to invest in two different German -based crypto firms in February of this year. This includes crypto exchange -traded product provider, Deutsche Digital Assets, and market maker, platform, Tradius, Deutsche Bank Singapore, and Memento Blockchain also recently completed a proof of concept called Project DOMA, which stands for Digital Asset Management Access, which allows for the management of digital funds and tokenized securities. And founded in Switzerland in 2018, Taurus' Series B round was led by Credit Suisse and included the likes of Deutsche Bank alongside Arab Bank Switzerland, indicating major interest from traditional financial banks. Let's go. The announcement of its Series B round also clearly outlined Taurus' aim to serve tier one banks in Europe. And they also told Cointelegraph that the platform serves close to 30 banks, with most deals going beyond cryptos to including tokenization of equity debt as well as other products. Deutsche Bank is set to offer customers crypto custody options through a partnership with the cryptocurrency infrastructure platform, Taurus. Now obviously, this is a major, major deal when you have a $800 billion asset manager, such as Deutsche Bank, partnering to offer Bitcoin custody for institutions around the world. The bank can now officially hold crypto directly for their clients. So there we have it. Another one bites the dust. And now for the moment you have all been waiting for. Let's discuss this $4 .5 trillion asset manager, Fidelity, which I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, is the second largest asset manager in the world, next to BlackRock that controls over 10 trillion in assets under management. They're predicting, their head of global macro, Julian Timmer is predicting that the Bitcoin price hit $1 billion per coin. So let's break this down, shall we? And then we'll dive into our live Q &A. Here we go. Fidelity's prediction for Bitcoin. We have Julian Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity, put forth the notion that Bitcoin, the king crypto, has the potential to reach a value of $1 billion per BTC in roughly two decades, specifically around the year 2038. So there you have it. Right now we're in 2023. So what is that? Roughly like 15 years out. To supply the forecast, Timmer employed a combo of models and charts with particular focus on the stock to flow model and his own demand model. These analytic tools form the foundation for his primary prediction. And speaking of stock to flow, massive shout out to Plan B, creator of the Bitcoin stock to flow model. Now he believes, along with the stock to flow, the data, which doesn't lie, that the Bitcoin price is subject to hit between 100 ,000 and a million dollars after the halving in 2024. Let me know if you agree or disagree with the stock to flow prediction. And now we'll get back to this analysis from Julian Timmer of Fidelity. The above demand model employs Metcalfe's law, and according to the numbers of its users, grows linearly, the network's value, or interfiends, the Bitcoin price, grows geometrically. This means that the utility of the adoption of Bitcoin are expected to grow more rapidly compared to its network of users, exchanges, ATMs, and participating retailers. Therefore, this model predicted that the Bitcoin price will reach $1 million, which is seven figures, by the year 2030. Now I'd also like to throw out there, we also have Cathie Wood of ARK Invest predicting a $1 million Bitcoin price by the year 2030. In fact, if you've been following my show, then you know her bear case scenario is over a quarter million per BTC in 2030, her base case is over 600 ,000, and her bullish case is $1 .48 million per BTC. There's other big analysts and financial institutions as well, just as bullish as Cathie Wood. So I just wanted to throw that out there that there's others in agreement with Jurien Timmer thus far on this Bitcoin price prediction. So yeah, in contrast, Timmer's stock to flow supply model noted the event of significant price surges during each halving event. Consequently, when considering this model in conjunction with the other factors, it foresees a Bitcoin price range of $1 million to $10 million for Bitcoin defined by the year 2030. Timmer's demand model is more inclined towards reflecting the bottom of the Bitcoin price. But on the other hand, the stock to flow model seemed to provide a better approximation for the peak of Bitcoin. However, it's worth noting that the disparity between these two models widened significantly beyond the year 2030, which is where things get interesting. The reason behind this gap is expected to be the changing value of the dollar, as many, many economists are anticipating the crash of the dollar in which Jurien Timmer is as well. So Timmer proposes that the value of the dollar undergoes fluctuations over time when compared to other traditional assets. For instance, if just $1 was invested into the stocks during the 18th century, its present -day value would be roughly $4 billion. You mean to tell me $1 invested into stocks in the 18th century is now worth $4 billion? That tells you everything you need to know about fiat currency, folks. Now similarly, Timmer implied that if $1 million was invested today, it can grow to $1 billion in just a span of 20 years. This further revealed that the purchasing power of the dollar has significantly reduced due to factors like inflation and depreciation, and let's not forget, money printer continued to go. Just saying. Thus, Timmer's statement implied that keeping a fixed amount of dollars for many years may lead to a reduced purchasing power due to the assets' changing value, and over the last few years, an increasing number of are companies taking over the $1 trillion market cap, and as a result, it's foreseeable that in the next two decades, the concept of a trillion -dollar valuation will become more common. Yes, right, so much that individuals themselves could be worth a trillion dollars or even more. The scale of numbers may even reach the quadrillion range. Like, whoa, so is this milestone still achievable for Bitcoin is the million -dollar question. So despite Bitcoin's historical growth, it had recently faced a significant setback. Bitcoin's network activity had diminished, and it had fallen behind in comparison to Cardano's network, for example, the number of active addresses in the Bitcoin market had experienced a notable decline when compared to the levels seen in 2021, but we also gotta note that we're currently in a bear market, past couple of years. We hit the cycle peak back in 2021, and we soared. Remember COVID era? Bitcoin dumped all the way down to like $3 ,500 range, and within a year, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, we hit that all -time high, which is the current high of $69 ,000. So this just goes to show you how fast Bitcoin can climb during a bull market, and we know the past couple of years have been bearish as all hell, right, especially 2022. We had the collapse of Terra Luna. We had the collapse of FTX being the second largest crypto exchange at the time. There was mass contagion. Everything was impacted. We dropped to a new cycle low of 15 ,700, but I think the bottom is past us. What's your thoughts, chat? Do let me know in the comments so I can read those out loud here in a little bit, but let's finish up this prediction. The higher network activity, like increased transaction volume or active addresses, is viewed as a positive indicator for the growing adoption for Bitcoin. This can create a sense of confidence amongst investors, potentially leading to the rise in demand and positive effect on the price action, and although Timur's prediction may be considered far -fetched and lacks empirical evidence, it doesn't completely dismiss the possibility of Bitcoin reaching such levels. The concept of de -dollarization has gained stature, shifting global attention towards alternative currencies. The shift in focus is expected to drive the demand for assets like golden crypto, such as Bitcoin, and with BRICS pushing for the fall of the dollar, the BRICS currency and Bitcoin are expected to garner continued momentum. So there you have it, fam. What are your thoughts surrounding this whopping $1 billion price prediction for the king crypto by the year 2038? Do you think it's realistic? And before we even got to that billion prediction, what about $1 million by the year 2030? Do you think this is realistic? Do you think this is a pipe dream? Do you think this is conservative? What's your honest thoughts? And where do you feel the dollar is likely to go over the course of the next few years? Do you think it will not even be in existence and will be replaced by the digital version, which is the CBDCs, central bank digital currencies that Congressman Tom Emmer and many others are warning you about? Let me know your honest thoughts. And don't forget to check out cryptonewsalerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
Coronavirus
A highlight from opBNB Goes Live On Mainnet
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday September 13th, 2023. Developers introduce an EIP for a new BLOB base fee opcode, DAP Radar releases a zk -sync ecosystem portal, the SEC sues the Stoner Cats NFT project, and the Lazarus Group siphons over 54 million dollars from CoinX. All this and more starts right now. KCG ceremony coordinator Carl Beek introduced EIP 7516, a proposal for the addition of a new Ethereum opcode called BLOB base fee. The opcode is similar to the existing base fee opcode and can be used to retrieve the BLOB base fee value of the current block. The opcode would allow smart contracts to access the BLOB base fee, which can be used to calculate BLOB data usage costs and facilitate the implementation of BLOB gas futures for smoothing out BLOB data costs. The proposal is currently open for feedback on the Ethereum Magicians Forum. zk -sync released a new ecosystem portal managed by DAP Radar. The portal ranks DAPs by key metrics including volume, total value locked, and unique active wallets. It also sorts DAPs by categories including DeFi, NFTs, games, bridges, and DAOs. SyncSwap, MEW, and Maverick Protocol are currently the top 3 DAPs on the network by total value locked. DAP Radar is the first external ecosystem portal for zk -sync. Developers can now apply to feature their zk -sync DAPs on DAP Radar for increased visibility. zk -sync era is an EVM compatible zk rollup. The rollup is currently the third largest layer 2 network with over $400 million in total value locked. The U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against the Stoner Cats NFT project for selling unregistered securities in the form of NFTs. The project had raised $8 million from its 10K NFT collection which sold out within 35 minutes. The SEC cited the project's marketing campaign which included holder benefits and promotion from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher. The Stoner Cats NFT project settled the charges with the SEC by paying a $1 million penalty and agreeing to a cease and desist order, which included the burning of all NFTs in its possession. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce later issued a statement arguing that applying the Howey test to NFTs lacks clear boundaries and could stifle creativity among artists and creators. According to security researcher Taylor Vanno, the North Korean state -sponsored hacking group known as the Lazarus Group has siphoned over $270 million worth of assets in the last 102 days. Yesterday, the hacking group exploited $54 million from the CoinX exchange. Earlier this month, the group exploited Stake .com for $41 million. Vanno noted that while the stolen funds can be publicly traced to Lazarus Group, only a fraction gets confiscated through the freezing of assets. And lastly, OPBNB, a Layer 2 network built on the OP stack, is now live on Mainnet. An OPBNB network testnet was first released in June. Over 435 ,000 unique addresses have since interacted with OPBNB on testnet, processing over 35 million transactions. The network features a one -second block time and ultra -low gas fees. Users can now add the OPBNB Mainnet RPC to their wallet using Chain ID 204 and Bridge to the network using ZKBridge. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for watching. See you soon.
Ethereum Daily
A highlight from opBNB Goes Live On Mainnet
"Welcome to your Ethereum news roundup. Here's your latest for Wednesday September 13th, 2023. Developers introduce an EIP for a new BLOB base fee opcode, DAP Radar releases a zk -sync ecosystem portal, the SEC sues the Stoner Cats NFT project, and the Lazarus Group siphons over 54 million dollars from CoinX. All this and more starts right now. KCG ceremony coordinator Carl Beek introduced EIP 7516, a proposal for the addition of a new Ethereum opcode called BLOB base fee. The opcode is similar to the existing base fee opcode and can be used to retrieve the BLOB base fee value of the current block. The opcode would allow smart contracts to access the BLOB base fee, which can be used to calculate BLOB data usage costs and facilitate the implementation of BLOB gas futures for smoothing out BLOB data costs. The proposal is currently open for feedback on the Ethereum Magicians Forum. zk -sync released a new ecosystem portal managed by DAP Radar. The portal ranks DAPs by key metrics including volume, total value locked, and unique active wallets. It also sorts DAPs by categories including DeFi, NFTs, games, bridges, and DAOs. SyncSwap, MEW, and Maverick Protocol are currently the top 3 DAPs on the network by total value locked. DAP Radar is the first external ecosystem portal for zk -sync. Developers can now apply to feature their zk -sync DAPs on DAP Radar for increased visibility. zk -sync era is an EVM compatible zk rollup. The rollup is currently the third largest layer 2 network with over $400 million in total value locked. The U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed charges against the Stoner Cats NFT project for selling unregistered securities in the form of NFTs. The project had raised $8 million from its 10K NFT collection which sold out within 35 minutes. The SEC cited the project's marketing campaign which included holder benefits and promotion from celebrities like Ashton Kutcher. The Stoner Cats NFT project settled the charges with the SEC by paying a $1 million penalty and agreeing to a cease and desist order, which included the burning of all NFTs in its possession. SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce later issued a statement arguing that applying the Howey test to NFTs lacks clear boundaries and could stifle creativity among artists and creators. According to security researcher Taylor Vanno, the North Korean state -sponsored hacking group known as the Lazarus Group has siphoned over $270 million worth of assets in the last 102 days. Yesterday, the hacking group exploited $54 million from the CoinX exchange. Earlier this month, the group exploited Stake .com for $41 million. Vanno noted that while the stolen funds can be publicly traced to Lazarus Group, only a fraction gets confiscated through the freezing of assets. And lastly, OPBNB, a Layer 2 network built on the OP stack, is now live on Mainnet. An OPBNB network testnet was first released in June. Over 435 ,000 unique addresses have since interacted with OPBNB on testnet, processing over 35 million transactions. The network features a one -second block time and ultra -low gas fees. Users can now add the OPBNB Mainnet RPC to their wallet using Chain ID 204 and Bridge to the network using ZKBridge. This has been a roundup of today's top news stories in Ethereum. You can support this podcast by subscribing and following us on Twitter at ethdaily. Also subscribe to our newsletter at ethdaily .io. Thanks for listening, we'll see you tomorrow.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"And yeah, he laid out the case for integrating AI tech into the SEC surveillance scheme, but until now the agency's explicit use of the tech hadn't been made public knowledge. When asked by Senator Catherine Cortez, how he envisioned the SEC using AI, here's what Mr. Gensler had to share, so we already do in some market surveillance and enforcement actions to look for patterns in the market. It's one of the reasons why we've asked Congress for greater funding this year in 2024 to help build our technology budget for the emerging technologies. Now, while it shouldn't normal course of its operations, it is somewhat surprising that the agency hasn't issued a formal public declaration detailing its use. However, it's worth noting that aside from the requirement to report cybersecurity incidents signed into law by Mr. President Biden, I hate even saying this guy's name, in March of 2022, there don't appear to be any legal requirements in the US for agencies to publicly report the internal use of new tech. And based on the description given by Gensler himself, it's unclear exactly what form of AI the agency is using. However, the SEC filed numerous analysis reports on the use of AI and algorithmic trading by actors within financial markets. It would make sense for the agency to similarly employ machine learning algorithms capable of parsing large amounts of information for autonomous data. So there you have it, the show point 2.0 continues. Let me know your honest thoughts, fam. I already know how I feel. I'm not a huge fan of crypto regulation because I feel the regulators, they claim to have the investors' best interests at heart, but I think they have their central bankers and the people behind them that put them in power is best financial interests at heart. And to me, it couldn't be any more clear, but let me know what you think, chat, and I'll be reading your comments out loud towards the end of the show. Now let's discuss that the Bitcoin bull market is still intact. According to top crypto analysts, Dave, the wave, then we'll be discussing the latest regarding Bitcoin payment app service strike, as well as their CEO, Jack Mallers forecasting a million dollar plus Bitcoin price action. Then we'll dip into our live Q and A, but first, yeah, let's discuss the crypto market still being intact. Popular analysts as Bitcoin path towards a massive bull cycle remains intact. Despite the current market correction, synonymous analysts, Dave, the wave tells his followers on X, the Bitcoin appears to be in the midst of a consolidation period after rallying by about a hundred percent from its November, 2022 bottom. That's right. I believe the bottom is in at roughly 15,700 chat. The trader also says that the widely or weekly logarithmic moving average convergence divergence known as the LMACD indicator is still above the zero line, which had historically acted as a support for BTC. The LMACD indicator is designed to signal chases in an asset's trend, strength, and momentum. Typically an asset is seen as bullish once it crosses this LMACD zero line. Quitting the analysts here, technically not panic stations, but plain sailing. Number one, a consolidation of this year's move up. Number two, this year's move up near as long as the move down from the peak to low, low hodling. And number three, weekly LMACD consolidating to the zero line, still in the buy zone for investors as outlined here in this chart. And according to the trader, the indicators are not changing the broader case for a bull cycle, even though the market sentiment appears to have been flipping bearish. Quitting him again, you can listen to the scaremongers who play on the popular sentiment, or you can keep your eye on the rational technicals. I'd much rather keep my eye on the prize, which is the rational technicals personally. But what are your thoughts, chat? The analyst also says that the current Bitcoin correction is nothing out of the ordinary, considering Bitcoin's strong rally earlier in the year. Quitting him again, if people stop to consider that the Bitcoin price retraced a full 50% of its decline from the peak, then they wouldn't be too surprised to see consolidation here. It makes a great point because the all-time high is 69,000 and currently we're sitting just above 26,000. So looking at this chart, which you can see here in your screen, he appears to predict that the current correction can push the Bitcoin to the 50% Fibonacci level, which is around $23,000, which is 3,000 South from the current price action. The trader previously predicted that the king crypto will revisit its all-time high at around 69,000 sometime next year, followed by a deep corrective move to below 59 G's. So he's saying in 2024, expect Bitcoin to break out to a new all-time high, then to retest and go back down to 50,000. What are your thoughts, fam? Let me know if you agree or disagree with the crypto analyst, Dave the Wave. I personally feel that the Bitcoin price is likely to break out to a new all-time high sometime in 2024 as well. And I think by 2025, we reached the cycle peak for this particular new bull cycle, which I'm anticipating a multiple six figure price action. But what's your thoughts, chat? Let me know your predictions. I'll be reading them out loud here in just a little bit. Now let's discuss the latest and greatest coming from Jack Mallers, the strike CEO, along with his $1 million Bitcoin price prediction. This was news a few months back when Bitcoin payments app strike expanded to more than 65 countries from just three helping in to usher in mass adoption. That's right. The strike app, as we know, uses the Bitcoin lightning network, a secondary network for cheaper and faster Bitcoin transactions to offer global payments and cross-border money transfer services. The app now sports a brand new user interface. How many of you are currently using strike, fam? Let me know. Strike says the expansion will increase its total addressable market to almost 3 billion people. That's like roughly half the population of the entire world. So that's pretty big deal. Massive kudos to Jack Mallers for doing this, putting them here. Our end goal is to address the 7 to 8 billion people in every single country, said Manuela Rios, strikes vice president of the product in a new interview. Rios says the apps user new interface will feature a seamless onboarding experience, something she said the company has been working on for years, quoting her again, if you're in the United States, the apps are gorgeous. There is a really high bar for the, for their design, but unfortunately that's not the case when you download the apps abroad. So just FYI. And then a little bit later, maybe a month or two later, they expanded their send globally payment service to Mexico. Now, anyone in Mexico tuned into the show, let me know. I got a lot of love from Mexico. That's right. Strike a money app for fast, safe payments and Bitcoin announced the expansion of send globally to Mexico, bringing its revolutionary payment services to the largest market for remittances from the United States. Check this out. Mexico recovered or received a record 60 billion in remittances from the U S alone, making up around 95% of total remittances abroad, sending a payment from the U S to Mexico cost an average of four and a half percent of the transaction value. That is absolutely ludicrous. So can you see this as a disruption technology, 100% quitting them here, cross border payments from the U S to Mexico have reached where'd we go here? Uh, I got lost here on the site. Okay, here we are. Okay. From Mexico reached unprecedented levels serving as a lifeline for millions of people said, uh, Jack Mollers, however, existing payment services are costly and ineffective and inefficient, making them inaccessible to many at strike. Everyone should have access to better payments and financial stability. We're excited to bring fast, low cost cross border payments. We have the lightning network to Mexico, enabling more people to send more money home. So when using send globally, the dollars are converted. Here's how it works into Bitcoin and sent via the lightning network to a third party partner. That partner converts the Bitcoin into the local currency sent directly to the recipients, local account, such as their bank account. Now in Mexico strike partnered with re lump ago to enable the transfers from U S dollars received this local currency directly into a recipients bank account, quitting them here. Re lump on go is a proud partner with strike to revolutionize money transfers from the U S to Mexico, the world's largest cross border payments corridor, he said, and by harnessing the lightning network, we enable instant low cost cross border payments that are transforming the financial landscape for millions of Latin America and individuals. And since launching the feature in December of last year, strike quickly expanded, send globally to over a dozen countries. And now I believe it's over 30 countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Nigeria, and now Mexico amongst the top 10 largest cross border markets. So there you have it. Real talk fam. If you have the option to use a app, which is available on anyone's smartphone, and you can send and receive funds virtually for free instantaneously using Bitcoin, the monetary network and any currency, send, receive, or swap, et cetera, without any downside, would you choose that? Or would you want to use Western union or MoneyGram and go pay 20% to send some funds back to your friends or family? It makes no sense to ladder. And that's why this disruptive technology with Bitcoin and lightning network will continue to take over the world. It's only a matter of time. Now we discussed the tech. Now let's dive more deeper into Jack Mallers, $1 million price prediction and break this down. Shall we? Now he did an interview and he discussed Bitcoin beating hyperinflation, speaking on CNBC's Power Lunch with Kelly Evans, the strike CEO, discussed the role of Bitcoin in the ongoing banking crisis. And Mallers says he is convinced the Bitcoin price will hit $1 million plus fueled by global hyperinflation. Moreover, Mallers reiterated the fact that there would only be 21 million Bitcoins despite the increased demand and actually transcribed this interview. I'm going to be reading it to you for a moment, but I also want to quote him here. My overall opinion is that the name of the game is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. The altcoins are interesting, but a lot more speculative. I use them to accumulate more BTC. And now for the transcribe I did myself, the transcription from that interview. Here's what Jack Mallers had to say. Very powerful words. Check it out. If silver is going to 1000x, I will walk into my kitchen right now and I will melt all my silverware and I will sell it at market. And if gold is going to rally, Elon Musk will find more on Mars. This is a super important point. Bitcoin is the only monetary instrument in the history of our species that is fixed. Facts. It does not matter how much more demand comes into the asset class. No one will ever be able to make more of it. There are two things that I can guarantee you in my life. Number one, that I'll die. And number two, there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. And those are the two things that I can only value. It's my life and my Bitcoin. So it is the only fixed supply asset. It's not that complicated. It's going to go up because everything else can be issued more. Preach. The only thing that is clear to us and clear to our customers is that you cannot hold and save in dollars anymore. Tell them. I think there is going to be a new era of the US dollar where inflation will enter a normalized 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 percent. The days of 2 percent in inflation are over. The Fed really blew this thing up. I mean, he's preaching facts here, fam. You can call it inflation because the CPI is a load of nonsense, right? Like the government is going to tell me how the dollar is inflating based on a basket of instruments. Like my Netflix subscription or my Caesar salad doesn't actually tell me how well the dollar is over 50 percent this year. You're telling me the dollar isn't inflating. You're out of your mind. I am not listening to that. The Fed and the whole monetary system is based on trust. And they constantly, they constantly break that trust. It would be the equivalent to there is a fire outside of my house. I smell the smoke and someone tells me, no, no, no, no. It's just a bunch of teenagers putting on a bonfire. OK, but I hear a police siren. Are you sure it's a bonfire? Yeah, yeah, it's a bonfire. Now I hear 10 sirens, then 100 sirens. Now my whole community is running outside. I'm not going to get up and look outside the window and see what's going on. I don't believe them for a second. You have to be absolutely crazy to believe the Federal Reserve right now. They are full of it. And I don't have to because I own Bitcoin. There is no one that can deflate my instrument. I get to hold it, save in it. I know the monetary policy and I sleep like a baby, like the baby face that I am. I think you are crazy to believe the Fed and these swap lines and treating these assets at par. It is a gimmick. It is a scam. So there you have it. Very powerful words coming from the strike CEO, Jack Mollers. Let me know if you agree or disagree with the fearless leader in the comments right down below. And don't forget to check out CryptoNewsAlerts.net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I will see you in the next one.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"Yo, what's good crypto fam. This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts.net. Again, that's crypto news alerts.net. How's everyone doing today? Did you know this is podcast episode number 1400, which is a major milestone. I'm your host JV. And today is September 13th, 2023. Let's kick off today's show with our market watch as we do each and every day. Hallelujah. We're still in the green. 26,000 is holding strong as we're currently trading at 26, 165. We also have ether, which just hit back above $1,600 and checking out coinmarketcap.com. As you can see right here, we're currently sitting just above that trillion dollar milestone with $28 billion in volume in the past 24 hours with the Bitcoin dominance on the rise at 49.1% with the ether dominance pretty stagnant at 18.5% and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours. We've got compound up 6% trading just under 40 bucks, followed by Thor chain up 5% trading at $1.58 followed by maker up 4% trading at $1,160 and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers for the past week here on crypto bubbles. You can see the majority of the market is in the green, which we love to see. We have cause up six, I'm sorry, 12.4% along with comp up 6.6% and checking out the crypto greed and fear index currently rated a 41, which is fear yesterday was as low as a 30 with last week, a 42 and last month, a 50, which is neutral. So there you have it. How many of you are taking advantage of this recent dip and dollar costs average in your position? Let me know. And it's going to be interesting to see what the Bitcoin price action does next. So let's dive right into our Bitcoin technical analysis without any further ado and welcome to y'all just joining us. Make sure to say hello in that live chat as I'll be reading everyone's comments out loud at the end of the show. So as you can see here in this chart, Bitcoin saw snap volatility on September 13th as us macro economic data showed inflation beating expectations. That's right. Which you can see here in the Bitcoin one hour candle chart. Now data from coin Telegraph and trading view followed Bitcoin price action as it threatened. It's a fresh loss of that 26,000 level. The CPI print for August came in at 3.7% year on year, which is 0.1% higher, which then was forecasted quoting them here. The index for gasoline was the largest contributor to the monthly, all items increase accounting for over half of the increase as part of the official press release from the August monthly increase was continued advancement in the shelter index, which rose for the 40th consecutive month. Now, earlier on the day, the crypto market participants had worn that a hot CPI reading would pressure the market as it would imply that inflation remained more stubborn than many hope for this in turn could have implications for how restrictive economic policy remains in the gasoline prices going up this fast. He also says inflation is still a problem in a big problem in the second half of the year. Now CPI was already a forecast to beat edge July year on year figure with August at 3.6% versus the previous 3.2%. And prior to the release, we had Keith Allen, the co-founder of material indicators who was optimistic about the week's Bitcoin price momentum holding out quoting him here. The strength of Bitcoin momentum has faded a bit since yesterday, but so far it's still strong enough to hold on to most of what was reclaimed after the bounce. He also reiterated that lots of technical resistance remained above the current spot price range. This come in in the form of multiple daily moving averages. Now with the wall street open still to come volatility was in play with Bitcoin lacking a clear trend at the time of this being published. This accompanying snapshot shot, as you can see here, shows you the Bitcoin order book on the largest global exchange Binance showing only modest liquidity surrounding the spot price with more bids currently parked at $25,000. So there you have it. How do you think this is likely to play out for the crypto market? Do you think 26 will hold strong and will continue marching upwards onwards? Or do you think we're likely to drop back down and retest that 25,000 critical support? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. And now let's actually break down some of these tweets breaking news coming from Tom Emmer, US Congressman. He says CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currencies, is a surveillance tool that can be weaponized to oppress the American way of life, which he reveals in this new speech. I think he hit the nail on the head. We all know that as Bitcoiners, right? Because we know CBDCs are slavery by the central bankers, while Bitcoin is the antidote to that. That's why we say Bitcoin is freedom. And Max had some wise words to share as well. He wrote, saving El Salvador and Argentina from central banks by introducing a Bitcoin standard will ultimately help Americans who have the same problem of a free-falling currency, just the later bit, preach. He also says it's not enough for a country to make Bitcoin illegal tender. It must also do what El Salvador has done, erect and penetrable barriers of entry, stopping all the ishcoins. The citadel needs protection. And this is the message we'll be taking to Argentina. So there you have it. Massive shout out to the high priest of Bitcoin, the one and only, Max Kaiser. Now let's discuss the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which is the Bitcoin transaction seamless, virtually instant, and for a fraction of the cost if you were to send it on the main network. Because guess what? Coinbase, the largest exchange in the United States has been talking about this and entertaining the idea. And now we got some more insights regarding the plans coming directly from their CEO, Brian Armstrong. So let's break this down. And how many of you have used Coinbase before as a crypto exchange? Let me know in the chat, chat. I appreciate it. Brian Armstrong has disclosed that the Lightning Network is coming to Coinbase. Well, let's freaking go. What are we waiting for? The news follows Armstrong being asked about the second layer tech on Twitter when the block CEO Jack Dorsey questioned him, why do you continue to ignore Bitcoin and Lightning? I think that's a valid question. Now, what crypto is a better money transmission protocol and why? Dorsey asked. And at the time, Armstrong responded and noted that his firm was looking into adding the Lightning Network and further stressed that Coinbase is not ignoring Bitcoin. Here's what Brian Armstrong had to share in response. Not sure why you think we are ignoring Bitcoin. We have onboarded more people to Bitcoin than probably any company in the world. Now, on September 12th, which was yesterday, Armstrong explained that the Lightning Network was coming to Coinbase soon enough, quoting him here, the team did a great job digging into this and we have made the decision to integrate Lightning, he said on social platform X. He also said Bitcoin is the most important asset in crypto and so we're excited to do our part to enable faster and cheaper Bitcoin transactions, which will take some time to integrate. So please be patient. I mean, you got all the money and the resources in the world. Does it really got to take that long? Just saying, just speaking out loud. At the same time, thinking out loud, the Lightning Network has been dealing with a great deal of criticism over the last few months. For instance, the Lightning Network is still considered beta software in 2023 and it's been out for more than seven years. Can't make this stuff up, folks. Some people believe the Lightning Network will never scale and some businesses have dropped support for the second layer altogether, which makes no sense to me. Despite the critiques, Lightning Network supporters believe that the second layer will be integral to scaling Bitcoin to the masses. In July of 2023 this year, the Lightning Network's capacity reached a new all-time high, but since then dropped more than 12% from the peak. So there you have it. How many of you have ever used the Bitcoin Lightning Network before? And don't you feel it's inevitable? All the major exchanges should be incorporating it. It would make the expenses and fees go down on the exchange if you're looking to move your crypto off the exchange and maybe onto a private wallet, etc. So to me, it only makes sense unless they want to keep the fees high to ultimately extract more money out of your pockets. What are your thoughts and when do you feel that Coinbase will likely activate the Bitcoin second layer protocol we know as Lightning Network? Let me know your thoughts in the comments right down below. Now let's break down our next story of the day and that's the latest coming from Gemini Earn and the Digital Currency Group. How many of you were impacted as a result of the Gemini Earn program? As you know, there is a lawsuit currently going on. There are shenanigans with the SEC and ultimately everyone got their funds frozen and lost out because the regulators seem to be targeting yearn programs, which is very unfortunate. But here's the latest of what's going on with this ongoing saga. Digital Currency Group, better known as DCG, proposed a new agreement plan for the creditors of the now bankrupt Genesis Global that would also see the Gemini Earn users recover nearly all of their claims. So in a new filing September 13th, which is today, DCG outlined the plan that estimates unsecured creditors a 70 to 90% recovery with a meaningful portion of the recovery in digital currencies. And in addition, the remuneration plan says the recovery of claims for Gemini Earn users would be projected at approximately 95 to 110% without any contribution from Gemini. Here's what the firm stated in their most recent filing. If Gemini were to agree to provide $100 million to the Gemini Earn users under the proposed agreement as it previously did, there would be little doubt that Gemini Earn users would receive more than full recovery. I mean, more than full recovery sounds fantastic. Send it, right? Gemini Earn was a service implemented by crypto exchange Gemini, which is backed by the Winklevoss twins. They're the owners with financing from Genesis. Users were then affected by Genesis' bankruptcy protection filing and withdrawal freeze. Genesis' initial bankruptcy filing occurred in January of this year after the withdrawal suspension, which had a domino effect of a massive liquidity crisis back in November of 2022. And reportedly, the company owed over $3.5 freaking million to its creditors, which included Gemini. It is the second agreement in principle submitted to the case. The previous proposal from DCG filed on August 29th offered the DCG equity. And a day after the first proposal was submitted, the Genesis lenders called the agreement wholly insufficient. In an update, the lenders claim that the debtors, along with Genesis' unsecured creditors, are unwilling to comply with their fiduciary obligations to maximize creditor recoveries. A week later, Genesis opened a lawsuit against its parent company, DCG, and its other affiliate, DCG Investments, on September 6th for defaulted loans worth around $600 million. Now, we all know Barry Silbert is at the head of DCG and Genesis and also the owner of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust product, which currently custodies over 600,000 BTC. So keep that in mind too, fam. On September 5th, Genesis Global Trading announced its plans to eliminate its crypto spot trading services, starting from September 18th. So how do you feel this is likely to play out for the investors? Do you think they'll receive all or maybe even more than all of their funds back? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. I just hope they make the right decisions and do what benefits the investors the most, not what benefits the SEC or the regulators or the exchanges at the end of the day. And with that being shared, welcome to y'all. Just joining in, what's new? What's popping? What's good chat? What are you most looking forward to in crypto this week as we're already halfway through the week? It is hump day after all. Wednesday, fam. Let's now dive into our latest regarding Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, along with him using artificial intelligence for surveillance agreements, which is, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about this, so let's break it down. The United States SEC, Mr. Gensler testified yesterday, September 12th in a Senate oversight hearing that his agency was currently using artificial intelligence technologies to monitoring the financial sector for signs of fraud and manipulation. Gensler gave a public speech before the National Press Club on July 17th, which I'm sure many of you watched.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"Bitcoin is the greatest form of money to ever exist. In today's show, we're going to be discussing Bitcoin price reacting as 3.7%. CPI sees an inflation jump beyond forecasts, and breaking news just in, US Congressman Tom Emmer says CBDC is a surveillance tool that can be weaponized to oppress the American way of life. That's right, CBDC is slavery and Bitcoin is freedom. And quoting the high priest of Bitcoin, Max Keiser, saving El Salvador and Argentina from the central banks by introducing a Bitcoin standard will ultimately help Americans who have the same problem of a free-falling currency just delay the bid. He also says, it's not enough for a country to make Bitcoin legal tender, it must do also what El Salvador has done, erect impenetrable barriers of entry, stopping the Ishcoins, the Citadel needs protection. This is the message we'll be taking to Argentina, preach. Also in today's show, Coinbase founder, Brian Armstrong, reveals a plan to integrate the Bitcoin lightning network. Let's get it. Also in today's show, Gemini earned users could recover all their funds in the new DCG remuneration scheme. We'll also be discussing Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, confirms the SEC's use of artificial intelligence for financial surveillance. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin bull market well intact despite the recent correction, according to crypto analysts who call the May 2021 crypto crash. We're talking about Dave the wave. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin payments app strike expanding to more than 65 countries from three, including Mexico, as well as Jack Mallers discussing the Bitcoin price beating hyperinflation and soaring to a million dollars plus per coin. All this plus so much more in today's show.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1400: Jack Mallers: This Will Send Bitcoin to $1 Million
"Bitcoin is the greatest form of money to ever exist. In today's show, we're going to be discussing Bitcoin price reacting as 3 .7%. CPI sees an inflation jump beyond forecasts, and breaking news just in, US Congressman Tom Emmer says CBDC is a surveillance tool that can be weaponized to oppress the American way of life. That's right, CBDC is slavery and Bitcoin is freedom. And quoting the high priest of Bitcoin, Max Keiser, saving El Salvador and Argentina from the central banks by introducing a Bitcoin standard will ultimately help Americans who have the same problem of a free -falling currency just delay the bid. He also says, it's not enough for a country to make Bitcoin legal tender, it must do also what El Salvador has done, erect impenetrable barriers of entry, stopping the Ishcoins, the Citadel needs protection. This is the message we'll be taking to Argentina, preach. Also in today's show, Coinbase founder, Brian Armstrong, reveals a plan to integrate the Bitcoin lightning network. Let's get it. Also in today's show, Gemini earned users could recover all their funds in the new DCG remuneration scheme. We'll also be discussing Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, confirms the SEC's use of artificial intelligence for financial surveillance. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin bull market well intact despite the recent correction, according to crypto analysts who call the May 2021 crypto crash. We're talking about Dave the wave. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin payments app strike expanding to more than 65 countries from three, including Mexico, as well as Jack Mallers discussing the Bitcoin price beating hyperinflation and soaring to a million dollars plus per coin. All this plus so much more in today's show.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"Yo, what's good, crypto fam? This is first and foremost a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at CryptoNewsAlerts.net. Again, that's your host, JV. Today is September 10th, 2023, and the market unfortunately is back in the red. As you can see here, we've got Bitcoin down a quarter of a percent for the day, barely holding on to twenty five thousand, eight hundred support. We also have Ether down a percent, barely holding on to sixteen hundred dollars. And check it out, CoinMarketCap.com, the current crypto market cap sits just above a trillion dollars, but about seventeen and a half billion in volume in the past 24 hours. Bitcoin dominance on the climb at forty eight point six percent, with the ether dominance at eighteen point eight percent. And checking out the top one hundred crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we have Kronos leading the pack, but only up one percent, trading at five point two cents, followed by Leo up three quarters of a percent, trading at three dollars and eighty four cents, followed by PaxDollar, which is the stablecoin, which is up point three percent. So it virtually means almost every major crypto is currently correcting and in the red, which you can clearly see here on crypto bubbles. This supposed to show us the top gainers out of the top one hundred for the past week. And I only see Kronos in the green and costs only up a modest one and a half percent, virtually meaning all the top cryptos are bleeding and bleeding pretty badly. And checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're neutral. So there you have it, fam. Welcome, everyone. Just joining us. Shout out to everyone in that live chat. Let us know where you're tuning in from. At the end of the show, I'll be reading everyone's comments out loud. Now let's dive into today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Check out the charts and what is popping right now with the king crypto, with this latest research that a black swan event could be on the cusp. That's right. Bitcoin may be worrying market participants with the current price action weakness, but on chain data paints an intriguing picture of activity under the hood. Now, UTXOs represent the Bitcoin leftover after an on-chain transaction is executed. Crypto quants UTXOs and loss metric tracks when the large numbers of these UTXOs are worth more than when they were when Bitcoin was originally bought. Now, currently, more of these are in loss compared to their original acquisition price than at any time since March of 2020. Can you say deja vu? At the time, Bitcoin dropped 60 percent to its lowest level since March of 2019, lows which were never ever seen again. So considering the current data from UTXOs and loss, crypto quant contributor ventured that that March 2020 Bitcoin may be seeing already bouncing back from a curveball selling event. Quitting the analysts here, given that the current level of the UTXOs in loss indicator mirrors that of the black swan event between March and April of 2020, those anticipating another black swan event might want to consider whether we are already in the midst of the event that they are waiting for. Now, in percentage terms, 38 percent of the UTXOs were in the loss at the end of August, a figure last seen in April of 2020. Quitting them again, when many UTXOs are in a loss, investors might be more inclined to sell, hinting at market anxiety. And conversely, when most UTXOs are profitable, it suggests an optimistic outlook and a stronger hodling sentiment amongst the investors. Now let's discuss the underwater Bitcoin speculators continuing to grow. That's right. Bitcoin, meanwhile, remains locked in a tight range amid the lack of overall Bitcoin price trend, with neither a breakout nor a breakdown willing to compete. Cost basis data likewise shows the current spot price caught between the acquisition prices of various investor cohorts. Now this realized price, which is the price at which the supply last move divided by the age, shows that the short-term hodlers fall into aggregate loss when Bitcoin is below the 27,000 level. And a full capitulation event, however, has yet to be recorded on chain. So there you have it. All I know is this, one Bitcoin is still equivalent to one Bitcoin regardless of today's fiat Ponzi US dollar value. Just saying. And one Bitcoin will always be equivalent to one Bitcoin. So keep hodling, keep stacking M-Sats. You already know, my fam. Now let's break down our next story of the exchange. 29,420 Bitcoin were stolen. So let's break this down. The commodities traders are trading futures commission. CFTC is hitting the South African Bitcoin trading and networking firm with a band of 1.7 billion penalty for defrauding investors. According to the press release, the CFTC announced the judge ruled that mirror trading international proprietary limited. Let me know if you've ever heard of the firm must pay over a billion dollars to compensate the victims of its fraud scheme involving foreign currency transactions, quitting the CFTC here. The order stems from CFTC complaint filed June 30th, 2022 and requires MTI to pay more than $1.7 billion in restitution to defrauded victims. The order also permanently enjoins MTI from further violations of the Commodities Exchange Act as charged and imposes permanent trading bans in any CFTC I. Now the CFTC also highlights a default judgment issued against MTI founder and CEO Cornelius Johannes Steinberg. In April, the court found that from May 2018 to March of 2021, Steinberg and his business engaged in an international fraudulent multi-level marketing scheme to solicit Bitcoin from people for participation in an unregistered commodity pool operated by MTI. The CFTC says that Steinberg collected at least 29,421 BTC worth over $1.7 billion while conducting the scheme. And for his crimes, Steinberg must pay more than $1.7 billion in civil monetary penalty, which is the highest in any CFTC case. Now, according to the CFTC's director of enforcement, Ian McGinley, here's what he had to share. The settlement with MTI and default judgment against Steinberg represents the latest stage in our battle against fraudsters who victimized over 23,000 individuals from the United States. So, wow, most of that Bitcoin comes from US investors, it seems. Here, the fraudsters made the most modern of promises, claiming their advanced intelligence software with Bitcoin as a base currency would create untold wealth for the investors, but were actually committing a classic form of fraud, which is a multi-level marketing scam. Whether a scam involves fictitious electronic trading bots or Bitcoins as this action involving a South African entity shows, we will pursue the scam artists wherever they may be. So there you have it. Again, let me know if you've ever heard of this firm and hopefully none of my audience was scammed by them. If it sounds too good to be true, typically it is too good to be true. And there's a lot of scams out there and I don't kind of preach to the choir. You guys know this, protect your Bitcoin fam. Now let's discuss another major hack. Unfortunately, a prominent figure in the crypto space, co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, was just hacked and scammed literally over $600,000 from victims, which is very unfortunate. But you also have to keep that in mind. Oftentimes, hackers could even hack a major influencer's account and then convince you to send them some Bitcoin in some hopes of some returns. But these are all scams as well. It's a very common scam we see more and more often, unfortunately, in the crypto sphere. Now, Vitalik, Ethereum co-founder, allegedly had his ex-account compromised according to a prominent blockchain investigator, Zach XBT. The incident led victims to collectively losing over $691,000 after clicking on a malicious link. That's right. On September 9th, yesterday on a post, Dimitri Buterin, the father of Vitalik, announced his son's account had been compromised, quoting him here, disregard this post, apparently Vitalik has been hacked. He is working on restoring his access. The post was also referring to as since was deleted. It published Buterin's account claiming that to celebrate the arrival of a proto-dank sharding coming to Ethereum, the hacker shared a malicious link to the alleged free commemorative NFT available, enticing victims to connect their wallets before ultimately stealing their funds. So there you have it. Trust nobody, verify everything, never attach your wallet to anything as it can be a malicious link designed to steal your crypto as what happened here. Now, consequently, this incident has led Ethereum developer Bakko, known better as Bakky Puba on X, to claim he has suffered losses in the crypto punk NFT collection. Now, at this time of publication, the prevailing floor price for a crypto punk NFT stands at almost 47 Ethereum, which is approximately equivalent to $77,000. Now, Zach XBT has been actively informing his over 400,000 followers about the hacker's activities. He recently shared that the most valuable NFT pilfered so far is crypto punk 3983, worth 153 ETH, equivalent to approximately $250,000. Now, a user with the alias Satoshi767 on X claimed that Buterin might not have implemented sufficient security measures for his X account, quoting him here, I hate to be the one to say it, but Vitalik should take accountability for his poor, opt, sec, and compensate those affected, he stated, before implying that he believes Buterin's oversight led to the attack, quoting him again, the only way this isn't negligence on Vitalik's part is if someone at X internally compromised the account, or if he was coerced in person by a criminal who threatened violence. I highly doubt that's what happened. Most likely, this was a SIM swap, which is a common occurrence for hackers in crypto. However, Zach XBT challenged those allegations, asserting that Buterin's high profile makes him susceptible to various forms of hacking attempts, as he shares here. You do not know yet whether it was a SIM swap. Vitalik is a big enough target to where an insider could have been paid off, or a panel was used, according to Zach XBT. So there you have it. It's sad to hear so many people being scammed, but you gotta be a little smarter. Never send anyone your crypto, never connect your wallet to anything. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, fam. And with that being shared, now let's discuss the latest with the one and only fraudster, SBF, better known as Sam Bankman-Fried, and the latest with his ongoing jail saga. Here's a picture of him right here being held by authorities and being held in custody. In a new letter to federal Judge Lewis Kaplan filed on Friday, SBF's lawyer, Mark Cohen and Christine Everdell, claimed that FTX founders unable to adequately review discovery materials on the provided laptop and internet connection at the Metropolitan Detention Center. Mr. Bankman-Fried was only able to load one document from the database to review the letter states. And here's what the attorney further shared. Effectively, Mr. Bankman-Fried had no access to the internet for the entire five-hour period. The defense team also asserted Bankman-Fried's trial preparation time in the jail is limited with the 30-year-old... Okay, so he's 30 years old and brought from the form of a visitor, a room late. Bankman-Fried was arrested in December, as we know, and charged with orchestrating a multi-billion dollar fraud at FTX and co-mingling customer assets. He also pleaded not guilty to those charges. Prosecutors have opposed any release for Bankman-Fried before the October trial. The government believes SBF can access discovery for up to 11 hours on the weekdays and has unlimited access to hard drives of evidence. But Bankman-Fried's lawyers counter that the lack of web access prevents comprehensive document review. Quitting them here, we therefore respectfully reiterate our request that the court order Mr. Bankman-Fried's temporary release under 18 USC. They wrote to Judge Kaplan, the attorney's argument that his constitutional sixth amendment rights are currently being infringed upon. What are your thoughts, chat? Let me know. The tussle over Bankman-Fried's pretrial access to evidence comes amid heightened attention to the conditions and rights of detainees preparing complex white collar criminal cases. Legal experts say judges tend to be cautious in granting temporary release, but complaints of inadequate access raise constitutional issues of courts often take serious. So what are your thoughts, fam? How do you think this will likely play out for SBF? And as I shared breaking news just the other day, a fellow in Turkey just got sentenced to almost 12,000 freaking years in prison for a $3 billion fraud. So how do you think SBF should be treated if he is found guilty of a $30 billion fraud surrounding FTX? And now let me do research. Let me know, fam. And at the end of the show, I'll be reading everyone's comments out loud. Now let's discuss the latest with Coinbase offering their institutional product, which can greatly benefit a lot of the cryptocurrencies. Let's break this down, and then we'll dive into the latest predictions from Max Kaiser, and then we'll dive into our live Q &A. So here we go. Coinbase, the leading digital currency exchange, the largest crypto exchange in the United States, just rolled out their lending services to its prime institutional investors. The organization suggests that the lending feature promotes the crypto market's development after some shortcomings. Various virtual currency platforms such as Celsius and Voyager filed for bankruptcy due to their shortcomings, which we all know that happened in 2022. A filing by the US SEC stated that the crypto exchange's customers had invested $57 million in the lending activity that commenced on August 28th. This is also an incredible indication of various digital currencies such as Luna Classic, Polygon, Slashmatic, and Bitcoin Spark. Most importantly, Bitcoin Spark might also experience growth once the Web3 community sees through its double consensus mechanism and its multiple means of revenue generation. Now personally, I'm not familiar with Bitcoin Spark. So if you guys have any insights regarding this cryptocurrency, please do let me know. I have no familiarity with it whatsoever. But will Luna Classic recover? Great question. Concerning the ability of Luna Classic to bounce back has become rampant in the crypto industry, named only currency left after the downfall of Terra Luna. The Luna Classic is estimated to be in the green in 2026. Digital analysts depict that the crypto might also surge during the next bull market that might happen in 2024. But I also remind you that Luna Classic can go to zero. So keep that in mind as well, investors. Now back to Bitcoin Spark. The decentralized ecosystem seeks a platform that will cause venture capitalists and individual investors to invest funds increasing crypto adoption. The new entrant, Bitcoin Spark, stands to create waves in the crypto market to promote the growth and development of the blockchain ecosystem. Users and participants in the decentralized ecosystem need not worry, as the digital platform will sort out issues with interoperability, scalability, and transaction speed limiting factors for major blockchains like Bitcoin, as well as Ethereum. The platform has a cutting edge algorithm that will enable participants to generate revenue in multiple ways. Bitcoin Spark has already been audited by Vital Block and Cognitos, the most compelling and prominent auditing organization of the blockchain ecosystem. Now marketing is pivotal in the upcoming Web3 projects as it creates awareness for the crypto and non-crypto individuals. When a project's marketing is strong, the platform seeks to reach many investors and subsequently surge over time. Bitcoin Spark will use a new marketing technique to capture the user's attention embedded into the ledger ecosystem. The marketing strategy is called innovative disruption. Innovative disruption seeks to disrupt the old marketing methods to develop quality and more eye-catching strategies. The process will involve storytelling to capture blockchain enthusiasts' attention, leveraging blockchain tech, and strategic positioning as the best and most potential crypto startup. Other methods utilized for marketing include influencer coalition and community engagement. So once again, let me know your thoughts if you have any insights regarding any of these cryptos. Are you bullish on any altcoins at this moment outside of Bitcoin? And yeah, what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments right down below. Welcome everyone just joining us today in that live chat. Make sure to let me know where you're tuning in from as in a little bit. I'll be reading everyone's comments out loud, giving everyone the opportunity to have their comments, voices, and concerns and opinions read out loud. Now let's dive into the latest from the high priest of Bitcoin, one of my favorite in the crypto industry, and that's the one and only, Max Kaiser. We're going to be breaking down his multiple seven-figure price prediction, as well as all of his other most recent price predictions, which are relevant. So let's start right here. He just tweeted, El Salvador bonds are up 90% this year, the best performing in the world. Bukele, the president of El Salvador, plus Bitcoin equals a rocket ship to the moon. And in that thread, he also says El Salvador debt will soon be trading at a premium. Volcano energy is powering El Salvador to become a Bitcoin powerhouse. El Salvador will be debt free by 2030. Now that's a very bold prediction. He also shared back on August 11th, the following, Bitcoin has already and will continue to outperform everything else so spectacularly by a hundred X or more that anyone holding Fiat stocks, bonds, gold, all the ish coins, property, et cetera, will literally be impoverished. Now you run the math, with Bitcoin's current price action above 25,000 times a hundred X, that's $2.5 million per coin based on Max Kaiser's prediction. I also like to share a recent tweet he shared on September 6th, four days ago, this Tucker Carlson interview with Javier Melez could pump the Bitcoin price 5% in a day. It'll become clear that all of central and South America benefits extraordinarily from adopting a Bitcoin standard. That's right, Bukele and El Salvador leading the way. And if you didn't know, Tucker Carlson, who has an audience of over a hundred million people tuning into his show now on X, recently went to Argentina to interview the pro Bitcoin presidential candidate, Javier Melez. I personally cannot wait for this interview to be released as it is obviously extremely bullish for Bitcoin. And as Max points out, this interview alone can pump the Bitcoin price 5% in a single day. Now, Max also made some very bullish predictions on the last day of last year, New Year's Eve, December 31st, 2022. Here's what his predictions for 2023, quoting him here, my 2023 predictions on Bitcoin, number one, will reach $100,000. Now we're currently 75,000 off from that target, but we're just entering the fourth quarter. We'll see how that plays out. He also predicted that two more countries will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Currently, there is a lot of talk surrounding nations such as, what do we got, Brazil, we got Argentina, many other Latin American nations, but I don't think it has been official yet, but many are in the works. So let's see. He also says that will become a major electoral issue in US elections this year. It already has become a major issue. You have Kennedy Jr., who has already said if he is elected president, he's going to back the dollar by Bitcoin. We also have other candidates such as Ron DeSantis talking about being pro-Bitcoin and anti-CBDCs, so he was right there. He also said that Bitcoin city will commence construction and that volcano bonds will be oversubscribed. So I mean, he hit the nail on the head on many of these. Obviously, we have yet to hit that $100,000 price action, but hey, anything's possible. So we'll see how that plays out. Now, he also was recently interviewed and he shared the following predictions as well. This country, referring to El Salvador, will be debt-free by 2030 with Bitcoin as well as geothermal Bitcoin mining. And he also goes on to share, quoting him here, where he declares, countries around the world are beginning to accumulate and mine Bitcoin as the world of fiat currency and central banks disintegrate with the benefit of President Bukele's new laws, such as making Bitcoin illegal tender. We have the ability to lead and lead the world and arguably become the richest country in the world. Go figure. Now, if you translate El Salvador into English, it means the savior. Is this a coincidence or is this all by design? Now, Max has also been a very vocal proponent of Bitcoin as a currency, declaring that all fiat currencies are going to zero compared to Bitcoin. It's all going to zero, right? Kaiser explained that Volcano Energy's market cap will grow to $50 billion, exceeding El Salvador's GDP, which is estimated to be $29 billion. This growth will be powered by the rise of the price of the Bitcoin currency. Max also was interviewed by Swan and made a multiple seven-figure price prediction, revealing what he believes will cause the Bitcoin price to skyrocket to new all-time highs. So let's quote some of this interview. With Bitcoin, it's kind of the end of the price discovery because everything will eventually be priced in Bitcoin. Everything goes to zero against Bitcoin. And so for someone like myself who has been following this for 40 years, the finance markets, technology, Bitcoin is the holy grail. It is the end all. I would say my compatriot in all of this is Michael Saylor. When you hear Michael Saylor talk, he talks about the aesthetics of Bitcoin, the beauty of Bitcoin. And he speaks about it in a way I think carries the torch from the Max and Stacey from 2011. He started buying it, I guess, when it was $10,000 or $12,000 or so in the 2020 era. So we were there from 2011 to 2020. I think he's kind of carried the torch from 2020 in a lot of ways, introducing Bitcoin to massive pools of capital. I'm surprised that more companies haven't followed his lead, given the outbreak in inflation we have had exactly as Michael Saylor predicted it. The melting ice cube, as he called it at that time, is exactly what happened. Well, I guess we can now say we're now in the era where BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, and these other major institutions are now looking at Bitcoin. So his work on the institutional level, I guess, is bearing fruit. Now, three years later, I see in the Middle East, they are starting to recognize Bitcoin. So that's a huge pool of capital. I think all that oil money will find its way into Bitcoin and be a huge catalyst for higher Bitcoin prices. It's a natural way for the oil industry to diversify their portfolio, because Bitcoin is essentially energy, and the energy eventually gets priced in Bitcoin. And there is a marriage between these two in a big way. So I think that's kind of the answer. I've always been fascinated by price discovery in markets and the architecture of how the markets work under the hood. And Bitcoin is such a pristine, perfect money. And I think it is something humans have been searching for since forever. And now we're seeing a changed society on a really fundamental level with the introduction of Bitcoin. A lot of people are freaking out because of it, because it destroys the status quo. And a lot of people have been waiting for it to come along, have the faith that humanity can be saved. They see Bitcoin in those terms. So you have this split going on, which is very exciting. So it just continues on and on. How can you not be interested in it? I think the people who were into it earlier and walked away just never really got it from the beginning. Once it's categorized as an asset class, we have nothing to do except position ourselves in this asset class preach. Either we are going to be a small position or a big position, but we cannot ignore it. We cannot not have a position. Now listen up right here. So even 1% of that multi hundred trillion dollar funds available moves the needle on Bitcoin and it moves it up considerably. So if we get into that five to 10% range, then you can start to really see it raised ahead of the seven figure type predictions that people have been making, including myself, because it is an asset class. So there you have it. Very bold prediction coming from Max Kaiser. And as I shared in great detail in yesterday's episode, Michael Saylor also made a very bullish recent prediction, which has been going viral on X. I already got over 2000 hearts, 400 retweets, and over 311,000 people who were exposed to this prediction from Michael Saylor. And I feel it's relevant to read to you right here. So I recently transcribed the most recent price prediction from Saylor. Here's what he had to say. First of all, Bitcoin is going up by a factor of 10, whether they can fix any of this stuff, it is going to be a grind up by a factor of 10 just because gold is broken and Bitcoin is going to replace gold. And now everybody in the universe knows they need a non-sovereign store value in the form of a bearer instrument. For the last year, people said inflation may be coming. We are not sure. Now the mainstream narrative flip to inflation is here. You need an inflation hedge. So it is going to grind up to replace gold. It'll go to $500,000 a coin regardless of whether they fix these things. Here are the three things that are massive catalysts that cause an acceleration. Those three things don't take us to $500,000. They take us to $5 million per Bitcoin. Those three things are number one, a spot ETF where someone can go ahead and buy $100 million Bitcoin via an ETF security. I think that's one. Number two, your bank is going to custody it for you and lend against it. And number three, I can mark it up or down on my balance sheet based on its fair value. It'll be pair of pursue to the way I handle Apple stock or at least that good. So if you have property with fair value accounting, by the way, it becomes a pair of pursuit to the way you'd handle treasury bonds and a treasury balance sheet. Treasuries are better than stocks because treasuries are properties, whereas a stock is a security and you're capped out at 40% of your balance sheet of securities now. So it would be a major, major breakthrough if you saw any of those three things. I'll end with this one observation I tweeted last week. I believe it's very powerful. If the banks can hold the stuff on their balance sheet, then a whole new class of investors are going to buy it. People are going to put in a billion and multi-billion dollar orders to buy it as a treasury asset. Nobody is going to sell it because there is no reason to sell it if you can borrow against it. Sage wisdom coming from sailor. So you're B borrowing against Bitcoin. Nobody is ever going to sell it. And then as I joked, you won't be able to afford it. Well, you'll be able to afford it, but you know, everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve when the banks normalize it. And you can draw a hundred million credit line at a hundred basis points from an FDIC insured bank at that point, right? Where we're going to blow through the market cap of gold by a factor of 10. And right now the gold market cap is roughly 10 trillion. So we say in the Bitcoin market cap will hit a hundred trillion dollars. I think the best is those three things are likely, highly likely to happen. I don't know if they happen in 36 months or 24 months or 12 months, but I'd be shocked if it's more than 36 months. And I hope it doesn't happen in 12 months because my view is the longer it takes, the more progressive the grind and the more time I have to buy more of it. So there you have it, fam. Let me know if you agree or disagree with the Giga Chad, as well as Max Kaiser with their predictions that the Bitcoin price will continue climbing. And Max says by a factor of a hundred X against all other assets, we got Michael Saylor saying the Bitcoin market cap will soar 10 times the market cap of gold sending the Bitcoin price ultimately to $5 million per coin. What are your thoughts? Do let me know. And don't forget to check out CryptoNewsAlerts.net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"Frankly, we are very optimistic and Garlinghouse emphasized that this is the first time the SEC has lost the crypto case. That means they were undisputed, not any longer. He called out the SEC for being a bully and going after players in the crypto industry who couldn't mount a proper defense. I think they make a great point there. Unlawful action continues with their crypto crackdown, right? He also noted that when the case against Ripple was first filed, a lot of the crypto exchanges in the US had the attitude of waiting to see what happens due to uncertainty. This resulted in several of the top exchanges such Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini, et cetera, all delisting XRP altogether, which absolutely suppressed the price action of XRP. The SEC sowed confusion in the market, according to Garlinghouse, quoting him again. They knew there was confusion and they actually did things that they know would increase confusion. Let me know if you agree or disagree with the CEO. Garlinghouse explained that this confusion actually masqueraded as power to the SEC, thus preventing innovation within the US. Quitting him again, the SEC has been trying to put power in politics over what is really just sound policy and providing clear rules of the road. He points out that this has made it difficult for entrepreneurs and investors to participate in the US crypto market and blockchain industry. So there you have it. Let me know if you feel if the SEC is likely to appeal this decision versus Ripple Labs and the XRP community. And with that being shared, fam, now for the latest regarding this BlackRock approval of their application by the SEC, which is a great sign that we are on track to moon next year in 2024 as Bitcoin halving is estimated to be roughly in April, roughly nine and a half months out. Let's go. So here is the latest with BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world. BlackRock s app to offer a spot Bitcoin ETF has been added to the official docket of the SEC as part of its proposed rule change process.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"The issuer now says demand has shifted since last summer and an ETF is on track. That's right. All ETF products are based on digital assets and Europe so far have been structured as exchange traded notes, which are ETNs rather than funds, which are ETFs. The Business Daily pointed out Jacobi has specifically highlighted that it's launching an ETF, not an ETN. So keep that in mind. While an ETF shareholder owns a portion of the funds underlying asset, an ETN investor owns a debt security. And I must say there's been so much misinformation and misuse of the term ETF by ETN issuers, presumably to obfuscate the risks that are inherent in acquiring and investing in ETNs. Jacobi's co -founder and chief operating officer Peter Lane was quoted saying late last year, now unlike ETNs, the Bitcoin ETF that Jacobi Asset Management prepares to offer cannot be leveraged or used as derivatives, which could otherwise lead to significant counterparty risks. Take note of that, No Clarity Gary of the SEC. Just saying. The new ETF has been authorized in Guernsey, a Channel Island jurisdiction that will facilitate its launch as it is not subject to the inherent inflexibilities of being an EU member. Noted David Crossland, a partner in offshore law firm Carrie Olsen and launching a Bitcoin ETF in Europe would have come with very large regulatory challenges. According to Michael O. Rorthen, founder, partner of ETF and digital asset consultancy Blackwater Search and Advisory, he explained the Bitcoin is not considered an eligible asset under the EU's undertaking for collective investment and transferable security directive, which allows collective investment schemes to operate throughout the union based on an authorization from a single member state. So quoting data from Coinbase and Bloomberg, the report details that net flows into European digital asset ETPs reached 483 million dollars over the past 18 months and assets in European digital asset ETPs stand at currently 4 .8 billion dollars according to the Morningstar data analyzed by the FT Ignite's Europe Asset Management Industry news outlet.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis, as well as the bulk case for Bitcoin according to ARK Invest, which is a $1 .48 million Bitcoin price prediction. Also, quoting Max Keiser, Bitcoin's revolution is an impossible to counterfeit digital store of value that can be used as money that has no sovereign or central bank involved that can be sent anywhere instantly at virtually no cost and is irresistible. Anyone who uses it is converted. You can say that again. Also in today's show, I'll be sharing Europe expecting its first Bitcoin ETF this month. I'll be breaking down this report, as well as the SEC could be waiting years to file an appeal in the Ripple XRP case, according to their CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. We'll also be discussing the SEC has officially and formally accepted the BlackRockSpot Bitcoin ETF, which is big news. I'll be sharing this regarding the latest application review, as well as a crazy 2025 crypto rally is approaching, says crypto analyst who called the 2022 market bottom. I'll also be sharing with you Michael Saylor's $1 million Bitcoin price prediction. Quoting him here, I have said it before, and I'll repeat it again, if Bitcoin is not going to zero, it's going to a million dollars per coin. It is either nothing, and if it's nothing, then it's getting scrubbed out and banned. And of course, we now know it is not getting banned. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Hey, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost, a video show. So
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"Until then it is just a slow grind and we're getting so close to 32 .5 just fyi so according to the analyst that's the line in the sand to keep your eyes out on for others continue to narrative calling for lower levels to reappear in the second half of this year after the midterm uh top uh quoting uh coin telegraph reporter here the more time passes with bitcoin holding above 25 ,000 on the macro level the more I'm leaning towards the macro bottom being in says crypto tony I still believe we see a bigger drop later this year but likely to be a part of a bigger accumulation zone now let's discuss small entities snapping up the bitcoin supply bitcoin supply shock in full effect right the latest on -chain figures from glass node analytics revealed ongoing accumulation amongst the smaller entities of the bitcoin investor spectrum we referred to these cats as shrimp defined as wallets containing less than one btc and currently increasing their holdings of over 33 ,000 btc per month on a rolling basis and according to glass node the data stands out with only 130 out of 5263 trading days recording a larger monthly position change that brings the total coins held by the shrimp class to 1 .33 million btc so there you have it and massive shutout to everyone accumulate in sats keep on stacking and breaking news just in spain's largest bank santander says bitcoin lightning network can scale to a million plus transactions per second versus only 20 ,000 with visa the old school railways now if you were to uh or the bitcoin lightning network it's no question if you're to ask me with that being shared now let's discuss the latest with bitcoin futures which is looking very positive uh right now uh hitting 18 month highs check this out the bitcoin futures premium has reached its highest level in 18 months on july 4th traders are now questioning whether the derivatives metrics indicate excessive excitement or return to the mean after a prolonged bear market the bitcoin price has been trading at a narrow four percent range since june 22nd oscillating between 29 .9
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"$1 million" Discussed on Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
"Happy Independence Day to the entire crypto fam. In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis as Bitcoin analysts flagged 32 ,500 launchpad zone for the Bitcoin price action. And breaking news just in, Spain's largest bank, Santander, says Bitcoin lightning network can scale to 1 million plus transactions per second versus only 20 ,000 for Visa. And quoting Max Kaiser, the Raul Powell law in El Salvador protects consumers from poisonous scams making unregistered illegal. ishcoins Also in today's show, we'll be discussing Bitcoin futures premium hitting 18 month high is now the time to flip bullish. We'll also be discussing everything you need to know regarding Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, as well as Cameron Winklevoss slams DCG's Barry Silbert and says not even Scambankman Freed was capable of such delusion. We'll also be discussing the Bitcoin price can soar to 140 ,000 next bull cycle predicts crypto analysts as well as permeable Max Kaiser says El Salvador will be debt free by 2030 and the Bitcoin price will hit 1 million. In fact, he says it's a mathematical certainty. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market. All this plus so much more in today's show. what's Hey, good crypto fam? This is first and foremost a video show.
The Argument
"$1 million" Discussed on The Argument
"Bunch of partisan hacks. Of course, what was interesting about it is that she delivered that speech at the university of Louisville's McConnell center. So there was a partisan element even to her presence there. But to the extent that they think of themselves purely as conveyors of a judicial philosophy. As opposed to partisan players, then I think there's going to continue to be the sort of reluctance to hold themselves to similar guidelines as we try to create and the rest of the political system because they think they're sort of this separate priesthood. This group set apart with their 9 robes. And I think they're the only ones who don't realize or don't admit that they're just as susceptible to all the same political impulses as anyone else serving in government. Right. I mean, there's a couple ways you could qualify it, right? And sort of understand where the justices who feel as you describe Carlos are coming from, right? And one is that, you know, the Supreme Court does a lot of work that is not headline material that is not cases about hot button culture war issues, Bush V gore contested elections and so on. And if you're a Supreme Court Justice, you spend a lot of time doing that kind of work, work that doesn't have strong partisan valence. And so that, I think, psychologically creates this strong disposition to think, look, almost all of the time, the work I'm doing is a kind of to the justice's mind, umpire based, calling balls and strikes following arguments where they lead kind of work. And so it sort of natural to think, well, why can't the country see that that's most of what we're doing? Why is there this fixation on the few cases where inevitably the justices seem to line up the long partisan lines? Like, why don't they get that their political? Well, lots of their work isn't political. It's just the most important stuff that is. I think that, you know, in some ways that some of the most celebrated justices were quite political. Sandra Day O'Connor, who really controlled the court for a very long time as the kind of moderate swing vote in the person that everyone wanted to win over. Had a really uncanny sense for where the majority of Americans were. And not getting too far beyond that. Her role in Casey, for example, and her sort of personal disgust at the idea that a woman would be required to inform her husband that she was planning to get an abortion. I mean, that just really rubbed her the wrong way. And I think she was on to something. And so I think that really effective judges who have helped moderate and keep the court within a certain kind of band of public approval have had a sense of politics and in many cases have been politicians, which of course, quite famously, Sandra Day O'Connor was. And it wasn't just sander day economy. I mean, like Earl Warren was a three term governor of California, Republican. Hugo black was a U.S. senator. Political experience may be actually quite useful in the court, but there's a difference between being political being ideological and being partisan, right? And I think you can parse that out among members of the court today. You know, just as a matter of opinion. Everyone drink. Alito may be more ideological than Kavanaugh, but Kevin, I think, seems more partisan than Alito. You can sort of look at these different influences. You mentioned Bush V gore, Ross. I mean, three of the justices worked on the bush side of bush V gore. Kavanaugh Barrett and Roberts, three of the current justices. I mean, that's a remarkable indicator of not necessarily the ideology of the court, but of the partisanship of the court. So Ross, looking at your point about kind of why people wouldn't understand the nonpolitical aspects of this. Doesn't that kind of push the idea that it would be useful for the court to have some kind of standards whereby say they don't speak before highly partisan groups, and I would argue that you could extend that to their spouses as well. But if they want to be seen as above politics, then they're really does need to be some understanding of how they're more political activities and their spouses political activities, just destroy that. I mean, if they don't want Congress mucking around over there, they probably need to tackle this a little better themselves. Maybe, but I honestly, you guys can disagree, but most of the people who are most exercised by clarence Thomas's friendship with Harlan crow are fundamentally upset that clarence Thomas is writing conservative opinions on guns and abortion and the big issues over the court are all about how much power should the court have, how much should it be involved as an arbiter of culture war issues, especially. And if you want the court to sort of not be perceived as political, I think you're much better off, not that this is easy either, but looking at how can we restructure, do term limits. I mean, that's politically impossible for other reasons, but it's at least it at least addresses itself to the fundamental question, which is about the court's power in politics. Talking about conflicts of interests and things that are adjacent to corruption. We've seen a great flowering of investigative reporting around the justices themselves, which is not historically been the case. And I think what has been historically the case is very chummy relationships between the journalists who cover the court, who themselves form a kind of priesthood, right? I mean, they're often highly trained lawyers who geek out on the work of the court. And those skills, I think, are very appropriate to interpreting and understanding rulings. But I think that the cult around the notorious RBG and why is a little bit unseemly, right? And, you know, these are powerful, powerful government officials who as journalists, we should be scrutinizing them and holding them to account. And reading about journalist Nina totenberg's close relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her friendship with Antonin Scalia, which was those kinds of things I think are a problem. And the other thing that I was going to say is just coming back to Thomas, this gets to the point that Ross was making about the kind of political questions in nature here. It's very easy to forget just how isolated Thomas was and how far out of step with the rest of the court, Thomas was, really, really recently in his book about the justices, Jeffrey toobin was published in 2007. You just get this sense of Thomas as being very, very much on the outside and being a total loner in terms of the work that he did. Apparently he would make his clerks watch the 1949 film version of the fountainhead, the Anne Rand novel. Oh, that's not weird. As a way to sort of prepare them for the kind of isolation that they were going to experience in the lonely work. But also, you know, in 1997, on the Brady case, which was quite famously the press secretary of Ronald Reagan, who was injured in a shooting, he, you know, there was a bill that was really sort of substantive gun control. And part of the Brady Bill was struck down. And in a concurring opinion, Thomas said, actually, the Second Amendment right is a personal right. And he went so much further than anybody else on the court wanted to go. And it's just really striking the extent to which that is now the position of the court. And it has not been that long. I mean, this is just a real, real revolution. And so when we talk about the ways in which things have changed and sort of who was political and who wasn't political, it is really striking the extent to which the court has moved to Thomas. In this contribution to Dobbs, where he says that the logic of Dobbs can be applied to other decisions involving same sex marriage, use of contraceptives, he cites himself 21 times. Because he really had not much else to cite in support of his views. But you can see how quickly that shifts and what seems fringe becomes more mainstream. I think from the perspective of most conservatives, and I don't mean sort of the most fringe conservative legal scholars. I think Thomas has taken very seriously and has an indeed extreme but also extremely consistent and rigorous judicial philosophy and one of the core questions hanging over all of these controversies is to what extent is serious intellectual work desirable and injustice because Thomas is whatever else you may think in Thomas is a more serious theorist and scholar of the law than Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts. And maybe the arguments that people make are fundamentally that that's bad and that the court should be the province of a kind of Sandra Day O'Connor split the difference. We're trying to figure out what the best political place to land is. That's a reasonable argument. That's not at all the argument that anyone in the world of liberal constitutional interpretation, though, has been invested in for the last 40 or 50 years. And so that, I think, is an issue hanging over all of these debates, right? That liberals, including liberal journalists, are very unhappy that conservative justices who do legal interpretation the way liberal scholars have said it should be done. Not reaching the outcomes that they want. That's what you now have on the court. And nobody's happy with it. But that unhappiness should cause, I think, some revisions in how liberals think about the court that are quite challenging to make, more challenging than maybe we're suggesting here. Saying that sort of different splitting is a kind of political way to do scotus. Bypasses how writing opinions on the most narrow grounds possible, is itself a judicial philosophy that say justice Robert subscribes to. His big concern in Dobbs was that he felt you could address the case specifically and clearly without revising broad constitutional precedent. You could decide it on narrower grounds, and neither side neither the dissenters on the left nor Alito and company on the right thought that was cool. They wanted a big definitive decision. So I think that there is a judicial case, not a political case for deciding cases more narrowly, and that that impulse is not purely a kind of, let's just find a mushy middle. There's a judicial philosophy behind it that, unfortunately, justice Roberts felt all alone on. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're
The Argument
"$1 million" Discussed on The Argument
"To each individual justice. Which again has been a problem with Jenny Thomas, clarence's wife, because of her known role in perhaps trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. And then the Supreme Court has to rule on a lot of these cases, this is a clear issue where a little recusal could have come in handy, but nope, nope, everybody on the court is so convinced of their immaculate conscience that they can't be. They can't be bothered with such matters. Well, I mean, this is where the fundamental challenge is that the powers of the court are such that the ideological stakes involved in all decision making are extremely high. And so the justice who basically makes himself or herself a sort of hyper pure, recused, then ends up in the position of performing a kind of perpetual self sabotage on their own side in American politics. And of course, we're, you know, there's the view that the justices don't actually take sides and so on and that they are not supposed to be political actors, right? But everyone knows that that's transparent nonsense and one of the nice things I suppose about the last ten years is that liberals who used to claim to believe this no longer say that they do. Because they no longer control the court. So the fund's been ruined for everyone. Everyone's unhappy. Everyone can now at last agree. But it does sort of create permanent problems. And I mean, there are conservatives who have their own long lists of complaints about liberal justices, not recusing. But the general issue of you're not recusing enough has been sort of a resilient conversation on the court for a long time or around the court, at least. The other issue that's worth raising here, which is sort of an odd way of looking at this, is that there are ways in which I suspect that possibly all of the Supreme Court Justices, regard some kind of compensation related gray area, the kind of book deals and junkets and everything else as in a way they're due for taking a kind of permanent pay cut to serve on this August body. I'm not defending this view. I'm just trying to, at a human level, if you're a Supreme Court Justice, you make a really, really nice salary, but you know, you're not rich, you're not making the kind of money that your peers and corporate law firms, the people arguing cases before the court are making. You exist, especially nowadays in this bubble of anxiety and threats and security issues. And I strongly suspect that there's a psychological mechanism where a lot of justices, again, not just Thomas, say, this is actually kind of hard service, and I'm not being adequately compensated for it. Anybody who's not working on Wall Street can make that justification. And Brett Kavanaugh, we all know, came out of the womb. Longing to be a Supreme Court Justice. So you should be willing to trade a little bit of financial compensation and you don't get to travel on private jets all the time like your corporate law Friends to be one of the most powerful people in the country. I have to say I think that I for one would sign up for paying Supreme Court Justices a whole lot more money. They are public servants who do a very important job and why shouldn't they be paid half a $1 million or heck even a $1 million. It's only 9 people. We can afford it. I think it's not a terrible idea at all to compensate them and perhaps provide them with other benefits. Problems that can be solved with money are actually the easiest problems to solve in some ways. Just to pick up on what Ross was saying on the recusal question, I'm the farthest thing from an originalist. In fact, I have no judicial philosophy at all. But since I'm neither a lawyer nor a judge, but it is kind of crazy to think that when the Supreme Court was created, all of these questions about how long someone was going to live, how frequently openings would come up and all those kinds of things, I think just felt extremely different. You know, we've just been through an extraordinary series of events that resulted in a highly unusual to use a neutral term or one might say highly aberrant to use a perhaps more accurate term president who served for a single term after not winning the popular vote, but winning the Electoral College was able to appoint three Supreme Court Justices. That's wild. When we think about the makeup of the court, when we think about the ethics of the court, when we think about all of these things, I feel as if all of the questions are unnecessarily heightened by this very strange and historically rooted but perhaps not appropriate way that the Supreme Court is made up. Well, now you're talking about bigger structural changes, which people are also toying with. Either adding members to the court, which I think is very problematic, but the question of term limits has also come up, which would address what you're talking about with the kind of randomness and how they wind up there and who gets to a point what? Term limits could also have an impact on what Ross is talking about. The downside of a lifetime appointment is that you never get the chance to then go make your pile of money the way happens in so many other aspects of government for better or for worse. And if justice is new that this was a, I don't know, 15 year hitch or something like that, then they may not feel the urge to try to cash in while they're in office. You know, it creates all of these other problems. Imagine if a huge law firm had of counsel former chief justice John Roberts on their letterhead and they're arguing before the court. Things get very tricky very quickly. So I think it's a little bit harder to manage the problem in that way. It's always a cost benefit analysis of these things, though, and they're going to be all kinds of unintended consequences. But I do think it's worth looking at the impact it would have on how the nominations take on this incredible intensity. It's a lifetime appointment. You got to get the young judge who's ideologically in tune and everything is riding on it, whereas if you have, say, an 18 year appointment, you kind of rotate who's coming on and off and you know when these things are likely to happen and you don't have to do things like Mitch McConnell felt he needed to do, which is, you know, somebody dies and you got to hold a seat open for a year until the next election. I mean, there are a lot of benefits to regular rising, so to speak, the way the court evolves.
The Argument
"$1 million" Discussed on The Argument
"From New York Times opinion, I'm Michelle cottle. I'm Ross douse it. I'm Carlos lozada. And I'm Lydia polgreen, and this is matter of opinion. So today is our first episode and we're talking about clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice. A slew of stories have revealed that he and his wife have received many gifts. Many many gifts. From a rich pal who also happens to be a big donor to conservative causes and candidates. And if I guess, I don't mean nice baseball tickets or a holiday cheese basket. We're looking at Kardashian level locks here. Can someone just recap what's been happening for the last month or so? Carlos? So we're talking about the court today, thanks largely to the folks at ProPublica, who over the past month have reported several big stories surrounding clarence Thomas. We've learned a few things. First, that over the past 20 years, clarence Thomas took some really nice luxury vacations paid by billionaire Harlan crow, fancy yachts, private resorts, overseas travel, private jets, that kind of thing. Thomas said he didn't think he had to disclose this kind of personal hospitality quote unquote on his financial disclosure forms. We've learned that Harlan Crowe purchased property from clarence Thomas. In fact, he purchased a house that Thomas mother reportedly still lives in. We've learned that Crowe for some period of time paid for the private school tuition of clarence Thomas grand nephew. So at very least Harlan Crowe is a pretty generous friend. And justice Thomas did not sufficiently disclose or acknowledge this generosity. And of course, even before all this, public trust in the court was headed in the wrong direction, particularly in the aftermath of the leak of the Dobbs opinion, overturning roe V wade. So some of the questions for us, how serious is all this for clarence Thomas? Where does it rate on the kind of no big deal to hyperventilating outrage meter? What should be done about it? If anything. And I think really more important is what does it do to the perceived legitimacy of an institution where already you have unelected justices enjoying lifetime terms? So who wants to go first? I would just add a couple of things. There is a kind of an area of penumbra around some of the other justices and questions about their activities as well. There was an insider story about the wife of chief justice John Roberts, making $10 million over many years as a legal recruiter that feels like a slightly different area of ethical questions. There was also some questions about Neil Gorsuch and a piece of property that he sold. He was part of a group that sold it to the CEO of a law firm. So and the other thing that's worth saying is that I think that there have also been questions about just generally justices over many years taking these junkets getting big book advances. I think those are, again, very different from the Thomas situation, but I think they're worth keeping in mind just as we talk about. Who are these people? What kind of power do they have? And how do you hold them accountable? And are they doing a good job of holding themselves accountable? So, I mean, one thing to be said is that Harlan crow may be the greatest name for an American billionaire that you could possibly. I mean, I should say, you know, there are other right of sender pundits who have been entertained at Crowe's mansion or encountered him in various ways. I have as far as I know, no connections to Harlan crow. Excellent disclosure. I can disclose I have never gone on vacation with Harlan crow. We're picking a friends though, Ross. But you mean he should have, he should have taken man? No, you should have made different choices. I should have made that. I've known that for a long time, but I'm just saying you this opinion is not bought and paid for when I say that if I were writing an old fashioned pulpy 600 page novel about American politics and I were inventing a conservative billionaire, I would name him Harlan Crowe. So I think that's an important framework for the discussion. That's what really matters here. I think it's a sort of curious kind of scandal where most people, including most sensible people on the right of center, agree that there is something unseemly about the scale of sort of undisclosed largess involved in the crow Thomas relationship. At the same time, there's no actual quo alleged in any of this quit. It sort of 50% of a really big deal Supreme Court scandal where people keep looking for the case where Thomas has cast aside judicial ethics and nobody seems to have an example of that. So it's more as far as I can tell a story about unseemliness rather than actual alleged corruption. Yeah, but let's jump in right here and stipulate that that is very rarely what you're looking at in these situations. And with Thomas, in particular, it seems to be an accretion of perceived conflicts, including dealing with his wife, Jenny, who is this kind of on fire conservative activist who hobnobs with groups and people who have business before the court, but that said, I think it is important that we note that this is a nonpartisan broadly spread going back decades sort of problem, the entire court needs some guardrails clearly because these folks have confused their job of interpreting the law with being above the law. Well, I think that's right. And I think being a true believer and not actually basing your opinions on this, I think it doesn't give you a pass. Ethics exist for a reason, not just to prevent you from doing the wrong thing, but to prevent you from even appearing to have done the wrong thing. And the appearance of impropriety, I think, is just as important as the actuality of impropriety because sometimes it's hard to know the difference. That, of course, is completely separate, whether anything can actually be done about it. And to me, that's the bigger problem that we have is that we are living in a country that is so deeply divided and polarized with institutions that are meant to check and balance one another that are just fundamentally broken. And so there just is really no way to hold anything or anybody to account in this situation. So senator Durbin, the Democrat who chairs the judiciary committee in the Senate has invited chief justice Roberts to testify and Roberts's response was to say how unusual it is for chief justices to appear before the Senate. And he cited a few cases in which it had been for very kind of low stakes reasons. As if kind of the higher the stakes, the less accountability there should be. Then they released this very generic statement on ethics principles and practices. This very non binding surely we all agree that we're going to do the right thing. The lower court judges to the contrary are held to this thing called the guidelines of the judicial conference of the United States, which is binding on them, but not binding on the high court. And I think that gets to Lydia's question of how do we do this when there's no real mechanism in place to set sort of stricter guidelines for the justices and when the long-term understanding has been that they kind of do it themselves. Even recusal rules, when they decide to recuse themselves is totally up
ESPN Daily
"$1 million" Discussed on ESPN Daily
"No, he did not. Yet, Jordan was like, hey, it rules a rule and I do not sign autographs at my kids stuff. I'm here to see my kids and Don respected that. So what Jordan said was bring it down to my steakhouse and drop it off and I'll sign it down there sometime and so Don wave goodbye Jordan hopped in his car and he thanked him one more time for advocating on his behalf and Don's walking out there with this ball and he really felt like Michael Jordan's signature was he needed that. He was really wrestling with how important this ball was to him with the concept of just like walking to the front desk at this restaurant and being like, hi, can you get this autograph for me? And the fact that it was a basketball itself. Like this was a sport that he had kind of a tormented relationship with, you know? He had never technically played a lot of organized basketball and then the term organized basketball almost keeps him from his greatest achievement making this shot so he wrestled with it and like was he really going to do that? And the answer is yes, he was going to do exactly that. He needed Michael Jordan's signature. So he drove over there one day and he explained the deal to a person at the restaurant and I think it was like an assistant manager there and he said I really need MJ's signature on this. This is the most an artifact from the most important moment of my life and it must have worked because a few weeks later he got a call to come on over to the steakhouse, get the ball and the person said, hey, Michael signed it and he wishes you well. So right as we near this 30th anniversary, you got in touch with Don Calhoun. Where is he now? What's his life like? As much as I love the part of this story about this guy making a shot. My favorite part is the way that this story ends. Don's 53 now he has four children. He's still kind of lives a middle class life. He works a job in Chicago area. The checks stop coming in 2013, so he got the money from 1993 up through 2013. And the money really impacted his
ESPN Daily
"$1 million" Discussed on ESPN Daily
"So Ryan, you mentioned earlier how it was absolute mayhem in Chicago stadium after Don Calhoun hits his three quarter court shot. The crowd erupted, the bulls team erupted and Michael Jordan himself slept on the backside and said, good shot kid. What was the rest of that night like for dong? After he made the shot, he was asked to stick around and do interview after interview. This guy got interviewed more that night than any of the players. I wasn't thinking $1 million, not at all. I knew it was going in, but I still couldn't believe it. I tell you, it was just like life to me, just spontaneous. That's unbelievable. He was just going from camera set up to camera set up, and it was right outside the bulls locker room. And as he's doing these, bulls players keep popping in and out and they love this shot so much. I can't even express how happy they were. They just kept wandering over and saying, they wanted a piece of Don Calhoun themselves. And so they would say congratulations. And he had the basketball because the ref, one of the refs had come over and slapped him on the back and giving him the basketball that he had shot. So he was holding this and doing these interviews. And all the players kept coming over and hugging him handshakes, signing the basketball. So Calhoun, he got signatures from Horace Grant, Scottie Pippen, John paxson, BJ Armstrong, even a couple of the heat players from that night. And as he got ready to do it, one of his last live hits, he saw Jordan and a bulls worker come out and they were standing nearby and he made eye contact with MJ and MJ smiled at him and was he was clearly there waiting to talk to Don. I'm on the floor with MVC all the page in that news networks man got me through I'm doing interviews interviewing Jordan comes out of locker room. I'm telling you man, I was supposed to go over there and talk to Jordan to do a quick interview. And this lady was like, hey, Michael's over here. We're doing come on. And I was like, Don wanted to pull the head set off and just run from this 50th TV interview that he was about to do. But of course, he had a producer, he said this producer in my ear just kept saying, okay, we're live in 13 seconds, 12 seconds. Wait, wait, wait, okay, wait, it's gonna be 30 seconds. So he just kept getting delayed and MJ standing there and standing there and standing there and eventually he went live on camera and he did the best interview that he possibly could because his heart's broken as he saw Jordan whisper something to the bull's staffer and Jordan left. He'd gotten tired of waiting. And I probably seen him about 30 seconds about twice. He was gone, man. And I blew that opportunity because that reporter would tell me, okay, we can already go on live right now right now, right now I'm here. Sudan does this last deflating interview and he was just like realizing, oh, I'm not gonna meet, I'm not gonna beat Michael Jordan after all, and it crushed him. But he just had this feeling like maybe. Just maybe I will run into Michael Jordan somewhere down the road and then I'll get this autograph and I'll say hello to him. Yeah, like I live in Chicago, it's a city of neighbors. You run into people all the time, but I have a hard time imagining he's just gonna magically run into Michael Jordan. So how does he try to manifest this for himself? Well, for the next few months, he did not run into Michael Jordan at a gas station or anything. So it was going to take some planning and he'd heard from a friend Michael Jordan had kids that played basketball in the area in high school. And so he thought, what if I go to one of those games, you know? And so he found out about one of his son's games and he went to the game and he showed up with the basketball and he had two Sports Illustrated magazines which had covered the shot that Don had made and so he tried to walk up to Jordan and Jordan was in his own section with security kind of blocked off from everybody. Well, trying to watch the game. And security jumped right up and said, no, no, no, no, you're not coming up here. His security guy was like, well, Michael doesn't do anything when he's with his kids. And Calhoun said, just tell him I'm out here and I'll come up afterwards or stop, boy. Give him the ball. He's like, no, he doesn't do it. Michael has a firm policy, 100% no autographs at kids events. He just doesn't do that. And Don tried to explain, hey, I'm Don Calhoun. I'm the guy who made the $1 million shot in the security guys. No, sorry, no autographs. But as the game got near the end, a very unlikely thing happened in the stands. The same security guard came to Don and said, listen, Michael's going to walk out of here after the game. He's going to walk to his car. If you want to walk with him, you can. And Don got varied excited. This was going to be the culmination of that night at the bulls game. He got his ball, he got the sharpie ready, the magazine's ready, and sure enough, as the Jordan crew left the high school, they grabbed him, they swept him up and he did this short walk with Michael Jordan. And the first thing Jordan said to him was, did you get your money? And Calhoun said yes. First thing he said, you get your money. I go, yeah, I got it. They say, yeah, I know because we made them give it to you. We were upset. And then Jordan said something that really shocked him. Jordan said, we made them give it to you. We were upset that they were trying to not pay you. Wait, so MJ tells him we made them pay you. Like, what does that mean? What does DOM think of that? He was stunned. He'd heard rumors that part of the reason he ended up getting the money, the part of the reason why they had that press conference that we're going to take care of this was because the players themselves had loved a moment and hated that the headlines were swirling and maybe wasn't going to get paid. They were very agitated that this student might not get his money. And so this moment was Michael was sort of confirmation for him that Michael Jordan himself had helped make him a millionaire. I wanted further confirmation. I reached out to Jordan. I reached out to the bulls and everybody declined on giving me official comment and confirmation on this. So we're going with Don here, but I believe him. So Don gets to be MJ, and they're walking to his car, does Jordan sign the ball for Don in that moment?
ESPN Daily
"$1 million" Discussed on ESPN Daily
"So that brings us back to the night of the big shot. Again, it was a three quarter court shot for $1 million. How did a contest like this even come to fruition back in 1993? Well, one of the reasons I love this story was like, how do these work? Where did they come from? How do they work? And I found it to be very interesting. The money comes from the franchises, but it's through insurance. They find contest insurance companies. So the math on these contests is a little bit complicated. Let me use a very basic slimmed down example, which is let's say it's a three quarter court shot in the prize is a $100. They will sit down and look at a contest and they'll try to figure out the percentage chance that someone could achieve this contest. For a three quarter court shot, if we use that as an example, they think that's less than 1%. What an insurance company will do is they will take the prize amount, a $100 in this example, they'll figure out the chance of making it 1%, and then they double that to make sure they're making some money. So if it's a $100 contest that they think has a 1% chance of being completed, they will charge the team $2 every time they run it. So in the case of the bulls, that means every time the team wants to run a $1 million contest with a 1% success rate, the insurance company would charge the team $20,000 every time they run it. But if someone makes that miracle shot, that means that the insurance company would pay the entire $1 million prize. So this is a mega liability. Absolutely. That's why you don't see too many millions. You know, you'll see 50,000, you'll see a 100,000. You'll see 500,000. But the insurance companies, they're good at this. They know that even that 1% chance is just, if you insure it a hundred times to 20,000, they end up doubling their money. And so, you know, even these ones that are like, oh, I think I could make that shot. It's like, you probably can't. But he does. He does. And that's the craziest thing about this. In 1993, Don Calhoun makes the shot and is supposed to win a $1 million. But like any contest, there's some fine print, right? So what exactly is that fine print telling us? news insurance companies don't really want to pay ever. So the fine print is a little squishy. They use the term organized basketball. You can have played organized basketball if you're doing a basketball contest. And I probed what's the definition of organized basketball is Don Calhoun really organized basketball. He was three of 12 in community college. Is that organized basketball? Part of the contest was like if you played any organized ball within the past 5 years, the major energy for the contest. But they didn't, they knew I had played. They didn't think I was going to make the shot. It's a complicated thing. What if you were the best YMCA player for ten years, you know? And you got called down to the court. Is that organized basketball? Calhoun says he put on the form that I played basketball three years earlier, I played at these two community colleges. I played some games, and he said it was no big deal. They signed him up and gave him the T-shirt and he was ready to compete. That changed after he made the shot. The insurance company disagreed that he had not played organized basketball. They considered it organized basketball and after he won news reports began to circulate in Chicago that despite making that shot in front of all those thousands of people, Don Calhoun might not be getting the money. So what happens next? Well, that's really bad PR. So as that was sort of getting sorted out, the bulls held their own press conference. Calhoun stopped beside Jerry reinsdorf. It was broadcast lots of people watched it. This was back when everybody watched the nightly news and got the newspaper every day. And so they wanted to very emphatically say he will be getting the $1 million. And he got his first of 20 annual $50,000 payments. It was not $1 million check. It was 20 years in a row getting 50,000. And after that, his life did change. In the next few weeks, he was on a tonight show a bunch of other TV shows. He got a cup of coffee as a member of the Harlem globetrotters, played a bunch of hoops with them. He was the unofficial mayor of Chicago for a brief period. Everybody knew Don Calhoun. When they hold that press conference zone, they say they're going to pay him and he's going to get his first payment. Who exactly is funding it? Well, he ended up not getting many details about how the sponsors and the insurance company worked it out. He just didn't care. He just took yes for an answer. I think the leader in the Clubhouse, theory is that the bulls and Coca-Cola and another sponsor ended up just paying it themselves. What he did know, though, is that a few weeks later, he would find out that he may have gotten a key assist from a secret source that he never would have expected, which is Michael Jordan himself. Coming up, how his airness helped Don Calhoun get paid. Baseball is back. Get your ballpark on with tickets from vivid seats. Or enjoy hockey and basketball in all their glory with courtside seats. Whoever you're rooting for, there's nothing like the thrill of seeing your favorite team live. Vivid seats, the official ticketing partner of ESPN is offering you $10 off your first $100 ticket purchase with the code daily. That's code daily. Download the app or visit vivid seats dot com today. Vivid seats life happens live. We all know that breakfast is an important part of your day. But sometimes when you're traveling for business, you end up staying at a hotel that doesn't offer any. And you know what happens, you grab a cup of coffee and skip the meal entirely. We've all been there. But if you book a room at la Quinta by Wyndham, you can enjoy their free bright side breakfast featuring delicious baked goods, fruit, eggs, yogurt, and waffles. And really, who doesn't want to start their day with a fresh hot waffle. Tonight, la Quinta, tomorrow you triumph. Book direct at LQ dot com.
ESPN Daily
"$1 million" Discussed on ESPN Daily
"Hey there, I'm Emily Kaplan. Yes, you're probably wondering what I'm doing from out of my usual spot. Dodging pucks and grabbing cliches, ringside at NHL games. Don't worry, that's not going anywhere. But you are going to be hearing different voices hosting ESPN daily in the coming weeks. And I'm one of them. I'll be with you the rest of the week, helping this podcast do what it's always done. Tell the best sports stories and audio day in and day out. Thanks for listening. Ryan Hawkins Smith, I want you to take us back to April 14th, 1993. It's almost 30 years ago to the day at the late great Chicago stadium, which was home to the Chicago Bulls before the united center. What happened that evening? Well, in that night, a young office supplies salesman then Don Calhoun, he was only 23 years old. He went to the bulls game, he hustled in and on his way in. Some workers at the arena grabbed him and said, hey, do you want to sign up for this contest? You have to take a three quarter court shot. If you make it, you win a $1 million. You're like, hey, hey, would you like to take the $1 million shot tonight? And I was like, huh? She was like, well, all you got to do is you sign this waiver here, just to get you down to the floor. It's a contest. One shot from three quarters court, if you make it, you win a $1 million. And the bulls have been running this contest, they ran at 19 times before that night. No one had come close. Two people clunked the backboard, one or two hit the rim. Everything else was an air ball. The estimate of someone like Don Calhoun making that shot is actually less than 1%. The only thing he remembers as he got ready came down to the court was someone saying whatever you do do not touch the free throw line. Don't cross over the free throw line. So I'll get out there and she goes, all you have to do, take a shoot down there, don't cross this free throw line. I'm like, here I am at Chicago stadium. I got this thing. I'm going to go down to the floor and take a shot for a $1 million. I said, Michael Jordan's house. As he got ready for this shot in front of this entire roaring crowd. He felt this weird calm come over him. And it's because he was thinking about his brother, clarence. He took one fast dribble, and he thought to himself, this one's for clarence. I take the dribble, and I say this is on clarence and everything. And I threw it. And then he threw a missile the entire length of the court. And I remember the force of the throne pulling me forward and my right foot landed just behind the line. And the ball went. And I'm watching it. And I'm like, it's gonna hit the shot clock. But no, it sells right below it. And then it just dropped. Jeff young man being hugged has just won a $1 million here in Chicago stadium. The crowd goes crazy. He raises his arms up in the air and then he ends up getting swallowed into this bulls huddle. They are ecstatic. It's absolute mayhem for 30 seconds. It looks like they just won their tenth title in a row. Calhoun is just getting bumped, pushed around. People are yelling at him, and he found himself at the end, just directly in the middle of the bull's huddle. He was like the 13th man on the team. The sea kind of parted of all the other bulls players, and there stood Michael Jordan himself. I promise you man, everybody just departed to the left and to the right. And you can see the Michael Jordan was standing right down there with the at the end with his hands up. Going, whoo. Like this, both hands up. And I gave the guy high 5 bro and I turned around and he smacked me on the bus hit shot, kid. Jordan ends up yelling at him, smacking him on the butt, telling him it was a great shot, and it's actually like a really fun moment. Don Calhoun felt like his life had changed. And it did change that night. And he was the toast of Chicago for the next 24 hours, but he was the toast of the country. Don Calhoun from way way downtown. A $1 million. At half time in the bulls game a promotion, he walks into Chicago stadium and somebody pulls him over and says, you're going to get a shot halftime for a $1 million. He says the woman who chose the contestants picked him because she quote liked his shoes. Every major newspaper, lots of TV newscasts at the time, all ran this clip of Don Calhoun making this shot. Funny for us this evening, the $1 million basket. There's no doubt in our mind whatsoever that you may have heard or seen this story already today. But we reckon some things are worth savoring. Don Calhoun was plucked from the stands at the Chicago Bulls basketball game last night, handed a ball and told to shoot. And he nailed it. And he was a millionaire. Or so he thought.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"$1 million" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Once again, if you put some common sense here, you put your emotions to decide. I don't Bitcoin to a $1 million and 90 days, right? Your gut just says, nah, that's not right. And that would that be like a three 3600 percent increase from 26 Orwell's right now is at $27,000, increased to a million bucks. I don't buy it. But I will happily Apple be wrong because I hold Bitcoin to hold other crypto. Bitcoin moves, you also move as well, and if all that capital comes in, then I will be filthy rich. But like I said, guys, 90%, no 10%, yes, right? We'll see what happens. I would love to hear what you guys think, but look, like I said, Bellagio, sharing some really solid facts. I think the premise as to why Bitcoin could go to a $1 million, but the 90 day window is what? Throws me off, not in 90 days. Maybe in ten to 15 years from now. I think that's possible to a million. You really have to wrap your head around that a $1 million. And all the headwinds we're facing right now in the crypto industry. I don't think so and CBDC is coming. I don't think so guys. But certainly happy to be wrong here. Now, some thoughts here by Benjamin Cohen, who's a well-known analyst, he has a big YouTube channel. He shared some great, a great statistic here, which shows that all these things are moving towards Bitcoin's retracement. He shared a chart which is called a stablecoin supply ratio oscillator. He said the stablecoin supply ratio oscillator just reached the peak level it reached in 2019. Note that from this level in 2019, Bitcoin moved up one last time before kicking off a new downtrend that lasted for about 9 months. And that's what we're expecting guys. This is a chart I've been sharing with you guys for a year now. The repeat of a similar pattern to 2019, then I roll over to test the lows again and a slow steady grind into 2024, the Bitcoin having, then it slows that he move up for the bull run after having. Like we've seen historically. So he says, just remember, oftentimes in recovery years, 2015, 2019 and now 2023, we tend to get ahead of ourselves and calls for new all time highs will pop up. Typically though, especially during the latter half of the year, the market comes back down back to earth. So he's right. So balaji and some of these people who are calling for new all time highs this year. Look, I will gladly be wrong, but the history, the data, the trend, does not confirm that. Does not tell that story, right? And I think the four year cycles and the having, that's the standard. Doesn't mean it can't change, but I don't think no new all time highs are coming this year. I think 2025 is one we see to all time highs. But like I said, I will gladly be wrong because I'm here to make money and if it happens this year, then that will be great, but once again, it's about probabilities. There's a high probability. It does not happen or go to new all time highs. Now, another analyst shared an update here on the altcoin market and we've talked about Bitcoin continues its move upwards, what we've seen historically to capital will flow from Bitcoin to the altcoins. He said, update on the altcoin market, as mentioned ten days ago, the moving average 200 is holding excellently and we even had a retest of the breakout from