40 Burst results for "UAE"
Daily Crypto Report
"uae" Discussed on Daily Crypto Report
"It's 8 a.m. Eastern November the 25th and this is your Daily Crypto Report. Bitcoin is down slightly at $37,719, ETH is up half a percent at $2,077, and Binance Coin is up half a percent at $233. Binance founder CZ's attorneys say he should be allowed to return to the UAE and does not represent a flight risk. They pointed out that CZ voluntarily came to the U.S. to plead guilty to charges and the magistrate judge overseeing the case has already agreed that CZ presents no flight risk. CZ was released on a $175 million bond and his sentencing is scheduled for February of 2024. The native token of NFT platform Blur saw a 22% surge after being listed on Binance's retail-focused convert feature. The token's price has doubled in value over the past week. This rise coincided with Bitcoin hitting its highest point since May of 2022 amid a broader crypto market rally. Blur has seen significant gains due to the launch of Blast, a layer 2 network developed by the same team behind Blur. While popular NFT-based monster battling game Axie Infinity is stepping into the world of merchandising, the game's developer Sky Mavis is allowing certain Axie NFT owners to create and sell official merchandise featuring the game's characters. Almost 5,000 Axie NFT holders with Mystic and Origin NFTs will have the opportunity to produce and monetize their merchandise and businesses. These Axie owners can use their NFT characters to launch various ventures, such as Axie-themed cafes, comics, restaurants, or toy collections. Sky Mavis has also introduced an official merchandise store. A portion of the merchandise sales will be allocated to the Axie Community Treasury, supporting community-based decision-making and decentralization. While former hedge fund manager and host of CNBC's Mad Money Jim Cramer says he was wrong about Bitcoin and now says people can consider buying and investing in it, he said he'd made significant profits from investing in Bitcoin and described his previous negative assessment of the crypto as premature. This change in stance comes as Bitcoin recently surged to an 18-month high, crossing the $38,000 mark for the first time since May of 2022. However, Cramer's track record of making incorrect calls has led some to speculate about the potential impact of his endorsement on Bitcoin's price. Despite being below its all-time high, Bitcoin has seen 100% growth since the beginning of the year. Hollywood director Karl Eric Rensch reportedly made a 575% profit on trading DOGE using funds initially earmarked for development of a Netflix show. Rensch received $55 million from Netflix for the show Conquest, but used millions of that money to invest in DOGE after disputing with the streaming service. His erratic behavior and mis-production milestones led Netflix to abandon the project. While his stock bets didn't work out, his DOGE investment paid off, and he saw a big return cashing out $27 million from his initial $4 million investment on the Kraken exchange in 2021. Well that's all for us today, visit us at dailycryptoreport.io and listen to us everywhere else you podcast under Daily Crypto Report.We'll dig into these stories and talk to authors like Jodie Pico for their first-hand experiences. You can child-proof your world, but you can't world-proof your child. Listen and subscribe to Season 2 of Missing Pages wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to As a Woman, Fertility Hormones and Beyond. I'm your host, Dr. Natalie Crawford, and I am a fertility physician and co-founder of Fora Fertility in Austin, Texas. We will talk about a wide range of topics, including the menstrual cycle, your hormones, infertility, IVF, mental health, and well, beyond. So join us and become part of the community of collaboration that amplifies others as a woman.
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "UAE" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Welcome in this early one thanks for being with us. I'm Dean Lane. Juan Herrera is our producer. Among the top stories we're following for you as we into roll this Wednesday morning together here at WTOP. CBS News 3 American officials are part of the team negotiating to extend the Israel -Hamas truce. CBS' Lilia Luciano is in Tel Aviv. The director of the CIA, Bill Burns, was in Doha. Part of these negotiations, Secretary of State Blinken is going to be here in Tel Aviv in the West Bank and in the UAE to continue negotiating. Hamas released more hostages but may still have 170 others. It was so windy in Washington that symbol a of Christmas ended up on the ground says CBS' Elaine Cajano. Snow flurries dusted parts of Philadelphia and Baltimore. Outside the White House, a powerful gust of wind toppled the national Christmas tree. All living the former First Ladies attended a memorial in Atlanta
Bloomberg Radio New York
"uae" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"UAE. I'm Rashad Salamat, let's have a look at the market action Just taking a look at what we have futures -wise, treasuries, equities, well, certainly at the moment The futures are helping to keep the market here from going, well, helping to support it, if you we will, as lurch to the upside. US dollar actually, about 1 .3 % down from where it was at this time yesterday, slight movement to the upside for crude as the demand side of things perhaps is playing out there with a bit of weakness being seen and over two days, as I said, the dollar index 1 .3 % to the downside. We're also looking at the treasury market as well, which got a lift too, as it was thought that probably done, the Fed's probably done with interest rate hikes. Asian markets also very much moving to the upside. We've got Hong Kong coming back on stream after a gain of about 3 .5 % now trading about 2 .8 % to the upside. Is that right? Yeah, Rish, Hong Kong certainly hanging on to the gains from before we enter the lunch break and it's really about that US inflation print. So it's green anywhere you look in the region whether it's stocks, bonds or currencies. We're seeing in the EMFX space in region, the the South Korean won is really outperforming but let's get a closer look at some of the Chinese assets because there's a lot to unpack. We had some support measures reportedly coming through for the housing market in the form of a boost to funding if we can take a look at some of these Chinese assets and then we also had the PBOC coming through with a liquidity injection at the largest in nearly seven years via a one -year policy loan and of course that better than expected retail sales number and that is despite the property contraction deepening. So overall positive on Chinese stocks there is some support as well for the weakness in the Chinese currency against the greenback hovering there on the 724 but I want to zoom into this chart which shows us the northbound stock connect and overall there is a positive flow to the mainland markets supported perhaps by this better improving Chinese data as well as the support measures Rish. Thanks April, April Hong there in Singapore and let's get to the inflation data did show this a slowdown in price rises in October. Of course the takeaway is that the Fed's done with its interest like hiking cycle. Mark Cranfield's with us now and he's of course an MLive strategist. Margaret what are the implications? It's probably all a little bit overdone in the very short term but you can see the enthusiasm for a trade that people have been waiting a long time for. They've wanted to hear that the chances that the next Fed move is going to be to lower interest rates and they think that the CPI report inflation is that trigger. They think that's the moment when the market woke up to the fact that not only have interest rates peaked in the United States but now they're going to be firmly on the downtrend. Of course the Fed hasn't said anything specific to say when they're going to be start cutting interest rates but you can tell by the way that people are pricing into the derivatives curves and the yield curves that they fully expect there will be interest rate cuts next year and probably several not just one but maybe up to four interest rate cuts coming in 2024 and that euphoria obviously spread has into the equity market and against the US dollar and everybody it probably is going to get blunted a little bit the the Fed speakers will probably push back a bit they they won't be happy that the market has got so overexcited but it's going to be very very hard to put this genie back in the bottle traders and investors they think that they've seen a big turning point and they're just keep going to on pushing in that direction until there's some piece of data which is very much against it and it's going to be hard to see where that comes from in the short term. Mark Good stuff, Mark Radcliffe there for us, he's an end life strategist. Well it wasn't the only data point that the markets got a bit excited about. We had China's data dump economic activity mixed in October, consumer spending in industrial output did pick up but investment growth showed a slow down. China economy editors deal these issues right here now and so looks like people have got a bit of confidence and maybe animal spirits are coming back given the retail number but again I don't want to rain on the parade but you know it is against some base effects which to put it mildly pretty awful. Yes, this is a retail sales figures big jump 7 .6 % but that does compare to October 22 when sales actually contracted because that was as you I'm sure remember right in the middle of continued pandemic lockdowns. That's also when we started seeing COVID outbreaks across the country so I think that's a pretty big caveat when it comes to this data today also maybe playing into a bit of that industrial production beat as well. Overall though I think the fact that you are seeing those numbers surpass expectations does indicate that there's at least some momentum in the economy there providing you know that idea that will probably meet that growth target of about 5 % for the year close out 2023 but it's really that investment figure that I think is incredibly concerning. I mean look at those property investment statistics right so year to date we saw 9 .3 % contraction that's worse than what we saw on the first nine months of the year that's certainly weighing on that overall headline index and I think ultimately indicates that maybe there's more support that needs to come for the economy as we get into 2024 I mean you know we've seen already some some expectations we've reported just yesterday that authorities are mulling this idea of more stimulus to sort of help housing financing so ultimately yes I think we're probably looking at more support as we get into 2020 well yeah exactly we've seen the property per stocks really could have a leap up because of that 137 billion US dollar but I mean the thing is have the medium -term lending facility well as that record injection taking place I've not seen that since 2016 the amount that they put in how does that move things and you know the thing is are these banks actually going to lend to people anyway who are looking a bit as though they need money the a bit too much yeah I mean I think that at this point what the PBOC is trying to do at least is they want us continue to support the economy monetary policy in some measure is important for them to consider but they're ultimately also trying to probably protect some of the profit margins for these banks obviously as we get into the final months of the year maybe that's why you were seeing that larger than expected liquidity operation while they held policy right study Bloomberg economics is actually thinking that given the size of that net injection that probably lessens the possibility that we would see other easing measures from the central bank as we get into November you know the rest of November into December you know the idea about maybe there's not a policy rate cut that's imminent anymore maybe we're not going to see a cut to the reserve requirement ratio for banks just because you're seeing that support come through in the form injection I think the research ultimately important for us to look at as we get into the beginning of 2024 is what are the kinds of fiscal support ultimately we have an offer we've just talked about that housing financing package that's under consideration we also reported obviously last month that we had an incredibly rare mid -year budget revision to the central government's budget as we were looking at the issuance of additional sovereign debt to sort of spur some infrastructure projects so I think that those are the kinds of measures that we're going to see the government take as we get into 2024 it's really not just about what's happening on that monetary easing side it's also what's happening on the fiscal side as well. Jill, watch this space as ever. Jill, this is there, our China economy editor. Let's get over now to the head of asset allocation and fund management and auto asset management. We're joined by Gunther Wesson. He is there for us at the moment and looking at what we have with regards to as we come to the inflation story out of the US in a second but as we're talking about China what did you make of the data we had today and you know the the thing is there may be hints of stability maybe improvement but structural forces are really much at the fore as the economy I suppose has to try and find a growth indeed as a structural drag from from the property sector I think this is going to continue for quite a while if for example Japan is blueprint any for that but nevertheless what we have seen recently is a bit of stabilization in the economic data which is good we have more stimulus to come and I think they will have to do some more in the end that
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh "UAE" from WTOP 24 Hour News
"Is going to be here in Tel Aviv, in the West Bank, and in the UAE to negotiating. continue So those efforts are still being made. But for now, no changes have been made beyond 10 hostages for every day of the ceasefire, and three Palestinian prisoners. Up until now, it's been women and children for every Israeli hostage released. Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder says there have been no attacks on U .S. forces in Iraq and Syria since in the fighting pause between Israel and Hamas. This began on Friday. Our forces are there for one reason, and that's to stay focused on the justice mission. And so we will continue to focus on that mission as well as ensuring our that forces are protected should there be any additional attacks. It was a packed house to remember the life of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, former President Jimmy Carter at 99 years old left hospice care to attend the service. Daughter Amy Carter spoke during the at service the Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta. My mom spent most of her life in love with my dad. Thanks for watching. Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life. Rosalynn Carter's private funeral is tomorrow. Lawmakers could vote this week on whether to remove Representative George Santos from Congress after the Ethics Committee this month said the New York Republican is guilty of corruption and CBS's Scott McFarland began ticking middle of the afternoon today one of the House members went to the floor in fact two of them did to invoke a parliamentary technique which provides for a 48 -hour window for the House to move on this expulsion vote it's rarely used but it was used today requiring there either be a vote on expulsion likely sometime Thursday a South Carolina woman is dead after falling through the floor of her home and then into a well. CBS's Matt Piper has the bizarre story. 83 year old Dorothy Downey died when she fell through rotting floorboards at a century -old South Carolina house and down a well shaft that no one knew was there. The fall below was 48 feet deep. Scott Crane is Oconee County Emergency Services Director. I've never had one under a home that someone actually fell into accidentally that they didn't even know was there. Downey Downey was helping her daughter pack up and move from the house. Her death's been ruled accidental. This is CBS News. You don't need a job platform. You need a hiring partner. deed lets you Indeed schedule and conduct virtual interviews all from one place. Start at indeed .com slash credits. 903 on this Tuesday evening, November the 28th. We've got 29 degrees in Good evening everybody. I'm Kyle Cooper. The top local stories following were for you this hour on WTLP. The National Christmas tree set to be lit up for the season Thursday night fell over from strong winds this afternoon. I've got some bad news folks.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Republican Jewish Coalition Tapped to Co-Host GOP Debate
"Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel. Good morning, Madam Chairwoman. Good to see you. It's working. I'm glad it's working. I know I'm a little underdressed today. I'm in my casual clothes. I'm working. You look fabulous. Good to see you. I want to begin by thanking you and David Bossie and every member of the committee that made the selection for the third debate in Miami of the Salem Radio Network and NBC to co -moderate. But I really want to thank you for crucial and urgent time for the RJC's voice to be heard because I think the anti -Semitic racism we see in the United States is astonishing and I don't know what the RJC is going to ask. They're in charge of their questions like I'm in charge or Salem's moderator is in charge of their questions but I'm just so glad the RGC is there. Yeah, me too. It was a game day decision. I mean, we had a different partner scheduled and after everything that happened in Israel, I just got on the phone with that original partner and said we need to shift and we need to go where the moment is and meet that moment. I was just in Israel with the Republican Jewish Coalition. I went to Israel and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and the UAE to celebrate the Abraham Accords. I was people say gas the Jews, we hate the Jews, things that we are seeing across the world right now. It is reminiscent of the Holocaust and that phrase never again and to see this happening in our world again, it's not just about a political conflict about land. It is hate. It is hate -filled and I just hope everyone knows the Republican party does not stand for that. We don't let any bit of that under our tent like you see with the Democrats with Rashida Shaleeb and Ilhan Omar. We condemn it wholeheartedly. We have chosen this partner to show our commitment to Israel but also to Jewish Americans and Jewish people across the country that we believe any type of religious intolerance is unacceptable.
The Breakdown
Fresh update on "uae" discussed on The Breakdown
"Today's episode is brought to you by Kraken. For far too long, the whole financial system has been standing still, too slow, only on for certain hours. Overly designed for some types of people, but not for others. Crypto, at its best, represents progress. It asks the question, what if? It invites people in instead of leaving them out. It's on 24-7-365 and moves at the speed of real life. Not everyone believes it. We've got our fair share of detractors. But that's the way it always is when you're building something new. Kraken is a crypto company that has been through the highs and lows of the industry, facing forwards towards progress throughout. And now, they're inviting us to see what crypto can be. Learn more at kraken.com slash the breakdown. Disclaimer, not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. Cryptocurrency services are provided to U.S. and U.S. territory customers by Payword Ventures, Inc., PVI, DBA, Kraken. So clearly a different tone, a vibe shift, a sentiment change. But what is happening with Binance? What's the latest on that story? Well, it appears that former Binance CEO CZ will remain stuck in the U.S. for the time being after a federal judge agreed to take another look at his bond conditions. Last Tuesday, CZ successfully argued before a magistrate judge that he was not a flight risk and should be allowed to return home to the UAE to await sentencing. The magistrate acknowledged that the decision was a close call and ordered that CZ would need to return to the U.S. two weeks ahead of sentencing. This decision appeared to come as a shock to prosecutors, who quickly filed a motion for it to be reconsidered. Their filing argued that CZ is a flight risk that could be managed. The DOJ had also noted that pretrial services had recommended that CZ be detained until sentencing. A core point made by prosecutors was that this isn't a minor criminal case. Although federal sentencing guidelines recommend an 18-month prison term, the DOJ emphasized that they could ask for the 10-year maximum. They said that this tough sentence could be enough to make CZ rethink plans to return voluntarily. A federal judge has now stayed this part of CZ's bond agreement, denying his opportunity to return to the UAE as planned on Monday. Now, contrary to some early reporting, this does not mean that CZ will necessarily be forced to remain in the U.S. until his sentencing, which is currently scheduled for February. What this means is that CZ will be forced to stay put for now while the issue can be fully considered by the federal judge. The judge gave no indication whether or not a hearing will be scheduled to hear oral arguments or any potential timeline for his decision. The balance of CZ's bond agreement is not controversial, and the DOJ is not pushing for CZ to be locked up prior to sentencing. For all of us, the question remains the same as it was on yesterday's show, whether this is legitimately a sign of the deal faltering or just the Department of Justice putting on a show. Now, one thing that has people feeling like this is weird is that this seems like the type of thing that would be negotiated as part of any particular settlement. Some have speculated that one easy explanation would be that maybe part of the deal that CZ agreed to was to not make any representations about the safety of the platform. If the DOJ viewed his Tuesday tweet as a breach of that, maybe this is a reprisal. The reality is that we don't really have any even leaks from behind the scenes, so we're just grasping at straws. Now, after this most difficult year in Binance's history, the task of rebuilding and moving forward has been handed to new CEO Richard Teng. Teng has worked for Binance since August 2021, first as the CEO of its Singapore division and later as the global head of regional markets. His work history includes serving as the CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority in Abu Dhabi, Chief Regulatory Officer in Singapore Exchange, and a 13-year stint at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. This extensive regulatory background makes Teng a solid choice for cleaning up the numerous outstanding regulatory issues at Binance. Teng made his vision for Binance clear from his first public statement as CEO, stating that one of his areas of focus will be, quote, collaborating with regulators to uphold high standards globally that foster innovation while providing important consumer protections. In his first blog post as CEO published on Monday, Teng asserted that the platform remains in a strong position. He noted that Binance remains the world's largest crypto exchange by volume and told users, quote, you should feel confident in the financial strength, security and safety of the company. He wrote that the next phase for Binance would be characterized by, quote, responsible growth and in an interview with Forbes said that Binance will adopt a traditional corporate structure, including establishing a board of directors. Teng did not provide specifics on any necessary reforms, and for now, Teng still has the difficult task of transitioning Binance out of its crisis-ridden era and restoring trust with users. Although there was no major run on the exchange, average daily trading volume has been trending down over the past week. Notably, Binance has conducted its first round of delistings in the post-CZ era. Among the assets to be removed from the platform was the Tornado Cash Governance token, which led to a 56% drawdown. Binance gave its standard explanation for delistings, stating that, quote, we periodically review each digital asset we list to ensure that it continues to meet the high level of standard we expect. When a coin or token no longer meets the standard or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it. We believe this best protects all our users. Notably, there were no specific details about the decision to delist the Tornado Cash token. Now, one of the largest remaining problems for Binance is the ongoing SEC lawsuit. The SEC stood out last week as the only agency not settling their legal dispute with the company. The case was back in court on Monday for a status hearing, with Binance lawyers asking the judge to bring the SEC's fraud investigation to a close. Throughout the case, the SEC has fought hard for extensive discovery in an attempt to uncover ties between Binance US and the international exchange. They said they were looking for evidence of mishandling of customer assets and potential fraud. Binance, for their part, has characterized this process as a fishing expedition. During Monday's hearing, lawyers for Binance said, the SEC has no evidence that assets have been misused in any way. They also noted that since the commencement of the SEC lawsuit in June, the value of assets on Binance US has diminished by almost 90%. Around half of users have abandoned the platform, leaving it as a largely irrelevant entity. The magistrate judge, hearing the evidentiary dispute, said that CZ's guilty plea last week made it much less likely that he would be able to misuse US customer assets. He said that, at some point, I have to make a leap of faith and say enough is enough. He ordered the parties to aim to resolve outstanding evidentiary issues and report back by December 15th. So that is the story from here. And I don't know about you guys, but it feels pretty good to be on the backside of the Binance story, and of course the backside of the Sam story, and a little bit more focused on the future, even if right now the future is just rampant and ongoing and never-ending ETF anticipation. I have no doubt that more things will come to the fore soon, but for now, that is going to do it. I want to say thanks one more time to the sponsor of today's show, Kraken, go to kraken.com slash the breakdown and see what crypto can be. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
A highlight from GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniels on The Next GOP Debate
"Cable news, noisy, boring, out of touch. That's why Salem News Channel is different. We keep you in the know. Streaming 24 -7 for free. Home to the greatest collection of conservative voices like Dennis Prager, Jay Sekulow, Mike Gallagher, and more. Salem News Channel is unfiltered and unapologetic. Watch anytime on any screen at snc .tv and local now channel 525. Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel. Good morning, Madam Chairwoman. Good to see you. It's working. I'm glad it's working. I know I'm a little underdressed today. I'm in my casual clothes. I'm working. You look fabulous. Good to see you. I want to begin by thanking you and David Bossie and every member of the committee that made the selection for the third debate in Miami of the Salem Radio Network and NBC to co -moderate. But I really want to thank you for crucial and urgent time for the RJC's voice to be heard because I think the anti -Semitic racism we see in the United States is astonishing and I don't know what the RJC is going to ask. They're in charge of their questions like I'm in charge or Salem's moderator is in charge of their questions but I'm just so glad the RGC is there. Yeah, me too. It was a game day decision. I mean, we had a different partner scheduled and after everything that happened in Israel, I just got on the phone with that original partner and said we need to shift and we need to go where the moment is and meet that moment. I was just in Israel with the Republican Jewish Coalition. I went to Israel and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and the UAE to celebrate the Abraham Accords. I was people say gas the Jews, we hate the Jews, things that we are seeing across the world right now. It is reminiscent of the Holocaust and that phrase never again and to see this happening in our world again, it's not just about a political conflict about land. It is hate. It is hate -filled and I just hope everyone knows the Republican party does not stand for that. We don't let any bit of that under our tent like you see with the Democrats with Rashida Shaleeb and Ilhan Omar. We condemn it wholeheartedly. We have chosen this partner to show our commitment to Israel but also to Jewish Americans and Jewish people across the country that we believe any type of religious intolerance is unacceptable.
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
Fresh update on "uae" discussed on The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
"Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt inside the Beltway, joined from Jerusalem by Haviv Reddy-Gir of the Times of Israel. Good morning, Haviv. Thank you for joining me again. I really appreciate that you do so much American media, from Dan Senor on Monday to MSNBC to my show. I think it's great. You're perhaps one of the most reasonable voices I've heard out there in persuading people about Israel's point of view. Are you doing this for the government or is this just Haviv saying, this helps the hostages and this helps Israel, so I'll do this? I'm doing it because I'm getting called by your show and MSNBC. No, I don't work for the government. I haven't worked for the government ever in my life. I guess I was a soldier once. I disagree with a lot of things the government is doing. In Hebrew, I mostly tweet and complain about the government. Well, I appreciate that you do this because there are a lot of people talking in America who have no idea what they're doing. Let me begin with the hardest question, Haviv. I listened to you and Dan Senor on Call Me Back yesterday, and the first question I wrote down is, there is no happy ending to this situation. There's only the least worst ending. What's the very least worst ending of this that you can imagine? Well, there's an incredibly happy ending. Hamas abandons its understanding of us, interpretation of us that believes that we will magically disappear. We will evaporate. We will move to some random other place in the world and decides to leave Gaza rather than force us to pull it out of Gaza. And Gaza is taken over by moderate Palestinian political forces keen on developing Gaza, not the kleptocracy under Mahmoud Abbas and Ramallah. But there are extraordinarily good, competent, caring leaders in Palestinian politics. They are always pushed aside by the major forces like Hamas, like Fatah. There is a good scenario. And then there are the forces in Palestinian politics that will make sure that good scenario doesn't come about. But those are choices, and that's the choice Hamas makes. Hamas has spent 17 years in control of Gaza and has done nothing but build the underground city in which it is now hiding behind and beneath its civilians. Hamas is nothing other than that. It literally has no other strategy, no other infrastructure. It did nothing for Gaza except that. And if that changes, that choice that Palestinian politics has made changes, there are many wonderful scenarios. If President Biden were told that for $10 billion of investment in Palestine, America could put the Palestinians on a radically different trajectory, I suspect he'd find those $10 billion in Congress. And I suspect Congress would find $100 billion to have the Palestinians have that better future. If this war translates into genuine global empathy and support for a Palestinian polity that is in Hamas, that's only a good thing. Habib, is that within the range of possibility? I have friends in the UAE. I have friends in Bahrain. I know that there are moderate Gulf states. Elon Musk referred to them yesterday. But they're standing back because it's such a nightmare of poisoned mines. Is there any scenario where you see them stepping forward to run the Strip on behalf of the Palestinians until the Palestinians develop a new elite that will do it for them? No. Anybody who takes over Gaza after Israel removes Hamas, assuming the war continues the way it has gone, assuming Israel is as implacable as I think it is, and assuming Hamas is removed, anybody who tries to take over in the immediate aftermath of that will be seen by Palestinians, not just in Gaza. In Gaza, they'll probably like a new regime. They hate Hamas. We have polls on this. But in the West Bank, they love Hamas for what it's doing to Israel. And because out of a sense of empathy for Gaza, the West Bank doesn't want what's happening to Gaza to happen in the West Bank. But nevertheless, the Palestinian diaspora, American Palestinian activists have all found ways to support Hamas, despite kind of understanding that in Gaza, the perception is Hamas brought this devastation on them. But anybody who takes over will be seen as taking over riding Israeli tanks. In other words, even if they don't like Israel, even if their politics aren't pro-Israel, they'll be seen as coming in at Israel's behest. No, there has to be an indigenous Palestinian political solution after Hamas. Hamas, of course, will fight tooth and nail to prevent anything like that from ever happening. The pause that was extended for two days. I noted yesterday that Qatar and Egypt announced it first, then America announced it, and Israel held back. I do not think the United States should be ahead of Israel on any of these announcements. What was your reaction to that? Was that America leaning on Israel to accept the extension of the pause? I don't know if it was America leaning on it so much as America being part of the support network to allow the Israelis to start to consider them. The Israelis have a very simple point, and they've been making it from the start, and it's what the agreement is. If the hostages keep coming out, the ceasefire remains in effect. When the hostages stop coming out, the ceasefire is no longer in effect. Defense Minister Galan said yesterday, when the ceasefire ends, the Israeli forces will resume the war on Hamas more strongly than it has been until now. The Americans have asked us today, and I think the Americans understand that, and I'll tell you why. They asked today, or I think they asked yesterday, but it was reported today that Israel act differently in specific ways, not sort of in a generic, please don't kill civilians, which everybody would like to not kill civilians. But in specific ways, create these kinds of humanitarian corridors in the south when the war continues in the south. All these details that lead me to understand that the Americans understand that the war will continue in the south.
The Breakdown
A highlight from The Senate Doesn't Seem to Care About Crypto Anymore
"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 13th, and today we are talking about news that Binance US CEO has left the company. 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. Well, friends, last night I had assumed that today's show would be some combination of Gary Gensler testifying before the Senate with maybe a little side of CPI. But then last night, new Binance news broke that had the whole community chattering. So that's where we're going to start. According to anonymous sources, Binance US CEO Brian Schroeder has left the company. Chief legal officer Norman Reed will step into the role on an interim basis. Alongside the resignation, Binance US announced internally that it will slash around one third of its workforce, laying off approximately 100 employees. This is the second round of layoffs for the US -based exchange as they dig in to fight legal battles against the SEC and the CFTC. Binance US said in a statement, Now, if you are paying attention, not even closely, just at all, you will know that this is the latest in a series of high -profile departures across the Binance empire. At least 11 executives have now resigned across all Binance companies. Three key personnel left on the same day in July, including front -facing Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillman, amid rumors of dissatisfaction with how Binance CEO CZ handled rumors of a DOJ investigation. Five more executives quit earlier this month, with the headline resignation coming from Leon Fung, the head of Asia -Pacific operations. In all cases, the resignations have been officially explained by a range of personal reasons, probably capstone by former compliance officer Steven Christie's extremely weird Twitter thread, which included the statement that, Now, the wide -ranging lawsuits against Binance have largely come home to roost for their US subsidiary. Both the SEC and CFTC cases include allegations that reach deep within the international Binance empire. However, regulators have been careful to focus their attention on Binance US to ensure that they have clear jurisdiction. A key focus of litigation so far has been the flow of funds between Binance US and the international organization. All of this means that the focus on the domestic exchange has led to the US subsidiary taking the brunt of the consequences so far. More acutely, Binance US was essentially cut off from all access to onshore banking, forcing them to operate as a crypto -only exchange. This shutdown of financial services has led to a dramatic collapse in trading volume. Binance US captured around 22 % of US market share in April, but this figure has now dropped below 1 % as traders quite reasonably flee to safer shores. Schroeder is now the third Binance US CEO to walk away from the role. Both Kathryn Coley and Brian Brooks, who earlier served as CEOs for the exchange, have provided extensive testimony to regulators and law enforcement. Schroeder joined the firm as president in September 2021, well into the company's claimed attempt to clean up their operations. One consequence of that could be that he has significantly less scandalous information on how the exchange functioned than other former executives. So what are the community's takes on this? Well, as you would expect, the anti -crypto folks are cheering. They see Binance as the next and perhaps ultimate shoe to drop. However, many folks in the industry, regardless of what they think of Binance, view it as a sad episode that shows just how problematic the SEC's approach really is. Wolf of All Street's host Scott Melker said, The SEC killed Binance US without proving a single thing, without due process. It simply took accusations to scare away customers and partners. This is the legacy of Gary Gensler. Another take which I resonate with strongly comes from folks like Byzantine General who wrote, I don't know why people are up in arms about this. I thought it was quite obvious already since the SEC lawsuit that Binance was just going to wind down operations of their US branch. It's so small and completely inconsequential to Binance anyway. Or more crisply from Icebergi, just closed down Binance US already. It has seemed untenable for quite some time and this only seems to reinforce that point of view. Now the other big generator of conversation was investor Adam Cochrane. He tweeted, I've been saying if Binance blows up, we'll be fine in no time. Got a tip that I've not yet been able to fully verify, but I would lean towards it being true on, and if it's true, it'll be a longer, more painful ride than I thought. Life behind bars would be the good outcome for CZ. I've sent that tip to some journalists I think can confirm if it's real and will keep folks updated if I get anything back. But in good faith I had to redact my will be fine stance and replace it with, we'll probably be okay unless this other part is real, in which case holy eff we're really going to zero and going to have to rebuild up again over time. Anyway, fun times in crypto. Now this certainly got people chattering, but not always in a good way. Zero Knowledge consulting partner and founder Austin Campbell quote tweeted it and said, If you have a financial interest in an outcome and post that you have a rumor without saying what the rumor is, you are part of the problem in this space. This would have been prohibited conduct in most regulated markets. I certainly would have gotten in trouble for this at JPM. Now, interestingly, however, 4Lex4Shaw had a different take. They wrote, It's all so tiresome. Binance had the support of dozens of governments from Singapore to UAE to every corner of the global south, and Tether too. The U .S. can't cut the UAE, Caymans, Bahamas, and Singapore out of Eurodollar markets, so it can't de -dollarize Binance. Any successful prosecution of Binance has to cut off Binance's access to USDT, cut Binance off from access to UAE, Singapore, etc., Eurodollars, or prove beyond a shadow of a doubt a huge hole in Binance's balance sheet, i .e. accounting fraud. Everything else is just low -budget theater. If the U .S. can accomplish one of those things, Binance is dead. If the U .S. can't, CZ doesn't have to give a crap about what the U .S. government says, indicts, or cajoles. The latter possibility breaks a lot of people's brains, but I don't make the rules. The interesting take here is, of course, that in many ways the Tether and Binance stuff going on is kind of just a proxy war for the U .S. about the U .S. government trying to exert sovereignty over the Eurodollar market that they simply don't control. I think it's a really interesting lens through which to look at these prosecution efforts, as well as questions around USD stablecoins. Anyways, who knows what happens next with Binance, but it continues to be the biggest open question in the entire space. Now, moving back over more officially to the U .S. government side of things, SEC Chair Gary Gensler appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday at a routine oversight hearing. Now, coming into the hearing, Gensler reinforced his well -worn position on crypto and written testimony. He stated that, quote, Given this industry's wide -ranging noncompliance with the securities laws, it's not surprising that we've seen many problems in these markets. We've seen this story before. It's reminiscent of what we had in the 1920s before the federal securities laws were put in place. Brushing off the recent Ripple decision, Gensler asserted that, quote, The vast majority of crypto tokens likely meet the investment contract test. Given that most crypto tokens are subject to the securities laws, it follows that most crypto intermediaries have to comply with securities laws as well. Now, the hearing itself was kicked off by opening statements from Chairman Sherrod Brown. As the leading Democrat dealing with financial issues, any crypto legislation being moved forward in the near future would likely require Brown's seal of approval to become law. Judging from his comments about the state of the industry, that seems unlikely. Brown said, quote, The FTX collapse showed how dangerous crypto can be. But FTX wasn't a lone bad apple. It was just the most explosive example of the problems in crypto. The problems we saw at FTX are everywhere in crypto. The failure to provide real disclosure, the conflicts of interest, the risky bets with customer money that was supposed to be safe. FTX was just the biggest and the ugliest. For consumers, it adds up to billions of dollars gone. Bad actors keep flocking to crypto. They use it to launder money, to evade sanctions, to fund crime and human trafficking and terrorism. We need to protect workers and families in these markets. We need to clean up the scams and fraud. As Congress considers digital asset legislation, I'm glad the SEC is using its tool to crack down on abuse and enforce the law. Now, of course, a casual observer might suggest that 1. FTX was distinct, given that its former CEO is on trial for perpetrating fraud against his company, investors, partners and the public at large. And an observer might note that the SEC didn't use its tools to do anything about that or any of the other big examples of actual fraud and problems happening. Instead, it's wrote in after the fact to win settlements against projects too small to defend themselves and chalk it up as victories, which might, to some, be seen as much more politically motivated than actually driven by consumer protection. But that's just one take. Now, ranking Republican member Tim Scott used his opening comments to drag Gensler for his lack of engagement with congressional oversight. Scott noted that the Senate hasn't heard from Gensler since last September, despite the FTX collapse and several bank failures occurring in the interim. He said, complete and timely attention to congressional inquiries is critical to ensuring independent agencies remain transparent and accountable to the American people. Yet, sadly, your agency has fallen short in this obligation to be transparent and responsive to congressional oversight. Without pro -growth regulations, we are limiting opportunities for our kids and our kids' kids from being able to take control of their own financial futures. The American people have a right to know what their government is doing, and your agency's blatant refusal to respond to our constitutionally mandated oversight represents a dereliction of your duties to the American people. And yet, still, when all was said and done, the most striking thing about the hearing was just how much crypto had faded as a front -of -mind issue in Congress. Gensler didn't mention crypto at all in his brief oral testimony, and lawmakers had numerous more pressing concerns to discuss. Based on the questions, climate reporting rules and AI use and financial services ranked as much higher priority than crypto enforcement, even for previously fervent Democrats. We didn't even get the customary anti -crypto soundbite from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who instead used her time to rail against a perceived lack of toughness in new private equity disclosure rules. The crypto discussion, to the extent there was any, touched on pending crypto ETFs. Senator Bill Hagerty brought up the point that the SEC's rejection of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust had been labeled arbitrary and capricious by a federal judge. He asked what the SEC would need to see in order to approve a spot Bitcoin ETF, to which Gensler responded that the agency is, quote, "...still reviewing that decision and reviewing multiple filings around Bitcoin ETPs. I'm looking forward to staff's recommendations." Now, on top of some of those specifics, many GOP senators had more general criticisms for how Gensler's SEC had conducted itself. Senator Steve Daines, for example, complained that the SEC has frequently overreached its mandate in attempts to expand its jurisdiction. He suggested that 80 % of the SEC's rulemaking efforts under Gensler were not required by legislation. Daines said, "...this means that the vast majority of the agency's rulemaking agenda has been voluntarily undertaken. Chairman Gensler, you are not an elected official that is beholden to your constituents. You are an unelected bureaucrat who has taken it upon himself to reshape American markets to your liking, to the detriment of innovation, of investors, and small businesses." What's more, it seems like many in the Washington establishment are not just concerned about Gensler when it comes to the crypto markets. Earlier this week, for example, the Wall Street Journal published an op -ed article penned by former U .S. Attorney General Bill Barr. Specifically, the article warned of Gensler encroachment into regulating the use of AI. But Barr was scathing in his attack of Gensler's leadership at the SEC more broadly. He wrote, "...this is only the latest example of Mr. Gensler's grandiose regulatory style. He takes on airy theoretical issues and attacks them with broad prophylactic regulations that are long on speculation and paternalism, short on evidence and rational analysis, and heedless of Congress and the Constitution. He claims these measures will head off speculative evils, but they are more likely to throttle the dynamism of U .S. markets." So how are we to sum this all up and make sense of it? To me, this was very clearly the first hearing of the next election cycle. Crypto is now an afterthought for Congress. Or maybe better put, it is an exhibit and an example of a broader narrative which is around SEC overreach. It seems fairly clear that people aren't that interested in getting regulation done for the industry and even on the GOP side are more interested in defeating a broader political agenda embodied by Gensler. The big themes were agency overreach, major questions doctrine, and the role of unelected bureaucrats, not crypto per se. But to the extent that anyone is looking for good news as relates to the election cycle, as finance lawyer at Davis Polk Scott Johnson pointed out, for those keeping count, Senator Sherrod Brown's odds are about 60 % chance to lose his seat next year as of now. Change isn't always necessarily good, but it certainly opens up new possibilities. But gear up, because we are definitely in the election part of the cycle. Thanks as always for listening, and until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
The Café Bitcoin Podcast
Fresh update on "uae" discussed on The Café Bitcoin Podcast
"This would just be the template of how to build a block, right? Yeah, this is about block construction. Okay, so let's say I'm a home miner and I'm trying to decide which pool to join. What's going to incentivize me to get on the Stratum V2 bandwagon here? I guess the ability to build your own templates, the ability to select your own transactions. I think it is that you're a home miner who's interested in the decentralization of Bitcoin in addition to the Bitcoin that you earn from doing it. Because this helps with the decentralization of Bitcoin. You are creating your own blocks, not hashing blocks that somebody else created. There was a really interesting recent article, it was a little technically heavy, by our friend Bitcoin Mechanic on Bitcoin Magazine. Where he spoke about issues like this and he said, really a lot of the people we call miners are more appropriately just called ashers. Because they're not mining, they're receiving block templates from pools and then they're hashing nonces against that. So that there was kind of this technical thing that you're more accurately described as being a hasher than a miner. You're not doing the full suite of activities that are involved in mining, which includes forming your own blocks from unconfirmed transactions in the mempool. And as other speakers here have said, that kind of impairs the number of parties that need to be compromised to insert some form of censorship into Bitcoin. Yeah, it's also the security piece that guys were speaking about too. I mean that's another heavy incentive. Can't throw that aside. So does that basically defeat this whole OFAC compliant block bullshit? Like if the government were to say to a mining pool, hey you have to not process non-OFAC compliant transactions, does this defeat that? It helps fight it, that's for sure. Helps fight it. Yeah, and we saw, I don't know what it was a few weeks ago or a couple weeks ago, that AMP pool, which is the biggest mining pool at the moment, had processed some OFAC compliant blocks. And so they might be, what's the word, compromised. So it is kind of scary to think that we've now got the two biggest mining pools who are maybe compromised in terms of doing some OFAC compliance in terms of their block construction. So this is a real thing and we have to be very serious about it and try to get as many people who are mining to stop pointing their hash at those fucking pools. Because we all want to send our bitcoin to terrorists. Do you guys have any feeling for how much of the hashrate is large companies versus solo miners or individuals or small setups? Unfortunately, it's generally pretty hard to know. I wouldn't even tell you if I have a feeling if it's greater or less than 50% for which one outweighs the other. Because I think the reality is you have this very, very long tail of smaller scale miners, people who are maybe between home miner and something that you would call industrial. And then it's where you draw the line. Is someone with a dozen miners in the industrial operation or do you have to have a whole container full or do you have to have at least an exa-hash in your mine? So it's also a matter of where we draw the line. I think there are people who do it more than just having a single miner in their house. But they certainly wouldn't be deemed industrial or corporate. And then as those get bigger... What you could do, I suppose, is you could aggregate all of the known hash of public entities. You could figure that out. And then you could subtract that at 28%. According to a study that came out in September. So 28% is public apparently. And then there's a bunch of private industrial mining companies as well though. But of the public ones, those ones are more known because they actually have to... Explain the amount of hash they've got as part of their reporting. And how much they're planning on bringing online and all that stuff. So they're pretty transparent. Precisely. Yeah, they kind of have to. That's part of it. I agree with you. There's a lot of private industrial scale mining going on out there. I know for a fact, just from talking to guys who... We talked to miners. There's a lot of private guys out there doing this stuff too. That are pretty large scale situations and they're just not public companies. It's going to be interesting to see over the next five years if the Lowry stuff starts to play out. And then governments actually start hashing what that turns into. Well, they already have. You've got El Salvador. You've got Russia. You've got China. You've got... What was the other one? Is Russia and China or the governments of Russia and China hashing? I think they are state sanctioned. Isn't UAE or one of the Middle Eastern countries, isn't that a state sanctioned mining operation as well? No, my understanding is that stuff was basically private industry. I don't think that was a government thing. Anyone know if the Vatican is mining yet? I don't know. It's clown world over there. So hopefully not. That's when it gets real, dude, when they're mining in the back room of the secret library in the Vatican. Yeah, what if the next war isn't between nation states, but between religious leaders mining Bitcoin. They're all trying to get their hash rate. It's like this is the Jewish hash pool and this is the Catholic hash pool. That's not true. They don't segregate like that in the Vatican. They've been there. Okay, not bad. I don't know anything about that. It's changing the topic a little bit, but this just popped into my mind. Are you going to see religions fighting each other over hash? I have a client who posed this question to me one day. If Bitcoin does start to make large states less relevant, I mean, that's one theory. I don't know if I agree with it. It's just something that Bitcoiners talk about that may play out. If that's the case and they cannot fund large militaries, are companies like MicroStrategy going to become the owners of the aircraft carriers? That is a really out there idea, but I thought it was interesting. Do you have any thoughts on that? I put out a tweet recently. I asked, since Bitcoin is now considered halal, how long before its culture? Is it though? I mean, there's a lot of arguing going on. I see so-called Islamic...
Crypto Banter
A highlight from Why Bitcoin Is Gearing Up For Its Biggest Ever Bull Run (Pay Attention)
"The next Bitcoin bull run could be bigger than any other, due to these 10 crypto catalysts, which are currently shaking up the crypto market. And in today's video, I wanna go through each one of these catalysts and explain to you why crypto is uniquely positioned for massive growth in the near future. So look, clearly the market right now is boring. A lot of market participants are feeling apathetic due to the market. This is in part due to the fact that volume is super low. So there's just simply not that much to trade in the way of Bitcoin, Ethereum or majors. And also that the volatility of the market is down. And when volatility is down, there's obviously less opportunities for trading. But on the investing standpoint, things couldn't be any more different because periods of low volatility and quiet market movement are actually an accumulator's dream because we all know what happens in terms of volatility. Extended periods of contraction tend to lead to explosive periods of expansion and I think we can assert that the more that Bitcoin trades in this sideways, boring range, the more that price action remains boring, the bigger the eventual move is going to be. And although yes, this can be to the downside, long -term volatility compression combined with strong macro catalysts and the upcoming catalysts that we have like the Bitcoin halving could very well lead to upwards expansion. And that's what we're gonna talk about in today's video, the reasons for that expansion and go back to the fundamentals because it's so easy to get swept up with the price of Bitcoin. Oh, you know, Grayscale had an amazing announcement but Bitcoin didn't react. You know, that must mean it's not bullish for Bitcoin. Wrong. Stop associating progress with price because you'll become a much better investor and you'll also be able to actually take advantage of the opportunities that are being presented via the fundamental shifts in Bitcoin's underlying strengths. So let's get straight into it. Just quickly, rapid fire. I'm gonna give away $200 to five people for the SmartX giveaway. So I'm gonna pick five people now randomly and make their names bold. If I choose to make your name bold, you have just won $200. There you go. There you go. I'm gonna look away to make it fair. Four and five. There we go. Number 12, number 14, 17, 23, 30. If your wallet address is highlighted in bold, you are one of the five lucky winners that won $200 thanks to the SmartX giveaway. If you aren't entered into the giveaway, we're gonna run this $200 airdrop for another week. So get involved for next week. All you've got to do is deposit a minimum of $50 worth of liquidity into any of the pools across Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB, or Base. You can also earn some pretty high APRs. Choose which asset you would like to deposit to earn passive income. And also if you enter your wallet address into the link in the description, qualify for the 200 airdrop giveaway. Congratulations if your wallet is there. Let me know in the comments. And obviously we will send you the money over the next 48 hours straight to your wallets. $200 coming your way. Let's get on with the rest of the video. So let's go through these catalysts. Let's go rapid fire. Let's talk about them, talk about the ramifications. And then at the end, I have a take for what all of this means. The first thing that happened recently was Grayscale winning their lawsuit against the SEC. I think this was a very monumental occasion for crypto and not just because we had a company beating the SEC, but because the courts finally acknowledged that the SEC's actions were overzealous. They actually worded the SEC's pursuit of Grayscale as arbitrary and capricious. And I mean, what a strong word, what a strong stance for the court to come out and call the SEC capricious. They essentially debunked the main argument of the SEC's case against Grayscale, which was that Bitcoin due to market manipulation is not an asset conducive to a spot ETF listing. But the courts essentially debunked that entire argument, which was the premise of the SEC's entire case against not only Grayscale, but against other ETF applicants as well. So the precedent it set clearly means the Bitcoin spot ETF has a much higher percentage of getting approved. And I mean straight after this Grayscale victory versus the SEC was announced to the public, we saw the probability of a Bitcoin spot ETF according to Bloomberg analysts increase by 15 % from 60 % to 75%. So it did have a tangible effect on the market. And yes, price did get faded because we're in kind of bearish market conditions, boring market conditions, but it can't be understated enough how bullish this actually is for crypto long -term and how it definitely lends into the favor of the upcoming 10 Bitcoin spot ETFs, which are currently pending approval. We know that the arc deadline is in January and then we know that BlackRock and some of these other big filings, for example, WisdomTree, VanEck and Bitwise are towards the month of March. But in my opinion, if we get one approval, that sets the example that all the others should technically get approved because I doubt the SEC will want to just approve one and then not approve the others. It kind of looks like they're picking favorites, especially if they pick BlackRock over the others. So I think once one is approved, it'll open the flood gates to all the others. And that could happen not just as soon as January, which is the first final deadline, but potentially as soon as the second or the third deadline. Because what you have to realize is, especially in the context of the recent grayscale loss from the SEC's perspective, they're under a lot of pressure at the moment. They're getting clowned in the courts. They're basically losing every case. They lost to XRP. They're having to settle with a lot of other like NFT projects and small projects. Basically, their endeavors aren't working in the court of law because the court system is doing what it's supposed to do, remain objective. And the SEC is doing what it's not supposed to do. And that's being unobjective. And for that reason, they're kind of being backed into a corner right now. And I think the only outcome for this is they're gonna have to buckle and approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. And that's why the probability from analysts is so high now, pushing into the 80 to 90 % range from recent estimates. So we could even see a Bitcoin spot ETF as soon as let's say November or December this year on the best terms, on the worst terms, maybe it's January, February, but we do know it's gonna be within the next four to six months. So if you are bullish on a Bitcoin spot ETF and you believe that it's gonna happen, then you don't need to play like the whole news game. All you need to do is simply accumulate in the lead up to that event. If your strategy is to accumulate Bitcoin long -term and if you believe that the spot Bitcoin ETF is gonna be bullish for the inflows to the market. And look, I do believe that the Bitcoin spot ETF is going to be a substantial cause of new inflows into the market. It's gonna be the first time that institutions are gonna be able to buy Bitcoin and buy it through the proxy of the equities market. The elderly people and retail investors that maybe aren't so well -versed in the crypto exchange sphere, they're also gonna be able to easily buy Bitcoin through the spot ETF. So I think it can't be understated how much of a bullish catalyst this is for crypto, how much of it is priced into the market, that's anyone's guess, but I do think long -term the structural net inflows into the market will be a massive plus for Bitcoin and a massive plus for cryptocurrency, especially if we see like Ethereum filings, for example. And for that reason, I'm extremely bullish on a spot ETF. It's really now just a timeline game. And I think that's the reason why the price hasn't moved because the market doesn't quite know when it's gonna happen. And when the market doesn't know when you see all these games and you see the chop continue into that official announcement. But that can create opportunities, especially on major dips if you believe in that final event. The other thing we saw, because the SEC isn't really being too crypto -friendly, is a lot of other companies throughout 2023 so far, a lot of other countries, sorry, start to accept crypto and start to be more open towards crypto. I think the one that probably stands out the most is Hong Kong, purely just due to China's stance, the Chinese mainland stance towards crypto being so negative in recent times. It was great to see another major Asian nation, especially the one that's so close to China from a political perspective to align with crypto and start accepting it. I think it was a monumental step for the crypto industry as a whole. And not only have we seen positive developments from like Abu Dhabi, UAE, Singapore, Japan, we've also seen great developments from Hong Kong where they officially opened their first crypto trading exchange, where they offered a variety of trading pairs. And I think that's only going to expand in the future. And this does put more pressure on the US because if the US is going to scrutinize crypto and shut down the industry, these players are simply just going to shift offshore to companies that are more accommodating. And I think that's the great part about crypto. It's international, it's borderless. That's the number one benefit of the crypto industry. It enables borderless transactions. It enables the entire world to be linked through a financial ecosystem. And that ecosystem isn't just the USA. So a lot of the time, we get very, very focused on the US and look for good reason because it's such a large percentage of the market. But we have to remember that this is bigger than the USA. This is a worldwide network that can penetrate every border, that can penetrate every country, irrespective of the US trying to claim jurisdiction over crypto. So this is also a positive development, the Hong Kong news. Now, off the back of the Bitcoin spot ETF, we also saw the ETH ETF filings start to happen. We know that ETH futures ETFs have been applied for over the last four to six months, but now we are starting to see concrete spot ETF filings from the likes of ARK Invest and 21 shares alongside Van Eck. So we are seeing the participants starting to pile up for each spot ETF filings. And I only expect over the next few weeks and over the next few months, more institutions start to pile in and file for applications of their own. And this is also extremely bullish for ETH as an asset because if the SEC sets the precedent of Bitcoin being a commodity and Bitcoin being worthy of a spot ETF, who's to say that Ethereum, which has been labeled by a commodity by the CFTC also isn't worthy for a spot ETF. And then that also would pave the way for a bunch of other cryptos to get ETFs as well. So this was a huge development for Ethereum. And once again, price didn't react to the best because of the reasons that I discussed before, the market's boring, the market's probably bearish leaning and it doesn't really wanna react to good news. And there's a few decent reasons for that, but long -term structurally once again, a spot ETF would have huge positive ramifications for the market. And I do believe that we could see more institutions, big institutions start to pile in as well. Remember what happened with the Bitcoin spot ETF. We first saw ARK apply, we first saw the smaller institutions apply and then BlackRock took that momentum and filed for a spot ETF of their own. Could we see a similar thing on ETH? Well, we see ARK, we see 21 shares, we see VanEck apply, we see the smaller institutions apply and then BlackRock comes along a little bit later and they apply as well. I mean, I don't necessarily subscribe to the theory that, oh, just cause ARK filed, it means that BlackRock's gonna file tomorrow. No, I think BlackRock may choose to wait here for a Bitcoin spot ETF approval and it may choose to wait for other institutions to come in and kind of get an SEC green light before it applies. Cause once again, it doesn't wanna ruin its exemplary record when it comes to ETF approvals. But I think the likelihood that BlackRock jumps into ETH eventually is now certainly much higher that it's starting to gain momentum as a trend. So it's something to look out for in the market and obviously it's great for ETH long -term. But yeah, the price once again, didn't react, just like the gray scale announcement got almost instantly faded. We saw the ETH spot ETF result in a huge price pump for Ethereum and then this rally also got faded. The market is the expert of fading pumps at the moment. But the whole point of this video is to teach you to actually detract the price movement from the long -term fundamental catalyst that we see in the market develop over the course of a bear market. In a bull market, good news causes massive price pumps. In a bear market, good news causes, well, price to go sideways or price to even drop. That is a sign of typical bear market conditions. That is a sign of typical market weakness. And even in the early stages of a bull run, if you do wanna say, look, we're heading into the Bitcoin halving, this is an early stage of a new bull run. It's not unusual to see massive, you know, 30, 20, 30, 40 % drawdowns during the early stages and also market shakiness in terms of its reaction to news. So this isn't like a bearish shine. It's not totally indicative of what's happening next just because, you know, it isn't reacting as well as we would like to these announcements. It just shows that in the short term, the market isn't ready yet to get super bullish. So definitely long -term, we are really setting up here with some amazing catalysts and I'm gonna talk about in a minute or two, probably the biggest change that I've seen over the last few days actually that could really affect prices. But we have to remember that every single positive bit of news we get now, every single positive development or announcement we get now is building behind the scenes for what could be an even bigger bull run next time around. And I'm not saying bigger bull run in terms of necessarily percentage growth because we know Bitcoin has diminishing returns, but in terms of sheer dollars in flowing into the cryptocurrency market, I think it's hard to deny at some point that we do see that. And technically that would make it the biggest bull run ever. So that's an amazing thing. So before I get into what could be the biggest change over the last three days, but not many people I've seen talk about it, I just wanna give you a reminder that if you are interested in investing more in this industry and not just in coins, but in unicorns and actual startups and proper companies in this space because you believe in this space and you wanna invest in the picks and shovels behind the space, we have partnered with a company called Link2, which is giving you access to investments that you wouldn't normally be able to access. So typically you would need to spend like over $100 ,000, sometimes $500 ,000 to be qualified as a wholesale investor to access crypto startups and AI startups and tech startups. Now, what you can do is actually invest in them at retail levels. So let's say $5 ,000 minimum investment instead of 100 ,000 and get the same exposure to the big companies that retail is usually priced out of. So just going through their portfolio here, we can see they have a wide array of crypto businesses like Circle, Ripple, Uphold, Itrust, Polisign, Chain Analysis, Copper, Ledger, companies that don't have tokens. But if you believe in the underlying businesses, you can get exposure to them. And if you actually go onto their website and go into link2 .com slash products, you can see all of the products that they've added to their ecosystem. So it's not just crypto products, there's AI products, there's automatic drone products, cybersecurity products, digital assets, fintech, a whole bunch of different sectors that you can explore and invest in if you choose to do so. So if you wanna get involved, there's a link in the description. Once again, I'm not chilling anything, like this is really just a platform that you can just check out, have a look at, see if you like any of the companies. And if you do like some of the companies, you can create an account on the mobile app, as you can see in front of you. And you can start investing today into tech companies and get access to the same investments that the big wholesale traders have been for decades, but retail previously didn't have access to. So I think it's awesome. They're also SEC compliant, so it's not some scam. It's a proper registered fund, you need a KYC. It's a fully regulated operation for, yeah, people that wanna invest more into the industry or into the tech world as a whole. If you're an active investor into tech, I know I personally started my investing journey, not actually through crypto, but through like Apple stock and tech stocks. That's how I originally built up some capital to invest in crypto because yeah, I was more trading equities in the early days. So I'm always a preacher of diversifying your portfolio. I've actually said publicly on Twitter that I own more equities than I do crypto. Can you even believe that? And that's just because I've had years to actually compound these gains. And then eventually it gets to a point where your money's kind of being made for you just by investing in equities and continuing to DCA. And I might do a video on that in the future, but link in the description to the link too. If you do wanna check out some of their investment options, once again, not financial advice in regards to any specific products, you do your own research before you invest in anything of course. But I think it's great that we can give you guys the option to get access to these deals that not everyone can typically get access to. So let's get on with the rest of the video. I said I was gonna talk about a catalyst, which I thought was really, really crucial for crypto. And it's actually this, which Rand did talk about on his show, but I've seen most other channels are completely ignored. And this was the news that they are going to be implementing in fair 2025 value accounting rules for Bitcoin. So let me read through what this means. Under the current practice right now, which doesn't provide clear guidelines on how firms should disclose their crypto holdings, firms treat their crypto as indefinite lived intangible assets, which includes trademarks, copyrights, and other items that are rarely traded. As a result, companies record their crypto at the historical price they paid and review their holdings every quarter for impairments. Holdings are considered impaired even if the price of a crypto falls temporarily during this period. And values can't be upwardly revised if the price recovers. They have to take the lowest price for that time period. Now this has huge ramifications because it can misrepresent their balance sheets in a negative way and under represent the total value of their crypto assets. And this makes it pretty hard for like a big company. Like, you know, think about these big institutions, like the big funds and like your apples, et cetera, to actually hold Bitcoin because they're constantly dealing with potential negative ramifications in terms of how they're going to have to report this, especially for companies with, you know, duty of care to their stakeholders because they are publicly traded. They don't want any sort of, you know, negative reflection back on their books because they invested in crypto and they couldn't report it properly. So there's a big change coming in, which is going to allow fair value accounting for Bitcoin, ETH, and other crypto assets, which essentially will enable you to record gains and losses immediately and classify crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum as true financial assets and not as intangible assets like they previously were, like trademarks, copyrights, et cetera. This is going to take effect in 2025. And I think as a result, many new companies are going to be able to add Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies to their balance sheets and not be scared about the misalignment of the previous reporting practices and actually be able to take advantage of the tax benefits for drawdowns and also the reporting benefits when crypto recovers and is performing super well. So I think it actually is very impactful on the market long -term because it's going to enable companies that previously didn't want to invest in crypto to invest in crypto. And you line that up alongside like a Bitcoin spot ETF. And overall, these are really good conditions for like the institutional adoption of crypto. And yes, the prices are moving, I know, but we're just building slowly. We're slowly implementing these rules. We're slowly implementing legislation and it's building really slowly. And yes, we have drawbacks. So we might take, you know, four steps ahead and then two steps back when Gary Gensler does something or sues someone and then three steps ahead and then another two steps back, you know, when there's another kind of regulatory upheaval. But along the way, we get these major wins, which makes crypto more easily adopted to the masses. And at the end of the day, that is the whole vision of cryptocurrency. And that vision is being realized, not just for Bitcoin, but for old coins like Solana, for example, which we saw Visa actually starting to accept USDC payments on the Solana network, which is huge that, you know, they not only chose to use the Solana blockchain, but more importantly, they showed their support for USDC. They're actually backing a stable coin and showing that they believe in stable coins in the ecosystem of cross border payments. I think that's massive for the cryptocurrency industry. And it's also good for Solana. Once again, Solana price didn't move, but it's the same story as this whole video. Another big catalyst we got, and this video is just stacked with good news. It's a happy day. It's OPM day. Smash the like button if you like the optimism, but I think it's genuinely caused to be optimistic some of the developments we had this week. We saw MetaMask announce their recent feature, which is the sell feature. Now, when I first saw this, I made a joke on Twitter, like, oh, you know, we're in a bear market. Now it's easier for people to sell their assets, but having people be more easily able to sell their assets is actually amazing because it's going to incentivize them to on -ramp money when they know that they can off -ramp money. Think about it like this. Remember the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade? Remember how the staking ratio of ETH was like really stagnant and people didn't want to stake? And look at the staking ratio increase that happened post -Shanghai. Why did that happen? Well, it's because people could redeem their Ethereum on the beacon chain. So if they previously deposited, they could then actually get their Ethereum back and they didn't have it locked in the ecosystem. That is an example of people's willingness to deposit when they know that they can withdraw. It's the exact same as MetaMask, where people may be more willing to deposit into crypto if they know they can easily off -ramp because off -ramping is a huge problem right now. Like I've had problems with this in the past. Some of my friends have had problems with this in the past. People in the industry have problems with this all the time. Like, you know, banks being tricky, exchanges being tricky, selling is just sometimes not easy in crypto to get fiat currency. Well, MetaMask is now essentially going to enable you to click sell on your wallet, convert straight to fiat and off -ramp straight to your bank account. That is huge in my opinion. And it also definitely leads the way for people to feel more comfortable transacting into cryptocurrency and not just out of cryptocurrency because they know there's a way out. They know they're not trapped in the ecosystem. So look, I know there was kind of a lot of memes around this and I even joked around it, but you know, actually thinking about this, it is quite bullish I think for the long -term adoption prospects of crypto. Now it's only being piloted at the moment. It's only available in a few jurisdictions, but I expect as this rolls out and as this kind of thing becomes more commonplace amongst crypto wallets and crypto dapps, this is a great precedent for the industry as a whole and undeniably a net positive. So that is kind of my video on the crypto catalyst, specifically 10. We actually did talk about 10, but I just kind of sporadically went through them. 10 catalysts that I think are holding Bitcoin and holding the crypto market in good stead for huge adoption in the future. And look, I know price action is kind of boring right now and I know it's easy to get despondent, but the point I made this video is don't forget where we're headed. Don't let the destination evade you just because the path has become more difficult. Always look at the final destination and then you'll actually be able to get some sleep at night because you're not gonna worry about the chop. We know the market will chop in between, but we know where it's going in the future and that's all we need in order to be successful investors over the long -term. All we need to do is have a long -term approach to crypto. Sure, we have a fun trading in the short -term. Sure, we ape into altcoins and do crazy decentralized shit in the short -term, but long -term, we're actually just prepping our portfolios for what we believe in as a disruptive industry that is really on the precipice of gaining mass adoption. And certainly these catalysts lend pretty well towards that. Talking about mass adoption, we just partnered with a new company on the show, which is offering something that I think is gonna be extremely important for mass adoption and that is storage and actually secure storage for the future of crypto. So Serenity Shield have built an amazing product that is essentially a privacy -preserving application that enables you to store, transfer, and recover confidential data. So you know how LastPass is on centralized servers and you put your passwords in and you put important information in, but you know it's on centralized servers and you know it's not living on the blockchain so you know it's not immutable. Well, they're essentially gonna solve that problem because they're building a permissionless protocol built using smart contracts that allows you to store confidential data, recover confidential data, and has a privacy -preserving element to make sure that you're the only one that sees that data and that data is properly encrypted. Now there's a very cool feature that Strongbox actually has and it's this transfer feature which maybe you don't want to think about, but it's something you should think about and that's inheritance, right? So if something unfortunately happens to you and you've got all this Bitcoin, what happens to that Bitcoin? I mean, there's been many cases of Bitcoin just being completely lost if something happens to someone or even if you're fined and you just misplaced your Bitcoin, there's no direct way for your loved ones, your friends, your family to access those assets. Serenity Shield has essentially come up with the solution to this problem by having a dedicated transfer inheritance built in function from Serenity Shield which enables you to have the peace of mind that your data is going to be safe. It allows you to store your data forever and that's a really important aspect of mass adoption in crypto for the future. It's actually where are people going to store their Bitcoin, their Ethereum? Where are people going to store these assets and keep them safe? And for people that maybe have like family trust, where are they going to store it so they know that it's accessible for family members? Well, this could potentially be the solution. Now their product isn't live yet. They just finished their test net. They're going into main net soon, but in the meantime, they do have a presale. So if you're interested in this kind of concept and you're interested in getting involved, I'll leave a link in the description for the presale where you can get your hands on and I'm not shilling the token. I'm not like necessarily endorsing that you buy the token, do your own research, work out whether it's something you like. I just thought I would let you know and keep you updated that they do have a presale round three for the next two weeks that you can get involved in. If you're interested in this kind of thing and you can see the token price, the vesting terms, the cliff, all that stuff in front of you, but it is going to be the utility token of the ecosystem as well and the subsequent projects that they launch in the ecosystem. But they're building a really cool product and if you want to check it out, there's a link in the description because yeah, I think it's going to be a pretty cool product that I'm going to show you guys on the show and I believe in it as an important piece of infrastructure for the future of crypto ownership and data storage. So thank you to Serenity Shield for sponsoring the show, of course. And if you enjoyed this video, smash the like button, let me know in the comments what your favorite catalyst is from the list of 10 that I read out. It may have been nine, it may have been 11, but hopefully it was 10 and I'll see you in the next video, which is going to be tomorrow. Have a lovely day. Peace out everyone.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 663:BRICS Currency Launch and CFTCs DeFi Conflict
"And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Friday, September 8th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnight, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight, we're diving into a geopolitical shakeup as the BRICS nations reveal their own banknote. Will this be a challenge to the US dollar? The CFTC is setting its sights on DeFi firms. What does that mean for the future of decentralized finance? We'll also discuss a new pilot program proposed by CFTC commissioner, Caroline Pham. Is this the road to regulatory clarity? Then, library is taking its fight against the SEC to the next level. What could this appeal mean for the crypto community at large? In international news, Thodex CEO gets a jail sentence that's hard to fathom. North Korea's Lazarus Group pulls off a staggering $41 million dollar heist. Can the crypto world ever be safe? Plus, the UK's FCA makes a U -turn on crypto advertising regulations. Is this relief or a trap? Stick around to find out. I do believe that this is a first for the Crypto Overnight. You see, this is the first story suggested by a listener. Wong Johnson left me a message on my YouTube channel suggesting I look into this story, and it's a good one, folks. So, thanks for the suggestion, and keep them coming. The first variant of the unique currency for the BRICS Association has been unveiled. The Russian ambassador to South Africa showcased the BRICS 100 banknote at a ceremony in the UAE Embassy in Pretoria. The banknote features the flags of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Now, if you're listening in on YouTube, look up at the screen and you're gonna see a copy of the currency. After the demonstration, the banknote was handed over to the ambassador of the UAE. The recent BRICS summit announced six more countries would become full members by January 1st, 2024. Those countries are Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE. The expansion has led to concerns about its impact on the U .S. economy. However, internal unrest within BRICS makes it hard to see it as a serious threat to the U .S. BRICS holds over a third of the global GDP after the expansion, raising questions about its potential impact on the U .S. dollar. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya expressed skepticism about BRICS nations working together. He highlighted the regional rivalries and differences in democratic governance among the member nations. He doubts that BRICS could develop a currency framework to compete against the U .S. dollar due to these internal conflicts. That said, the unveiling of the BRICS 100 note is a significant step towards financial autonomy for these emerging economies. It's a direct challenge to the U .S. dollar's global dominance. The expansion of BRICS to include six more nations amplifies this challenge. Imagine a world where a third of the global GDP is conducted in a currency other than the dollar. That's a potential upheaval of the existing financial order. However, it's not all smooth sailing for BRICS. Internal strife and skepticism from influential figures indicate the road ahead is fraught with obstacles. And that skepticism isn't unfounded. The member nations have conflicts of interest, which could hinder their collective goals. But let's not forget, these are the same nations that have been systemically marginalized by existing financial systems. Their distrust of the West could be the glue that binds them. Any move away from the dollar is a potential win for decentralized currencies. If BRICS succeeds in establishing its own stable currency, it could set a precedent for other alliances to do the same. And if that happens, the U .S. dollar's monopoly could crumble, opening the door for cryptocurrencies to step in. But for now, it's a waiting game. BRICS has made its move. Let's see how the world responds. As we navigate the unfolding drama around BRICS and its potential to shake the very foundations of the U .S. dollar, let's pivot to another sphere where the status quo is under threat, decentralized finance. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission set its sights on the DeFi world and the implications are staggering.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 660:BRICS Challenge to Dollar Dominance and EUs Digital Euro Gamble
"Good evening and welcome to The Crypto Overnight. I'm Nickademus and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10pm Pacific on Tuesday, September 5th, 2023. Welcome back to The Crypto Overnight, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas and no BS. But we do have the news, so let's talk about that. Tonight we're diving into a whirlwind of stories that are shaking the very foundations of the financial world. Can bricks outmuscle the G7 nations? What's the European Union's grand plan for a digital euro? And in the crime sector, a $40 million exploit rocks the crypto betting platform. Ma firms are raking in big bucks in the wake of crypto firm collapses. Meanwhile, Singapore's new president casts a skeptical eye on crypto and Japan is making some intriguing moves in the crypto tax landscape. Stick around, you're not going to want to miss this. So are they going to have to change the name bricks? Here's why I ask. India is a founding member of the Bricks Alliance. Well, they're planning to change their name to Bharat. This decision will be discussed in this special parliament session on September 18th. The Bricks Alliance itself has been growing, recently adding six new countries, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Argentina, Egypt, Iran and Ethiopia. I suppose Iran could be the new eye in bricks. The US dollar is losing its stronghold in the global oil sector. Bricks aims to use local currencies for oil trade, challenging the dollar's dominance. Reports from JP Morgan indicate that the dollar's influence in the oil sector has been waning even before Bricks initiated the de -dollarization process. Bricks' GDP and purchasing power parity now accounts for 37 .3 % of the global economy, surpassing the G7 nations. The alliance controls 42 % of the global oil markets and has a combined GDP of 31 .75 trillion. The bloc covers 36 % of the Earth's surface and consists of 45 % of the global population. So this isn't just a small -time gathering. The Bricks Alliance is not just expanding in terms of member countries, it's also challenging the very foundations of global economic power. The planned name change of India to Bharat is more than symbolic. It's a statement against colonial legacies and a move toward asserting a new identity on the world stage. The decline of the US dollar in the oil sector is a seismic shift. The dollar has been the global reserve currency, especially in oil trades. Bricks is not just aiming to dethrone the dollar, it's aiming to rewrite the rules of global trade. This is a calculated push by Bricks to take control of a sector that's been long dominated by the West. The GDP numbers are staggering. Bricks now controls more than one third of the global economy. This isn't just a challenge to the G7, it's a challenge to the entire Western economic system. The Alliance's control over such a significant portion of the world's population and natural resources gives it an unprecedented leverage. Before we move on, if you're riveted by these geopolitical shifts, hit that follow button. And speaking of power shifts, let's fly from the East to the European Union. The EU has its own grand plan to shuffle the deck with a digital euro.
Mark Levin
Sebastian Gorka Reacts to Vivek Ramaswamy's Stance on Israel
"Into the rest of the Middle East. needs Israel to stand on its own two feet and then stop providing it with military support. And I said, well, wait a minute, we're giving $6 billion to Iran, Israel $3 .8 billion. Yeah. And they have a very important role in our national security and our diplomacy. And so if you just walk away, how do you just walk away from these allies? He said the same thing about Taiwan that once they teach us how to make computer chips, then we leave them. Why would they do that? So here's a kind of, you know, flip it on its head. about not How this pie in the sky of Israel should integrate into the Middle East? How about the West of the Middle East should integrate into Israel, where we're talking about a country of 9 human beings surrounded mostly by nations that have wanted to destroy it or president Trump came along. I was on the ground floor in the White House when he came up with the Abraham Accords and God bless him. He the State Department was telling President Trump. Oh, oh, you can't have peace in Middle East until you wreck Palestine. And he said, Why? Because and he said, No, no, we're going to work with Israel. We're going to have Jared travel out to the Middle East. And what does he do? He brings a peace accord with the UAE with Bahrain with Sudan with
Epicenter
A highlight from Sandeep Nailwal: Polygon 2.0 - The New Value Layer of the Internet?
"Welcome to Epicenters, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastien Couture, and I'm here with my co -host, Felipe Ernst. Today we're speaking with Sandeep Nailbal. He is the co -founder of Polygon, and he was last on the show in 2020, almost three years ago. Back then the project was still called Matic and was sort of an idea that had not really been built yet. Obviously, lots of time has passed since then and lots has happened, and Polygon is now one of the largest ecosystems in crypto. And recently they announced Polygon 2 .0, a brand new vision for the future of Polygon, which we'll get deep into here on this podcast. But before we do that, Sandeep, how are you? Well thanks for coming on and how are you doing? Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me here. And I'm doing very well, very excited for this chat. Well so are we. Obviously like I said, Polygon has become such a huge part of the broader crypto ecosystem and certainly of the crypto narratives. Take us through the last three years, right? When you had this idea, which was called Matic back then, which was one of the very early ideas for a layer two on Ethereum. How has your life changed in the last three years? So, you know, before going into the last three years, it's like, you know, but the starting of Polygon, the starting of Matic network was basically, you know, I and my other co -founder also, we were building apps, dApps actually on our, this thing, like, of course we had some protocol level understanding, but we were building dApps and we realized that, you know, Ethereum is not ready for scale. And you know, I also personally, like, I am, you know, sometimes I call myself like web three fanatic, like, you know, sometimes I question myself that, you know, am I giving too much of, or over indexing on how much the world needs this trustless decentralized world and all that. But generally, like, I've been very, you know, kind of passionate about that, you know, this is the, this is the world, or this is how the next phase of the evolution of humanity is going to happen. Like, you know, we came from those empire states where the king was the god, right? Like king can do anything that he wanted to do. And then, you know, we had, we came into these nation state systems where everything became an institution, government became an institution and people were electing the governments. But then, you know, those institutions also, in the last 40, 50 years with social media, we started realizing that, you know, how much corruption is there in these institutions. And time and again, they have proven, these institutions have proven to be prone to corruption and somebody who gets enough power, they start, you know, misusing that power. And eventually, I feel that this is the third, you know, stage of evolution of human systems, wherein, you know, these trustless applications would be there, and then even the businesses will be built in a community owned, you know, as we say, community owned businesses and things like that, and they will, you know, empower, provide more freedom to individual human beings in all that, in more aspects of their lives, basically. And somebody actually, Harvard actually did a case study on Polygon, and I was there and somebody asked me what exactly Web3 reduces the cost of, like, because every big technology reduces the cost of something, like, you know, cars reduces the cost of transportation, internet reduces the cost of, you know, information and all that, what does Web3 reduce the cost of? And I said that Web3 reduces, or blockchains reduce the cost of freedom, the cost of providing freedom or cost of providing democracy into the system, right, which is, we know that how costly it is to, you know, have democracy. So that's where we started Matic Network, you know, we truly believed in this, and we realized that the infrastructure is not ready for building those kind of applications and businesses. So we went into that, and at that point in time, Plasma was a solution which, you know, looked like, okay, that was the hottest solution in that space, and we committed that, okay, we'll build a layer 2 using Plasma, but with an EVM on the layer 2. And in 2020, we launched the chain, at that time, we launched a working Plasma version, but then most of the people did not use the Plasma chain, people started using the EVM side of the chains, even like pure EVM part of the chain, and then the chain, actually, even though the chain had Plasma built in, layer 2 built into that, on that, but most of the people used only POS chain, and then it kind of, you know, was the, you know, kind of, you know, this confusion in the terminology, whether it's a commit chain or it's a side chain or whatever it is, but then the usage kind of exploded, and it became one of the biggest, you know, blockchains, even now, I think, by daily active users and, you know, by the number of applications deployed, it's probably the biggest blockchain, but in the end, you provide this Web 3, a scalable infrastructure, and that infrastructure can only come in, if you have single zones of security, right, like, you know, you don't have, like, right now, as we have seen in the past, like, we have so many blockchains, and we were just discussing before recording also that we have too much infrastructure, not many apps, right, but those infrastructure, when we say too much infrastructure, that infrastructure is there, but these are all die separate security zones, and to connect them, you have these bridges, and every other month, we keep hearing that, you know, some of the other bridge gets hacked and things like that. So, essentially, what I'm trying to say here is that even though we have a lot of block space, that block space doesn't have one single unified security zone, like each of the zones or each of the block space has a different security assumption, and you know, people need to use this third party tools and all that to do that. So, in order to achieve that web scale for Web3, we believed, you know, once we launched the chain, you know, we also evaluated optimistic rollups, and we realized that optimistic rollups are kind of the, maybe the next stage, but they are not the end stage, because, you know, you are, you have to put all the data back on Ethereum, and then you have to have a fraud proof, it takes seven days to have those fraud proofs fully guaranteed, it's hard to build also those fraud proofs, like, currently, you know, I don't think any layer two has a, you know, fully permissioned fraud proofs, only I think, people have, you know, permissioned fraud proofs, but most of the other optimistic rollups don't even have any kind of proofs whatsoever. So, at that point itself, we decided in 2021, that ZK is the end game, and we wanted to go big on ZK. And then by that time, like, you know, we, in 2021, we merged or onboarded some of the topmost ZK talent in the space, merged one or two like Hermes polygon, like the Hermes product project, which was building a ZK rollup, they merged with polygon network. Similarly, the Meer protocol merged with polygon network. And today, we have two, three die separate teams who were building it. And, you know, the benefit of these different different teams was that in the last four years, there's multiple projects who have been trying to build these ZK rollups, but having those multiple teams, they were able to contribute to each other from different different angles. And, you know, trying to, or were able to tell the teams that where can be some gotchas that you will find three months down the line. And the result of that was that in March of this year, 2023, we launched our first, like first full blown ZK EVM, which is audited fully mature source code and all that. And we, we launched it in March. And, you know, that is actually the first full blown layer to to exist with the with the validity proofs. And, you know, since then, we have done like a lot of leaps in the ZK technology that we are building some of our ZK technology, like a plonky to pilled, this is being used by large scale amount of developers all the all across the space, whenever somebody is building on ZK, people are using this technology. And you know, like Jordi, I think you guys know Jordi Bellina, who's one of the co -founders of Polygon, he's built Circom, which is kind of the first, you know, first programming language you get into when you start to build ZK circuits and things like that. So, yeah, a lot has happened. And now today, Polygon is a ZK powerhouse. And as you as you said, they're one of the largest ecosystems in the space. But the goal from here of Polygon 2 .0 is to is the goal is same, the mission is same. How do we get Web3 to the mainstream? How do you how do we play this role to get in the next evolution of humanity? I call it Web 3 .0 as humanity 3 .0. How do we play a bigger role in that? And the goal is still the same that, you know, how to provide this infinitely scaling infrastructure for Web3, which also has, you know, same security zones, so that the value can move seamlessly from one place to another, you know, meaning that the entire block space should look like one single blockchain, one single block space instead of like, you know, you, you, you kind of, you know, moving your value or bridging from one chain to another and things like that, kind of getting the similar kind of qualities that the Web 2 .0 today as for information, it's infinitely, practically infinitely scalable, but it is also, you know, seamless, same, same case with Web 3 .0, infinitely scalable block space, but seamless movement of value. That is what is Polygon 2 .0. That's the whole journey. Cool. So I think I understand the value proposition for Polygon 2 .0. In a nutshell, how will it look or how will it be designed just so we can kind of deep dive into the individual bits later? Absolutely. Great question. So it's very simple, like, you know, so we believe that under the fundamental layer of this trustless, you know, world Web 3 .0 is Ethereum and that's where the most of the value will be created or more than created, I would say most of the value will be secured. Right. And so that is the settlement layer where, where all the value is being settled and secured and things like that. But on top of that, you will have hundreds and hundreds or maybe thousands or millions of chains which will connect back into Ethereum using some sort of a proving mechanism, which we believe that ZK and most of the biggest researchers in the space believe that ZK is the end game for that. So, you know, you prove all of the execution on all of these chains back on Ethereum. And then because every chain is proving the ZK, their execution back on Ethereum, the value can move to and fro between these chains just by relying on those ZK. So that's the simplest idea about it. And between these chains and now how it will look is that, you know, you have Ethereum, you have hundreds and hundreds of these chains, all of them are proving back to Ethereum and they can rely on each other and the value can seamlessly move between each other. So all these chains connected to this common bridge or ZK proving layer, which currently we call it LXLY bridge, but we are moving it to an aggregator layer. So it will, it will be aggregated together. And with that aggregated layer, all these chains connected to this aggregator layer will feel like one single value network, right? Instead of just like the way internet feels today, like you are sitting in somewhere in Europe, I am sitting in UAE, we can create, exchange, share this information, same way, you know, with Polygon to model, we believe should be possible for the value, infinite amount of scaling, more blockchains, more applications need more block space, they can spin up and dedicated block space also, not publicly shared block space, they can spin up their own chains, but their value is still secured. Anybody can trust their value because it is being ZK proven on Ethereum and then that value can move around.
The Breakdown
A highlight from PayPal's Stablecoin is the (Second) Biggest Crypto News Story of the Year
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, N .L .W. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, August 8th, and today we are talking about PayPal's new stablecoin. 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. All right, friends, today we are talking about the big PayPal news, which was announced yesterday, and it hits at what I think is one of the biggest themes of the year, which is TradFi coming into the absolute utter wreckage of this industry after the last year plus of bad behavior and positioning themselves to take over like adults compared to some children who have lost their privileges. We'll get into that a little bit more, though, so first, let's talk about details and the reactions from the community. So PayPal is launching PayPal USD or PYUSD, a stablecoin that is issued by Paxos. It will be fully reserved using bank deposits, short -term treasuries, and other cash -like instruments. Initially, the stablecoin will be only available to U .S. customers. In one of the bigger parts of the announcement, PiUSD is an Ethereum -based ERC20 token. That means it will have compatibility across the Ethereum ecosystem from day one. Customers will be able to transfer the stablecoin between PayPal and Ethereum wallets, person -to -person payments will be enabled, the stablecoin will be integrated into the existing PayPal checkout process, and it will also be convertible into other cryptocurrencies already available on PayPal's platform. Now, while the stablecoin will be redeemable for U .S. dollars on a one -to -one basis, that feature will be intermediated by PayPal. What's more, this is happening right away. The rollout to U .S. customers will happen gradually over the coming weeks. The company also said that support for cross -platform payments with Venmo users will be coming soon. Now, there doesn't appear to be any way to prevent non -U .S. residents from getting access to the stablecoin on Ethereum, but details on that point haven't been made clear yet. There's already a smart contract deployed to the Ethereum network to operate the stablecoin, although there hasn't been any activity so far. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in a statement, Now, a stablecoin has been a long time coming for PayPal. The company first hinted at plans for this in early 2022 and obtained a full -bit license from New York State later that year. Indeed, along those lines, pretty much every step of the way, PayPal has gone to pains to ensure their crypto products are well -regulated and authorized. Schulman said that PayPal had extensively discussed their plans with regulators, stating, We are in a place right now in these conversations that people feel comfortable with a respected, well -regulated U .S. financial entity moving into the stablecoin space, and I think it's an important initial move. Put a big ol' pin in that point, as I think it is extremely, extremely telling. In their communications about the news, PayPal highlighted their choice of Ethereum, basically saying that they wanted it to be easily plugged into the existing ecosystem of developers' wallets and Web3 applications as well as exchanges. Now, on the back end, Paxos will be providing all of the infrastructure for the stablecoin and will begin issuing monthly reserve reports starting in September. Walter Hesseert, the head of strategy at Paxos, called this a watershed moment for the stablecoin industry when it comes to regulatory compliance. He noted that unlike some rival stablecoin issuers, Paxos is regulated as a trust company by the New York Department of Financial Services. Hesseert said, The difference is significant because we have a prudential regulator. In our case, you have a regulator overseeing every activity involved in the issuance, including the reserve management. This means no matter where you are in the world, anybody who has this token is protected by the oversight and the rules that are set for us by New York. Now, speaking of Paxos competitors, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said of the launch that, quote, It is a strong signal that near -instant, borderless and programmable payments in the form of stablecoins are here to stay. He also said, I'd like to congratulate PayPal and Paxos for the launch of PiUSD. It's incredibly exciting to see such a significant internet and payments company entering the stablecoin space. This is what happens when we start to get regulatory clarity. And with the Payment Stablecoin Act, this can open up a free and competitive market for dollar stablecoin issuers with strong supervision, allowing the U .S. to compete with digital dollars that are uniformly safe, transparent, liquid and supervised to Fed standards. Stablecoin laws are arriving in Japan, the U .K., EU, Hong Kong, UAE, Singapore and the U .S. Customers will know who they are dealing with, and firms that can survive scrutiny by central banks and prudential regulators will thrive. That's the market in 2024 and 2025. Now, staying on this regulatory theme for a moment, Patrick McHenry, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, had a strong opinion on the PayPal stablecoin launch and what it foreshadows for crypto in the U .S. He said in a statement, Now, it's notable not only that McHenry has been consistently one of the most steadfast advocates in Congress for rational crypto legislation, but that much of his work over the past 18 months has been focused on brokering bipartisan agreement on what stablecoin regulations should look like. Now, as a little aside, it is pretty remarkable to think about how different this response is as compared to the last time a big tech firm attempted to roll out a stablecoin. I'm referring, of course, to mid 2019 when Facebook announced Libra. That announcement was met with incredible skepticism and Zuckerberg himself was hauled into Congress to explain. Now, there are a bunch of reasons why this is different. One notable one was that Facebook wasn't a U .S. dollar stablecoin, but was a Bancor style basket of global currencies in which the U .S. dollar represented only 50 percent of the reserve. Second, Zuckerberg was planning to set up in Switzerland rather than the U .S. Third, it was Zuckerberg who was already in hot water for different reasons for both the Republicans and the Democrats. And of course, on top of all that, ultimately, Facebook wasn't first and foremost a financial services company, although PayPal is also nominally a technology company. It's never been anything but a financial company. There is also the fact that simply put, we're four years on. That's four years for Congress to have learned about and be able to distinguish between. Moving on, though, let's talk about what the denizens of crypto Twitter thought about this. One of the biggest themes of conversations was talk about potential restrictions, potential censorship and whether this is just a central bank digital currency by another name. Lawyer Sasha Hodler says, I just read the PayPal USD terms of service, full KYC, custody by Paxos, tied to your PayPal login, PayPal can reverse any transactions, claim to be fully backed by actual USD. All the censorship capabilities of a CBDC, but launched by big tech instead of the government. Riot platforms VP of research, Pierre Richard echoed those sentiments, saying so -called stable coins are permissioned fiat corporate versions of CBDC. Mark Jeffrey from Boolean Fund said, so basically the PayPal stable coin is a CBDC wearing tether lipstick. But what about specific concerns? Well, the big one was summed up by Crypto McKenna, who wrote, the PayPal stable coin has the ability to freeze your account and wipe your balance. I assume all payment processors will be forced to implement the CBDC type functionality. Now, others had issues with PayPal specifically. Chairman Burr Bernanke wrote, ah, yes, PayPal, the noble crusading company that stands for free speech, financial access for everyone and free flowing capital. Notably, they've never debunked anyone or frozen anyone's funds for activity they deemed not illegal, but immoral. There's absolutely no cases of PayPal demanking anyone. And when they've accidentally frozen accounts, they've been very quick to resolve the issues and have no track record of simply keeping your money. I can't think of a safer place to put my funds. Obviously, that commentary was being very sarcastic. Now, Bitcoin or Walker writes, can't wait to not use PayPal's new stable coin because I already deleted my PayPal when they said they would steal twenty five hundred from people for misinformation. For those of you who don't remember, that was a policy that was discussed in October of 2022. Now, others are sort of surprised that people are surprised that PayPal would act like a centralized company. Bernals writes, wait, people thought that the PayPal coin wouldn't be centralized? It's a fully backed stablecoin issued by a highly regulated TradFi entity. If you thought they weren't going to ham handedly bake in token freezes, I don't know what to tell you. ChainlinkGod writes, yes, PayPal's new centralized PiUSD stablecoin has centralized admin functions, as does USDT, USDC, USDP and all other pre -existing centralized stable coins issued by trusted third parties. It's not really that surprising, given the regulatory compliance requirements around handling fiat with consumers. Honestly, I'm surprised they actually went with the traditional stablecoin model of blacklist versus a more aggressive model of whitelist. Austin Campbell echoed these themes, saying the New York Department of Financial Services guidance for licensing stablecoins literally spells out that BSA, AML and sanctions compliance is required. This is probably the lightest touch way to do that versus a whitelist or something. The cost of doing business for a fiat backed coin. Former chief information security officer at A16Z Crypto Naseem wrote, I don't get all the fuss around PayPal's PiUSD having a centralized supply management. They are a financial institution whose goal is to make money move faster and more efficiently, not to be decentralized. People need to internalize that blockchains can be very efficient, interoperable rails for many use cases, regardless of the ethos alignment. Technology is rarely used for its original author's purpose, just like mobile phones or the Internet. David Morris from Coindesk puts it really simply, saying PayPal USD will be the most censored and seized centralized cryptocurrency of all time. Not even saying that is a sweeping condemnation. It just is what it is. Shapeshift founder Eric Voorhees agreed, but put a positive slant on it, saying you should assume that all centralized stablecoins can do this. Still, the launch is hugely positive, further helps the world move into crypto and from centralized crypto, people discover and become familiar with decentralized crypto. And that, of course, gets us to the takes about how this is, one, good for Ethereum and two, good generally for crypto mainstreaming. And of course, a lot of that is about scale. Business analyst Ethan Hughes writes, over the last 30 days, Ethereum has peaked at 556 ,000 active addresses. PayPal has 435 million active users and just issued their own stablecoin as an ERC 20 token on Ethereum. PayPal has 782 times more users than Ethereum. If only one percent of PayPal's users onboard to crypto through the stablecoin, that would result in 8x more DeFi users than we have peaked over the past month. Now, I could read one of a million other bullish tweets as well, but you get the idea. And I think it's pretty crisply put. There obviously are big implications if people actually choose to use this thing. Now, still, when it comes to the big themes that we've been talking about this year, I think one of the biggest discussion points are the regulatory implications. Crypto lawyer at Wilkie Farr, Mike Selig, writes, banking regulators have essentially said banks can only issue stablecoins on private blockchains. PayPal will issue its stablecoin on Ethereum. This regulatory arbitrage has to put pressure on Congress to pass a stablecoin bill ASAP. Austin Campbell quote tweeted that and said, I've been saying for a while that stablecoins are coming whether the banking regulators want them to or not. Fighting on the hill of defending a wildly antiquated system that rips off consumers is not going to end well. We need to embrace technology and empowering the end user. Jason Yanowitz from Blockworks writes, PayPal taking on USDC, love to see it. It's easy for regulators to be anti stablecoin when shadowy supercoders create them, less easy when it's major US financial organizations. Get ready for the stablecoin narrative to shift in DC. Now, speaking of a shift, Nick Carter, one of the most careful trackers of Operation Chokepoint 2 .0, definitely sees something significant here. He tweeted, PayPal news is the first positive piece of news I've seen in the Chokepoint 2 .0 category since January. Paxos BUSD was ground zero in terms of extrajudicial coordinated cross agency regulatory harassment. The fact that PayPal was able to get this through with Paxos is telling. Hal Presett, Northrock Digital puts it even more simply, tweeting, Paxos works with finance, send them a Wells notice and shut it down. Paxos works with PayPal. We approve. Clear trend here from US regulators to try to marginalize those they feel are shady bad actors and bring in large US institutions to run the show instead. This has implications for ETFs. And this, of course, gets to what I think is the big, big theme here. The incredibly clear trend right now is that all of the big companies, the big traditional financial institutions who spent the last bull run dabbling and starting to get aware and learning and preparing themselves and who had started to spend the beginning of this bear market building infrastructure, all of those firms saw in the collapse of FTX and the following regulatory response, not a reason to leave the space, but an incredible vacuum in which to operate. The thinking has to be from these players that crypto native institutions and startups had their chance and they biffed it. So now the maturation of the assets and the growth of interest among consumers in them and on the other, the regulatory disfavor of a lot of the institutions that those consumers were dealing with. What's the answer? Of course, it's for TradFi to come in and clean up. It is not an accident that the thing that set off the recent shift in spot Bitcoin ETFs was BlackRock entering the space, the world's biggest asset manager. PayPal's announcement of their stablecoin is absolutely part two of that trend that started with BlackRock's ETF proposal. But in no universe is it the last version of this that we're going to see. Now, ultimately, when it comes to the influence of the PayPal stablecoin itself, it is very easy to do the math on the total addressable market and come away salivating. But at the end of the day, it will be a test as much as anything about whether regular people have uses that they want to use stablecoins for. Is this, in other words, just another stablecoin competitor for the crypto natives, or is it something that brings more people in? For that, we will, of course, have to wait and see, but damn, this is a spicy and significant announcement, I would not sleep on the significance of it. Appreciate you guys listening, as always, and until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
The Breakdown
A highlight from How Stablecoins Could Save the Dollar's Global Reserve Role
"What's going guys, it is Sunday, August 6th, 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. Alright friends, happy Sunday! Today we are reading two pieces, both on the topic of stablecoins, and more specifically the topic of what stablecoins mean for the US and US dollars relationship with the rest of the world. The first piece is called, stablecoins, a potential counter to de -dollarization. The piece was written by Yiannis Giocas, a senior director of product innovation at Moody's Analytics. Yiannis writes, As the global economy continues to absorb geopolitical tensions, we see increasing speculation that the U .S. dollar's global dominance could wane, with a steady decline in the dollar's share of central bank reserves and increasing de -dollarization efforts among BRICS nations and other emerging markets. While the dollar is likely to remain the dominant reserve currency globally in the near future, domestic and foreign policies could erode its overall dominance. Amid these shifts, U .S. regulated fiat -backed stablecoins may offer a novel counter -narrative that can enhance the dollar's global power and mitigate the impacts of de -dollarization. The current global economic landscape is marked by an increased tendency among nations to diversify their reserves away from the U .S. dollar, exacerbated by the Federal Reserve's rate hikes to tackle domestic inflation. Small but growing allocations to other major currencies have reduced the U .S. dollar's share of central bank holdings to 58 % in the last quarter of 2022, from 71 % in 2000. Concurrently, the shadow economy, a sector comprising economic activities that are not officially recorded in a country's gross domestic product due to their illicit nature or the desire to avoid taxes or regulations, continues to be a significant part of many economies. Here, the U .S. dollar often serves as a preferred medium of exchange due to its stability and widespread acceptance. For example, in countries with high inflation like Turkey and Argentina, with rates of 38 .2 % and 115 .6 % as of June 2023, respectively, residents scramble to convert their income and savings into U .S. dollars for protection. Meanwhile, they face capital controls limiting foreign currency holdings and a central bank -set currency exchange rate that may undervalue their currency by up to 50 % as witnessed with Argentina's peso. Consequently, everyday consumers have been utilizing DeFi seeking refuge in stablecoins, thus overcoming these economic constraints. Amid this complexity, U .S. regulated fiat -backed stablecoins present a potential solution. These digital tokens are pegged to the value of a fiat currency, typically the U .S. dollar, and are designed to maintain a stable value relative to the underlying asset. They can offer the stability of the U .S. dollar combined with the flexibility and technological advantages of cryptocurrency, providing a novel financial tool that can help solidify the dollar's position in the global economy. As the regulatory landscape around stablecoins in the U .S. evolves, it is becoming clear that these digital assets could play a critical role in mitigating the impact of de -dollarization of the global economy, which, if left unchecked, could cause inflationary and cost -of -borrowing pressures for the U .S. Recent inquiry from the U .S. Senate's Banking Committee to stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle highlight the growing awareness of the potential risks as well as benefits associated with these digital tokens. Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle, has noted that well -regulated stablecoins can help reinforce the U .S. dollar's position in the global economy. He argues that if the Federal Reserve can gain control over non -bank stablecoin issuers, it can ensure these tokens are backed by secure assets such as dollars or treasury bills. This move could facilitate the introduction of a digital dollar into the core global economy, providing a robust counter to non -dollar trade regimes. Furthermore, U .S. regulated fiat -backed stablecoins could play a significant role in countries in which the dollar is currently widely used outside the formal economy. By replacing shadow U .S. dollars with blockchain -trackable digital tokens, these stablecoins could offer a more transparent and regulated alternative for transactions, thereby reducing the risks associated with the shadow economy. That said, as private enterprises, stablecoin issuers may be subject to fewer restrictions than alternatives such as CBDCs or tokenized deposits when expanding into new markets. This provides them with greater flexibility and potential for growth if they comply with their U .S. regulatory obligations. In conclusion, U .S. regulated fiat -backed stablecoins offer a potential strategy to counter de -dollarization efforts. By leveraging the stability of the U .S. dollar and the flexibility of digital currencies, these tokens could provide an additional tool for maintaining the global financial influence of the U .S. dollar. Our second piece today is a related piece by former Breakdown guest Austin Campbell. It's called Pass the Stablecoin Bill Now. Austin writes, This definition also reveals something very important about fiat -backed stablecoins in particular. They are old and understood financial products, using new technology. After the financial crisis, there was a significant period of reform in financial markets, where we gave preference to price stability products that worked properly, such as government money market funds or stable value funds, and penalized, restricted, or increased capital for those which did not work properly, such as deposits at highly leveraged banks, prime money market funds, or securitizations. This means we know how to define safe stable reserves for a stablecoin that are not a threat to financial markets. And this bill does this. At the same time, despite the lack of clarity and regulatory animus towards stablecoins in the U .S., the space has grown internationally from zero to well over a hundred billion dollars in less than a decade. Every dollar that flows into stablecoins is funding for the U .S. Treasury at a time when we desperately need it. Every dollar that flows into stablecoins is a dollar that can leave an exploitative local financial system, or a high -priced intermediary, and flow into a simple, transparent, cheap option, if structured like the payment stablecoins in the bill. Non -U .S. jurisdictions have realized the power of this innovation and are racing to take advantage of it. Singapore's MAS has granted a payments license to Circle, stablecoin projects are launching in Bermuda in the UAE, and First Digital has already launched a USD stablecoin in Hong Kong. Tether, perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the U .S. antipathy towards stablecoins, has now controls 80 billion dollars in assets, it recently reported profits of Q2 of more than 1 billion dollars. This means that the decision we face in the United States is not yes to stablecoins versus no to stablecoins, it is yes to stablecoins versus yes to stablecoins offshore. That stablecoins will proceed elsewhere means this is a critical decision for the United States from both a national security standpoint and a financial stability one. Onshore stablecoins, where the U .S. regulates the issuer, means that we will have the ability to perform client due diligence and understand money flows on every individual and corporation, engaging in the minting or burning of the stablecoins, giving us concrete knowledge of the starting point and ending point of every transaction that touches traditional dollar rails after being on a blockchain. It also means that we can ensure the reserves are transparent, segregated, properly managed, and put into instruments that are both stable for consumers and help fund the U .S. government and economy at a time of raising rates and growing deficits. In a worst case scenario, if the United States does not act, it also risks having the dollar no longer be the defining unit of account for crypto and blockchain. Perhaps it could be the euro owing to the passage of Mika, perhaps it could be the yuan owing to China reopening Hong Kong as a crypto hub and embracing the technology once more. Certainly the global share of reserves held in dollars have been falling, and the BRIC nations have been actively searching for alternatives to continued use of the dollar. A future where several decades forward blockchain technology is the backbone of financial services but dollars are barely used, and all of the information about the individuals or corporations transacting are in the hands of foreign governments, who may not be friendly to the U .S., is a bleak one for both the U .S. economy and the strength of the dollar. On the flip side of the coin, if the stablecoin bill HR 4766 is passed, the United States will have a regulatory framework that is likely best in class globally. Stablecoins will have federal recognition, with smaller projects able to be regulated at a state level, allowing for experimentation, but larger projects eventually being drawn into the federal regulatory apparatus. The payments stablecoins allowed within the bill will be transparent, conservatively reserved, with prudential oversight and clear rules around redemption and consumer protection. In short, they will work exactly like they are supposed to represent — safe, secure dollars on a blockchain. This is why it is paramount for the U .S. to act, as we cannot risk creating a future where it becomes a bit player in global markets. In that light, the arguments against advancing the stablecoin bill simply do not hold water. Stablecoins are not a systemic threat, as they are financial instruments we are already familiar with, merely using different ledger technology. The only losers, if HR 4766 advances, are entrenched incumbents like Tether, charging exorbitant fees to those of us who wish to use our financial system for payments. I will shed no tears on their behalf, and would urge the House and the Senate to embrace open, fair competition, where the U .S. is able to unleash innovation and our drive to bring better financial technology and inclusion to the world. Alright guys, back to NLW here for just a really quick wrap up. This will surprise you exactly zero, but I find the conversation about stablecoins in the United States to be so myopic and ridiculous and just patently absurd in every way. It is wild to me that there aren't more politicians who grok this notion that natural stablecoin demand is a way to extend the dollar's influence for another generation. Now the good news is I think that there are some politicians who actually do, and once again I kind of think it's more of an age gap than it is a party gap. But at least we're finally in a position where things are moving in this dimension, and I'm hopeful that in a year's time, let's say, we will have to be reading the same type of op -ed over and over again on LRS, and we will be on to being mad at the U .S. government for not getting something else. Anyways, I want to say thanks again to these authors for their great pieces, and thanks to you guys for listening. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from SEC GARY GENSLER ETHEREUM CORRUPTION EXPOSED! COINBASE SEC LAWSUIT & HUGE HEDERA HBAR NEWS!
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple, Google, iHeart, whatever your favorite podcast platform is, please hit the five star rating and review and it supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. This content is brought to you by Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. I've been a user of Uphold since 2017, they're one of my go -to exchanges, they have 10 plus million users, 250 plus cryptocurrencies, and they're available in 150 countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities on this platform. If you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Well, folks, I want to start off by talking about Hong Kong's big push towards crypto, opening up their doors and their gates, enabling a lot of financing and they have regulations now. And we know Hong Kong is under China's control. So this is really China's chess move here against the United States. China sees the United States is failing when it comes to crypto regulations and all the craziness that's going on here with the SEC and Gary Ganser. And they're doing a 180 from what they did years ago. Years ago, they banned crypto trading, they banned Bitcoin mining, now they're opening up their doors and they're doing it through Hong Kong, one of the major financial hubs in the world. And here's a quote from Bloomberg, Hong Kong has opened up to mass market trading of Bitcoin, part of the city's push to become a global hub. So we are in a crypto arms race, if you want to call it here, folks, and I've said it many times, any country that bans crypto, they are writing their economic death sentence because this is going to be a big part of the economy, not the only part, but obviously a big part of it. Blockchain and crypto will be powering a lot of things, AI and all these other things are going to be a part of it, of course, but everything will be running on the blockchain. So you have to embrace this Web3 technology. And here, Blockworks, they reported on this as well. They released an article, here's the title, why Hong Kong could be crypto's next center of gravity. A number of industry participants are eyeing the development of Hong Kong's crypto regulatory initiatives. So this is part of why I'm still bullish on crypto, despite the headwinds we're facing here in the United States, because crypto is not specific to the US, right? There's trading happening outside of the United States. There are people investing in crypto. There's a lot of capital and funds and a lot of building happening in UAE and Asian markets and much more. We saw the UK and the EU have passed crypto regulations and China, if I'm not mistaken, I think they're the second largest economy and I could be wrong there, but they're in the top five at least. They've got a lot of capital. There's a lot of funds there, folks, and they're looking to attract as much business. I think we saw some of the folks in Hong Kong, some of the financial regulators were even saying, hey, Coinbase and some of you companies are facing problems here in the United States, come set up shop in Hong Kong. So it's amazing what's happening and the United States better get its act together because this thing is moving fast around the world. Now let's move ahead. Speaking of the SEC and scumbag regulator, Gary Gensler, folks, today we got a whole plethora releases of of FOIA requests from the SEC showing the larger scale conflicts of interest with Bill Hinman, Jay Clayton, and the Ethereum folks. We all know that Bill Hinman gave the Ethereum free pass speech. We know he was being paid by Simpson Thatcher, which was part of the Ethereum Alliance, clear conflict of interest. He ignored the ethics office, the SEC ethics office warnings that this is wrong. You're not supposed to be doing it. It's in fact criminal. And we know chairman at the time, Jay Clayton, rubber stamped the entire thing. He knew what was going on. So it's funny that we get this massive dump of further evidence after the ripple ruling. I'm telling you, Gary Gensler is not happy today. And in fact, they didn't want this to come out before. And it had, it took empire oversight, the nonprofit, a whistleblower organization to sue the SEC to get this. They have to sue folks to get this information. So here's what they tweeted out. The SEC has now turned over 324 pages of new documents in response to our crypto conflicts for your requests. The latest batch of documents follows a may foil lawsuit brought by empire oversight in the district of Columbia. Joseph Lubin and consensus played a more central role than previously known in then SEC director of corporate finance, William Hinman that's bill him and controversial June 14th, 2018 crypto speech Lubin listened to this folks, apparently also apparently brought Hinman and Ethereum creator, Vitalik Buterin together as the speech was drafted. Remember some of you who follow me on Twitter, I was calling out Vitalik saying, you are a hypocrite, sir. I respect you as a coder and you know what you built with Ethereum, but as a person, you're a piece of shit because you are trashing XRP holders, seeing a whole bunch of nonsense while you are doing some backroom deals with the corrupt SEC. Now empire oversight, the tweets continue here to set investors and attorneys closely associated with Ethereum were prominent on the list of a March 28, 2018 meeting on a crypto safe harbor proposal. On August 22nd, 2019 email show Hinman met with Simpson thatcher partner Chris Lynn while Lynn was representing Canaan, a crypto mining client on its IPO. Now Canaan was not only mining Bitcoin, they were mining Ethereum at a time because the Ethereum was proof of work. It was using the proof of work consensus back then before it went to proof of stake. So that's an important note. Finally they said here, SEC ethics office had repeatedly worn Hinman against such meetings since he was receiving millions of dollars in payments and since in Thatcher while at the SEC, but of course, Hinman, uh, you know, he ignored those warnings and of course he's not being held accountable. And both him and Jay Clayton went to go work in the crypto industry. Funny how that worked out, uh, here, John Deaton's crypto law. They said the following with regards to the release in the latest release of the SEC emails by empire oversight, an email from an SEC staffer proves that Hinman met with Simpson thatcher partner Chris Lynn while Lynn was representing a crypto mining company before Hinman's division, uh, for an IPO. Three days earlier, Hinman's division corresponded with Canaan and copied Lynn regarding the Simpson thatcher client's draft F1 statement. Hinman had been explicitly warned by the ethics office 19 months earlier. He had a bar under the criminal finance conflict with Simpson against any meetings with that firm. Um, folks, we have to keep exposing this because, uh, folks, we got to keep the, these people accountable and I highly recommend you go follow empower oversight and Jason Foster, who's the president. Once again, they're nonprofit. You can support them, but at least go give a like in a tweet, right? Even if you're not making a donation, get the information out there because I'm telling you Gary Gensler, Hinman, and these guys don't want this information out there, but we're going to hold them accountable. They work for the people, right? They were at the sec, they're there to serve the people. So even Jason Foster said, what is the secs office of inspector general doing about this? We have another pending foyer seeking all sec communications about our may, 2022 referral. Jason's absolutely right. What are they going to do? So this is where we got to contact our representatives, folks, contact Tom Emmer, all these folks, right? Who are in the house financial committee services, and I'm going to do the same thing.
The Crypto Overnighter
"uae" Discussed on The Crypto Overnighter
"<Speech_Male> <Advertisement> <Silence> <SpeakerChange> <Speech_Music_Male> <Music> Kim said that he did not cash <Speech_Male> out any of his tokens <Speech_Male> and did not violate <Speech_Male> any laws. <Speech_Male> Now there's <Speech_Male> no reporting requirement <Speech_Male> for virtual assets <Speech_Male> in South Korea's public <Speech_Male> service ethics <Speech_Male> act. However, <Speech_Male> the timing <Speech_Male> of Kim's withdrawals <Speech_Male> has raised concerns <Speech_Male> about the potential <Speech_Male> for a conflict of <Speech_Male> interest. Kim <Speech_Male> had co sponsored <Speech_Male> an amendment to the <Speech_Male> income tax act <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> in July of 2021. <Speech_Male> <Speech_Male> Which included a provision <Speech_Male> to defer <Speech_Male> taxation on virtual <Speech_Male> assets. <Speech_Male> South Korea <Speech_Male> postponed plans <Speech_Male> to tax income from <Speech_Male> crypto as well as <Speech_Male> income from the transfer <Speech_Male> or lending <Speech_Male> of virtual assets <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> to 2025. <Silence> <Advertisement> Now <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> this investigation <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> is still ongoing. <Speech_Male> In this case <Speech_Male> has harmed <Speech_Male> the South Korean crypto <Speech_Male> market. The <Speech_Male> price of women's tokens <Speech_Male> has fallen by more than <Speech_Male> 20% <Speech_Male> since the news <Speech_Male> came out. <Speech_Male> This case is also <Speech_Male> likely to <SpeakerChange> have a broader <Speech_Male> impact on crypto <Speech_Male> regulations in <Speech_Male> South Korea. <Speech_Male> The government is <Speech_Male> already considering <Speech_Male> tightening its <Speech_Male> rules on crypto trading <Speech_Male> and investment. <Speech_Male> The investigation <Speech_Male> into Kemp's transactions <Speech_Male> could lead to <Speech_Male> even tighter regulations <Speech_Male> further <Speech_Male> dampening the South <Speech_Male> Korean crypto market. <Speech_Music_Male> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <Speech_Music_Male> <Advertisement> <SpeakerChange> <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> Coinbase is meeting <Speech_Male> with policymakers <Speech_Male> regulators, <Speech_Male> crypto founders, <Speech_Male> and clients <Speech_Male> in the UAE <Speech_Male> this week. <Speech_Male> CEO and <Speech_Male> cofounder Brian Armstrong <Speech_Male> is also giving <Speech_Male> a keynote at <Speech_Male> the inaugural <Speech_Male> Dubai FinTech summit. <Silence> <Speech_Male> Armstrong <SpeakerChange> has praised <Speech_Male> the UAE for <Speech_Male> its proactive and <Speech_Male> progressive regulatory <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> approach to crypto. <Silence> <Advertisement> He tweeted <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> that the region <Speech_Male> quote deserves <Speech_Male> a lot of credit <Speech_Male> for being forward <Speech_Male> thinking on crypto. <Silence> <Speech_Male> First dedicated crypto <Speech_Male> regulator <SpeakerChange> in the <Silence> world. <Speech_Male> A clear rule <Speech_Male> book published, <Speech_Male> business friendly, <Speech_Male> plus <Speech_Male> strong consumer protections. <Speech_Male> <Speech_Male> Really enjoying my <Speech_Male> visit so far, he added. <Silence> Coinbase's <Speech_Male> tensions <Speech_Male> with U.S. regulators <Speech_Male> have been growing <Speech_Male> in recent months. <Speech_Male> In March, <Speech_Male> the SEC <Speech_Male> sent coinbase <Speech_Male> a wells notice <Speech_Male> alerting the exchange <Speech_Male> to quote possible <Speech_Male> violations of <Speech_Male> securities laws. <Speech_Male> In April, <Speech_Male> coinbase sued <Speech_Male> the SEC to force <Speech_Male> the agency to respond <Speech_Male> to a petition that <Speech_Male> the agency filed <Speech_Male> demanding the <Speech_Male> SEC published <Speech_Male> specific rules <Speech_Male> for digital assets. <Speech_Male> <Speech_Male> The SEC is considering <Speech_Male> whether the Sioux <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> coinbase for violating <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> securities laws. <Speech_Male> If the <Speech_Male> SEC does Sue, <Speech_Male> <Advertisement> it could <Speech_Male> significantly impact <Speech_Male> the crypto market. <Silence> Coinbase <Speech_Male> could be forced to <Speech_Male> stop offering cryptocurrency <Speech_Male> trading services, <Speech_Male> hurting <Speech_Male> the
AP News Radio
Leaked US intel: Russia operatives claimed new ties with UAE
"A leaked document suggests U.S. spies caught Russian intelligence officers, boasting they convinced the oil rich United Arab Emirates to work against U.S. and UK intelligence agencies. The purported document was posted online as part of a major U.S. intelligence breach officials have declined to comment on the document which at the top secret markings, and was viewed by The Associated Press. Of the emirati government has dismissed the allegations that the UAE had deepened ties with Russia as categorically false, but the allegation comes at a time of growing U.S. concerns about companies in the UAE, helping Russia thought international sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I'm Charles De Ledesma
The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated
China Takes Center Stage
"Latest in the war. French and Chinese leaders meet amid tensions, okay? So Macron has gone to Beijing. You know this is playing the center stage role here. General secretary Xi Jinping, because nobody wants to meet with Biden because the president is in firm. Saudi Iranian foreign ministers agreed to resume flights after Beijing meeting. Oh, great. What meaning is that? The one that's not being reported on because of this idiocy in Manhattan. Iran and Saudi foreign ministers meet in China. They've had a restore security and stability. I'm just a UAE, our strongest ally along with Israel in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates, meeting with Iran. This is what happens with an infant president. It's your allies say how we can't count on this guy. We can't come on this team. Tony blinken and Jake Sullivan, nah, and they begin to make deals with the enemy. And Beijing emerges.
AP News Radio
More oil producers join Saudis in surprise production cuts
"Several major oil producing countries joined Saudi Arabia and shrinking their output. Shortly after a Saudi announcement on planned production cuts by 500,000 oil barrels per day until the year end, various other major producers, including the UAE, Iraq, Algeria and Kazakhstan, are informing they'll make similar, but smaller reductions for a total of 1.15 million barrels daily. The surprising moves could bring an increase in oil prices globally and strain relations with the U.S.. Higher oil prices can benefit Russian president Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine and force Americans and others to pay even more at the pump amid inflation partly fueled by that war. I'm Mimi Montgomery
AP News Radio
New crew from US, Russia and UAE arrives at space station
"A new crew has arrived at the International Space Station. NASA TV recorded the docking which occurred at one 40 a.m. Eastern Time. Dragon SpaceX on the big loop capture confirmed. Business dragon top of the psyche. The SpaceX capsule and its four astronauts had to wait some 65 feet from the orbiting lab, as flight controllers in California scrambled to come up with a software fix for a malfunctioning capsule docking hook, the new crew is from the United States Russia and United Arab Emirates, sultan Al nati is only the second person from the UAE to rocket into orbit. I'm Donna water
AP News Radio
SpaceX launches US, Russia, UAE astronauts to space station
"SpaceX has launched four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, including an astronaut from the Arab world. Three, two, one, and just full power and lift off. The falcon rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center shortly after midnight, carrying the four astronauts, including sultan Al nati, only the second emirati to fly to space, Salem Al Mari is director general of the Muhammad bin Rashid Space Center. It was a beautiful launch. I think it was a gorgeous launch. And for us, I think made all the sweeter because we had many Marathi on board. Mission will last 6th months. I'm done with water
The Passing Shot Tennis Podcast
"uae" Discussed on The Passing Shot Tennis Podcast
"Abu Dhabi. Whoo wins China's first ever ATP title and Djokovic requests an exemption to play Indian Wells. Kim Chris, today is the 13th of February and we are here to catch up on the weekend tennis at tennis weekly headquarters, especially backed by our crowdfunders Georgina Davis and David whitefield. We have had an enthralling week on the tour ATP and WTA two 50s and 5 hundreds championship points saved and some historic moments I feel potentially in the context of the season, which we're going to be getting onto, but Kim, first of all, what I'm excited to talk about before we get into the podcast is you have actually been a way and on holiday because I know there was some confusion about some later grams during our Australian open coverage, whether you're in Belgium or not, but actually over the last week you have been abroad. I actually have been away, no confusion. My Instagram is kind of up to date. But yeah, I've been away. I've been to Majorca, been Palmer for a long weekend of sunshine. And I have brought some ensembles back for both of you as well. You'll be pleased to know. Was this a rapper scouting mission? Of course not. Never. On the other side of the island, actually. So other side of the island, that makes it sound like you were the TV show lost. What 5000 episodes later and they all found to be. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Spoiler alert, and he lost listeners. I started watching that and then just gave up after to think four episodes back in the day. But yeah, no, I'm back from New York. So we haven't actually caught up for a couple of weeks. So it's nice to be back with you all. And I'm very excited to listen to your episode at the Davis Cup. Chris, you did a fantastic job out in Copenhagen. I was listening and screaming with pride at tennis weekly's presence at the devil. I know. I was like a proud dad. You found Freddie, yeah, proud dad Joel. And just fangirl here, Freddie Nielsen on the pod. Parents. Proud parents of the party. Send me out there and give
ACN Newswire
Blockchain Life will host the 10th Global Blockchain and Crypto Forum in Dubai
"12 a.m. Monday, February 13th, 2023. Blockchain life will host the tenth global blockchain and crypto forum in Dubai. Dubai, February 13th, 2023 ACN newswire, the tenth global forum on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and mining blockchain life 2023 takes place on February 27 28 in Dubai. The event is attended by key industry players, government representatives, heads of international companies and funds, investors, promising startups teams and beginners. It tap us noteworthy that the forum is a meeting point for a premium crypto audience, including world crypto whales. What to expect whales of the crypto industry at one place top speakers with world changing insights and analytics global expo of the latest web 3.0 technologies breakthrough smart networking app the legendary after party on the luxury yacht trip top speakers yet shoe cofounder and executive chairman of animoca brands, founder and CEO of ablaze Sergei khatra founder of listing help. And jets capital Ben Zhou cofounder CEO of bybit doctor marwan Al zuri CEO of Dubai blockchain center Carl renfield crypto entrepreneur, founder of crypto jobs dot com Chris MM crypto cryptocurrency expert. Cofounder of M and crypto Gabriel Abed ambassador of Barbados to the UAE doctor Muhammad Al hamri director of technology transfer office at University of Sharjah, blockchain and crypto adviser men in Shah founder and CEO of avalanche global solutions and cyber Gracie chin managing director of. Big Qatar and 1 February 27 28 Dubai Atlantis the palm by a ticket now blockchain life dot com Asian tickets roll copyright 2023 ACN news wire. All rights reserved. WWW dot ACN newswire dot com.
The Eric Metaxas Show
Chad Robichaux of MightyOaksFoundation.Org on 'Saving Aziz'
"Let's just go back. You made a decision that if the government is going to leave people to suffer and die, you are going to put together your own team of people to see what you can do. So you put together your team of special forces guys and what happens? I mean, are you in contact with Aziz during this period? Yeah, absolutely. I'm talking as easy as we're trying to make sure he's moving to safety. They stay safe. While we're working to get move forward. But when I talked earlier before the break about a miracle happening, there were several advance that happened that if any one of them did not happen or a door was closed, this whole thing wouldn't have taken place. And each one of those would have been an impossibility. The first of which was several calling the joint chiefs and asking for permission for us as severe an NGO to go onto the H Chi airport, a DoD controlled airport, land aircraft, go outside the wire, evacuate civilians, put them back, put them back in that airport. That's an impossibility. For anyone around the military. Yeah, you can understand that they're going to say, sorry, no. You can't do that. You're telling me they said yes. For some reason, they said yes. Which is a miracle. And then secondly, now we have to figure out how to move them. I mean, you can't just put them on a plane and fly to the United States. I'm not the State Department. And you can't bring someone without a Visa to another country. That's human trafficking. And you can only do that and Laura, Texas. But here in the real world, you have to follow the rules. And so we said, where can we bring these people to? And we called the UAE because we had some connections with the royal family there. Talk to them for about an hour. They rolled out the red carpet, said you could use our military center. We're going to put provide doctors and medical care. So when you had connections with the United Arab Emirates and it was because of them that you figured out how we can pull this off. Where we could bring them to, that's right, yeah.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"uae" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"To address your audiences First of all UAE as you know is a member of an alliance called OPEC plus that alliance formed have been doing a great job in my view balancing the market balancing the supply and demand And we have a history within that alliance and we've been through wars with being a member countries being towards being through conflict being through sanctions some of the members as you know Iran and Venezuela but something we always do And that's almost a law In the way that we work we have one objective only which is trying to maintain the supply to the market and ensure that that supply is affordable Nowadays when the geopolitics heads in we also the price is going higher and we are increasing the production gradually according to a plan but we can not under any circumstances see a replacement for 10% of the world's production Right That's from oil guys as well So I don't think practically if we bring politics into the organization we can help the consumers You.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"uae" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"To break down there The pillars are the regulation and the speed with which you and the government are moving on deregulating and social evolution is tremendous I will come back to that in a moment I want to square away that this economy open at all costs It's the thing that is going to set you apart from everybody else Can you assure businesses and travelers that are tuned into this program this morning from around the world That there is little or no risk of you going into a closed on or a lockdown Let's square that away on where we stand as the UAE On the way less impactful than the delta I'm even doing the delta we have in lockdown the construct The things the balance has been there and for sure And even with any fantastic variants when it comes to Corona I will not go back to that Do the working week It's probably the biggest single piece of news that everybody's grappling with What is it that made you decide that what do you think is going to add to GDP and FDI I'm trying to understand how you stand this up and justify such a seismic mood and 9th overnight Well there are so many aspects when it comes to the new working week days The first one is for sure giving more times and days off to the communities Half a day of private to this Saturday on Sunday which means that more consumptions are going to have been throughout the weekend But we start seeing the positive feedback from the businesses who has not changed their days yet because they're seeing that the consumption has been picking up with the end of the week And throughout the week things are progressing very well So we're expecting more purchase and more consumers to behave as changes all throughout the week moving forward For sure with the changes for linking ourselves with the global markets and global economies And for sure the results are going to be seen in the upcoming year or a few months from now.
Bloomberg Radio New York
"uae" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"The UAE private sector activity over the next 6 to 9 months To what extent is Emirates MVD talking about the following says one yes we said to you I got it wrong I just got it wrong Everybody's moving to Dubai buying apartments People are moving into the IFC And I know that for a fact people are redone asylum from London from trading desks not just training desks But it's real wealth with real business and it's red domicile Is that a can not turn into a potential huge tailwind for this economy I think it could And I think the main sort of driver of that was the fact that the UAE was able to stay open Last year post the summer even when the rest of the world went into these cycles of lockdowns and reopening So in terms of consistency in terms of messaging in terms of business as usual I think the UAE and to buy in particular did really really well in positioning itself as a place where people could relocate bring their businesses bring their families and effectively live a relatively normal life Now to the extent that that gets you know we see further growth in that sort of demand I think that's the big question So we've had a big surge of inflows of both people and to some extent capital But the question is the rest of the world is reopening So does that to something It's going to be a battle for companies The demand to some extent absolutely Yeah and you've got a debate I mean it's idiosyncratic as to whether people are prepared and I moved to Singapore into Hong Kong to domicile their businesses with the risks that they've seen for 12 months Today's fair day well it's not just fed day but it's potentially taper day And what power wants to avoid is the massacre that the Australians managed to deliver at last Friday to the short end of the year curve What would a fed taper do in your eyes How does it change the narrative Some people have said to me look man Stop talking about taper It's about the overall end point of rates It needs to be a shallow a shallow rise in rates That's what I should be talking to you about not tapering do you agree Yes I think it's about the messaging post the taper really So.
Places I Remember with Lea Lane
"uae" Discussed on Places I Remember with Lea Lane
"It's thicker than glass but it see through floor as well and you're suspended up and hits a preset meal of course you can't pick up a menu and have it flown up to you. Although i bet you that day is coming. We drones on but but baio yes suspended up there. And you've got a three course meal. And i'm assuming three hundred sixty degree views but no. I have not done it yet. Well i can imagine what you might not want to locate with hype. I'm a bad with heights. Which is good because most people who come here say you go to take the personally fund and eat even on one hundred twenty twenty four th floor. You're still a fairly good way up. Oh yeah when you you look down you realize how high it is. The name of the pie cast is places. I remember so garrett. Could you please share with us. A special memory of yours about dubai the easiest and all this one was Was resume getting married in in dubai. Me and that's all was gonna trump all of the the random encounters with famous people that that that just happened. But i know I was for fortunate enough of them. Married that lovely. Sarah in little church in dubai that despite it being the e being muslim country they are very respectful of other faiths and we got a church wedding during on lockdown time. So a week we masks. Our two guests were mass to witnesses. The minister was in masks and we had it on facebook. Live so our friends and family around the world to watch it so that's always going to be no matter what happens that's that's going to be my takeaway mantech and there's nothing more lovely than that. That is the most superlative thing of all. Yes thank you. I did live in the dubai marina. And so every friday morning i would go to the same grocery store and every friday morning i would see the same retired english cricket store buying groceries and just like morning morning before i got married. That may have been the big things like. Yeah he made me by my first name but dollars yeah well. I've noticed a lot of the memories that people share our special memories like that a small memory to some but a big memory to the person and those are the things you you you carry with you the rest of your life of course thank you for sharing that one. I do hope that dubai keeps coming up with superlative things to see and do we can all use a bit of magic in our lives as we traveled the world. A thank you garrett. I it for helping us better. Understand what makes you by such an extraordinary destination. Thank you once again leah for for inviting me on and it's been.
Masters Podcast Club
"uae" Discussed on Masters Podcast Club
"The way. How do you think you ended up with those three. We're an educational company. We always have been from day one so that was just for me. Educate our customers so we educate on that level where educating our team in that. I'm always in education. So you know life is one big you know learning opportunity for me so education was very easy and then when we talk to our team we did actually a video awhile back for the schools like a recruitment video when we go into the schools and so we interviewed our staff around what was cool about company in family kept coming up over and over the word like we felt like it's a family here i mean people didn't know what the other person was going to say so relationships and communication just was an organic kind of organically came. Did you just give a challenge out to any owner or leader listening to this about the importance of having core values. I talk about this a lot. In when i'm out speaking is i always liked to see a show of hands. People that even have a mission statement a lot of people raise their hands and say keep your hand feel the mission statement. They keep their hand. Now keep your hand up if you can recite that mission statement by heart ninety five percent of the house so then there's live hands left and then i say of the five people left. How many can keep their hands up so that their staff can then reset the mission statement in every hand goes down and so because back in the day the vase told us to write a mission statement and then no one told us what to do it right and so i would love to challenge any business owner out there. Say what is what drives you. What's your mission and from your mission. What are your core values. What is the nucleus of how your company is run. And how do you make decisions based on our mission statement and our core values how we make decisions like our beacon right. We keep moving towards that in the decision making sometimes when we don't know what the answer should be we have to say. Let's look at our values. Let's look at our mission and our decision is made by virtue of going through that process. So if this is who we really are as a company then how do we make decisions. Meaning that could be easy deciding point while this decision would not support would affect would hinder our values. So the answer's no yes. Even if on a personal level. I wanna make the answer different ten bit. What would feel right in the moment to make somebody. How american tribe of indians anytime they make a decision they decide. How will this affect us in five generations from now we make decisions. We do things. We're not an deciding how it's going to borrow in an hour exactly. Yeah how will this affect five generations from now. We've made this decision. Houses can affect our values who we are as a company agreed. Who is the racia- velos company. Where he says there is a tlc which stands for teach learn clean. That's like if you've got time timeline. That time the loved statements. Okay core values. Okay so then from there you then came up with your ten cultural command. Yes we really have twenty one. Well i wanted. I liked the span of the ten cultural moments but in ten of them are what we want to see and ten of them are what we do not want to see so what we refer to our ten cultural commandments is really we. I posed the question if we were going to create this beautiful garden to have these an english garden but these beautiful flowers. Blooming number one risk. That's posed to a garden several and says a. We'd okay so what are the weeds. And if we want to have this beautiful garden we have identified the weeds so we can pluck them out to keep the garden flourishing. And so you know a lot of the things that they came up with work you know no gossiping in the backroom. No talking about each other no dropping your dishes off in the sink. I mean just things that create weeds in a culture for somebody else to wash their dishes. You know not being a team player walking out the door without checking in with your team. So they came up with the ten weeds right and then the fertilizer. I guess if you will over here which are ten cultural commandment so so now. You have new team members who are committed the automatically need to buy into these ten cultural commandments. Along with the ten things that we don't want to see along with the core values. Yeah but they really didn't have a part in writing them in created them. That's right is that part of the hiring process in this is who we are what we believed. Sign on the dotted line and this is why sue again. It's the ways back to the uae because if someone wants a job they're going to sign on any dotted line and so it's a railing signing them three days next finding hire me now and so it is. It's about the why again. And then they go down initial next to each one that they understand it and so if there's coaching that needs to happen to pull that out and say okay when you signed on for us and you knew and so what's going on now that it's different from when you sign mass so hope you abide by what you agree to. That's right were abide by walking out the door what we have on poster in the back room of each one of our businesses i with the core values in ten cultural commandments on it we have thirteen golden rules in their poster sized young and in every location similar similar love it so yeah it's good it's good and we revisit them at our what we call salon celebration some people call them staff meetings or staff beatings but we've got we try to celebrate celebrate but we go over all the time our mission we go over the core values we try to conquer a couple of the the cultural commandment so talk about a living breathing document. How often do you have to revisit cultural commandments. We revisit them all the time. Because we do daily huddles before shifts get started in the company and so we're revisiting them. There we revamped them. Not too long ago Because i think people ended up being like the wallpaper that you never really noticed still on the wall. And so we gave him a face lift in a revamp and a new image and a new poster. So you know unlikes new so you look as you know you can create amazing systems in your company. If there's no follow up. They fall to the wayside throwing pasta at the wall. Meaning it doesn't stick what's the point you can have the best posted new world but if it doesn't stick yep then we're not making any progress exactly so it's just and it's constant i'm revisiting and follow up so if we don't follow up to all of these lovely systems that we put in place in there just words on a paper right okay switching gears here again.
Space Nuts
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts
"And that's why you. And i do this stuff because we tend to tell things as they are and as the best scientific knowledge that we have comes in then we relate to anybody is willing to listen and before someone comes back at me. I'm not saying that intelligent. Life doesn't exist somewhere else in the universe. It's you can never say never. And i said a lot but and i do believe life i do. Believe life is prolific in the universe. But probably more microbial level but never say never to intelligent for existing elsewhere. It's just such a massive massive thing the universe and we can't see most of it so can you say now there's no one else but us but that's the really million we never got. Ya never going say that they don't exist. Never going to say unless you look at every one of the ten to the twenty three star planets in in the universe. Exactly right thanks renae. And don't forget if you've got questions for us you can send them through on our website. Spice nuts podcast dot com. You can send them via email through the email interface or as an audio questioned by clicking on the tab and and using the the voice and get tell us who you anway from either way and next week. We're going to dedicate the whole program. I think two questions because we've got quite a few now and we need to bumper few off and we been getting a lot of questions in particular from one individual who we now know a little bit more about quite an astute fellow and he will be joining us on the program and in a live situation to ask a few of his questions so that should be interesting and guided. Do it blind. We're not going to test. It would just go in guns blazing and hope it works. But that's for next week. Fred as always thank you. It's been a lot of fun and nas to put. A few of these conspiracies debate and learned a bit more about what's happening at the thanks very much. A great pleasure. Andrew as always speaking next time fred watson astronomer large part of the huge team of three that put together the space in that spot gas. We're talking about are white now and for me andrew dice clay. Thank you again for joining us. And we'll catch again next week. Bye bye notes. Available at apple podcasts. Google podcasts spotify iheartradio and all your favorite podcast plan you can also stream on demand at god still paul. This has been another gas. Production from dot com..
Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"Northern hemisphere but it's still very very visible and in fact in screw question comes at a good time because now february march is the best time to look for the milky way in the northern hemisphere in the early evening because it's basically overhead. It's quite faint. So the thing that is killing it for you. In his almost certainly the lights of cambridge and surrounding areas. You need to get as far away from city lights as you. Don rural suffolk scott. Some dark side so he used to live in that area. A new market intact because i worked in cambridge cambridge. Shaw's got some quite dark places as well but get as far away from city. Lights is you cannot a clear. Moonlit night there's no good looking if the moons in the sky because not will or a bright moon anywhere that will tend to to block it out but now is the time of year to look for it because it goes right overhead so forth overhead in the northern hemisphere. We it's to our north in the southern hemisphere. Well we've got because it goes all the way around the sky we've got over. That's roy 'cause it's kind of big it is. It is big yes. It's a magnificent thing when you see it clearly on on a good night and we've we've got this fantastic thing. The aboriginal constellation of the emu in the sky to see that rising a may night or thereabouts is just spectacular. You see the dark amy's head and it's dark next stretching down the brightness of the milky way to its body in the constellation of scorpius. And you're just going to have to come to australia when we can travel again and have a look from siding spring observatory or somewhere like that to see what the milky way really looks like but it is visible in the north in. David is thank you your question. Now we move onto a question that is sort of reflecting on something that happened in the nineteen sixties. I'm sure a lot of people are aware of and well. That's the focus of this question. Fred hi andrew. This is ronnie from kentucky united states longtime listener first-time questioner. I have a question about the binary. Star system zeta particularly researchers. Nine hundred sixty four. Betty and bobby hill claimed to have encountered extraterrestrial lifeforms from that star system and described the star system years before discovery. I wondered how this is possible. And if there is any logic behind this do we have very much knowledge on the store system and with it being thirty nine light years away. Is there any possibility. Ersan probes or exploring distortions. Jim thanks for your time..
Space Nuts
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts
"Not be a good show when it comes. Yes that's a great question and it's it's all about the kind of scales that we're talking about because yes. The universe is expanding. But it's only when you start looking over significant distances that you can see the effective that and those distances are generally further than the distance between galaxies in groups and where the group part of something called a local group which is about twenty galaxies. Three bright ones one is milky way. One is there in germany galaxy and there is another one called the triangular galaxy which is a little bit smaller but a little bit further away than andromeda and does to ask million light years away and he's on collision course is under just said with our own milky way but those distances two and a half million lightyears is local. It's actually very very close by and so the force of gravity between the milky way galaxy and the drama. The galaxy is much greater than you would need to sort of compensate for the expansion of the universe so the expansion of the university's going on everywhere all the time but on a local scale. Gravity is by far the the more dominant effect and that local scale extends not just to a few million light years but probably not hundreds of millions of lightyears because for example the nearest big galaxy cluster is the virgo cluster huge cluster of thousand galaxies in the constellation virgo. It's about fifty light fifty million light years away and we are being drawn towards that as well but actually it's quite interesting because we are being drawn towards it. But that's kind of on the limit because the university's expansion is pulling away from it and this question which is going to win and in fact i think eventually eventually the expansion will probably win on that on that one. But that's the bottom line. It depends on distance when you looking billions of light years away. Then the dominant effect is the expansion of the universe not how we can measure the distances because we know how fast the expansion is going so a great question so it's yeah it is so gravity versus expansion and in terms of distance. Gravity's winning in our area yet but ultimately the expansion will take either. Yeah that's right. In fact it probably will never the look group in which we are embedded. This local group of galaxies will always remain intact. Probably splutter around it but the other galaxies the virgo cluster. Eventually the expansion will take it beyond a horizon that we can't see anymore because it will lead. The speed of light will be basically the expansion. That's taking place. Oh yeah it's with talking about ten twenty thirty billion sorry more like hundred billion years in the future that we won't see other galaxies etc. Once in our own little system fits up. We'd will the sky look when that happened very weird if there is and the second question was about observing the milky way. I suppose for people like me who live in a region which doesn't have as much light pollution as some parts of the world. It's a bit easier. But i guess he's talking about his geographic location in terms of being able to it. That's not the you know the is. Is it possible to see the milky way from being and the answer is yes. You can see the milky way pretty well from anywhere in the world because it stretches all the way around the sky and it's definitely brightest in the southern hemisphere because that's where the center of our galaxy is and it's unfortunate because it means that the fence is part of the milky way is in the.
Space Nuts
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts
"Problems your listening to or perhaps watching the space nuts podcast.
Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"Problems your listening to or perhaps watching the space nuts podcast.
Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"And that's basically what's happened in this case it's a come from archival radio velocity surveys actually and if basically found an object that was observed by tests nassar's test satellite transiting actual planet survey satellite. And when you find when tests spots the light dipping to not reveal that there is a planet there these things are given an allocation which tests orbit objects of interest in that steel are. Now i've got to fess up here. Andrew that i think a couple of weeks ago and it probably was space nuts but it might be elsewhere. I said that to you. I stood for target of interest. But it's not. It refers specifically to the tests satellite and it is trying to tess object of interest. And this is our number one. Oh double five be the be actually tells you it's it's a planet so really it was us. It was spice that suckers. I think we talked about yes. So so apologies for that aplogies tool space nuts listeners. It just tells you have told you all all many times before idea what i'm talking about. Why over here. Well for it. Nobody nobody sent us a correction which to. So you go to mall duped so they don't know what they're talking about either. So what is it does have another more formal name. Because the star around which t ten fifty five b orbits was already catalogued in the henry draper catalogue which is why its number starts with hd hd one eight three five seven nine is the star so this it's it's three five seven nine is the name of the planet turns out to have a roundabout a radius of three and a half times that of the earth and about twenty times more massive. So this is the big difference between neptune. what's neptune's orbital period. I can't remember it's getting on for two hundred years to cut the number but this one goes around it so star once every seventeen and a half days..
Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"Last. Ten years of service journey hits a gas cloud. And so you get this twinkling. It comes about because of the turbulence of gas in the milky way. That's what causes twinkling in the atmosphere twinkling of starlight turbulence of this case it's the atmospheric gas but you get the same phenomenon with the light from these distant quasars and so what they've been able to do these astronomers observed. I think it's a huge number. Yes thirty thirty thousand of these distant galaxies they examined and six of them a very big percentage were twinkling strongly. That tells you that they're going through a clump of cats it. What's really interesting. Is that this clump of gas. Seems to be a long string of gas because they the twinkling galaxies ones. That said yes. We're going through a clump of gas here. There in a straight line there long straight line across the sky which in itself i think. He's quite intriguing and essentially tells you that this cloud of gas as Probably long thin. So what they say case. This is from their conversational. Tickle in fact which is you can quote these directly. The cloud of gas we detected was inside the milky way about ten light years away from earth that means that from like from those twinkling galaxies traveled billions of light years towards earth. Only to be disrupted by the cloud during the last ten years of journey which is trying to say less eloquently a minute ago so and this is a crucial thing under by observing the sky positions of not just the five twinkling galaxies but also tens of thousands of non twinkling ones. We were able to draw a boundary around the gas cloud and we found it was very straight. The same length is four moons substitute agrees side by side. But only to when it's a width is a sixty degree. They've said so thin. It's the equivalent of looking at a strand of hair held at arms length. That's not something i often do. is you know. But that's how it is thought becoming less capable that to say. This is the first time. Astronomers have been able to calculate the geometry and physical properties of gas cloud in this way. But where did he come from. And what gave it such an unusual shape so that then leads them to speculate. What the form of this gas cloud is and they wonder if it's something that they call a hydrogen snow cloud something that is basically frozen hydrogen. And we've we've talked about this before andrew because that was one of the theories for whatever moore might be a solid lump of nitrogen that had come from the inside of a giant cloud. So they're saying you know. Perhaps there are snow clouds that make up some of the missing matter of the milky way. And maybe that's what these astronomers have detected with twinkling galaxies and. I should mention by the way that this all comes. Courtesy of this trillion square kilometer array pathfinder telescope. Ask cap in western australia. That's the instrument that was used to make these observations. It's one that are visited..
Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"uae" Discussed on Space Nuts | Astronomy, Space and Science News
"Expand more twenty percent to master and five percent to normal matter so normal matches a tiny fraction. It's actually more like four percent. Probably of what makes up the universe and we know we should to see it because that's normal matter it's in fact it's hydrogen. Basically and hydrogen has the property that is detectable glowing in stars or or nebulae. All when it's cold. Who which is what we pick up with radio telescopes. But when you pull that we can see. There isn't enough. And there was a big breakthrough last year which came from fast radio bursts as they pass through intergalactic space. They interact with the radiation interacts with the electrons in that space and the turns out that a lot of that missing matter. The missing normal matter is locked up between the galaxies because they found a lot without experiment last year however we still short apparently and once again the radio strongly world come to our assistance with a lovely story that actually comes from the university of sydney in here in australia to our murphy and one. Ming wang i think is the name. Her name is pronounced two young women. Astronomers are not quite well. I've worked with in the past on giving talks and things they have produced some really infamous interesting information. That comes about in a fascinating way. I think and it's all about twinkling we. We're all used to the idea of stars. Twinkling as their light passes through the atmosphere in fact a twinkling is something that astronomers don't like because it essentially destroys the quality of the images. And that's why big telescopes tend to look high in the sky rather than low down on the horizon. Unless you have to because the low you get on the horizon more atmosphere and going through all stars twinkle now. The atmosphere itself doesn't affect radio observations in that. You don't get any twinkling. But if you've got gas at a distance from our solar system and you're looking through that gas then you might well get the twinkling phenomenon. And it's got a fancy name. It's called installation. So simulation is what you're looking for in the observations of distant actually in this case. They're looking at distant quasars which are actively point sources in the sky very compact radio sources the nuclei of galaxies that have a supermassive black hole in them. That's feeding frantically on its earth on its surroundings and their extinct today the only in the early universe. oh the earlier universe. So they're using these these quasars as back ulama nation in other words that they're looking at the light of the quasars to see what happens to it when it gets ninety nine point nine nine percent within ninety nine within the within point zero zero one percent of the end of its journey. If i can put it that way in other words when it's made when this light of this radio radiation has done it staff. She's gone through billions of years worth of travel and it gets to our galaxy where you're talking about..