Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
The News From Planet Ruby—Friday, August 4, 2023
The apes are once again turning on each other, with the ruling classes charging a former Ape-in-Chief for trying to stay Ape-in-Chief by non-standard means. We believe this is all part of a complex game, the aim of which is to accumulate the largest amount of paper. Our analysts are working night and day to understand the rules, but they appear to keep changing.
Japan Plays Monopoly
The Bank of Japan decided to flip the card table over at the beginning of the week, realizing that its policy of buying just about every financial asset in the country, from bonds to ETFs, was unsustainable. Unfortunately, its adjustments to yield curve control culminated in an "unscheduled bond buying operation", aka "Oh sh—brb..."
This has big implications for the rest of the world, as Japanese investors have a reason to yank money out of foreign assets and bring those trillions home.
Bank of Japan could drain Trillions from America pic.twitter.com/5U8NN0EYkl
— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) July 31, 2023
As bond prices fall further due to this selling pressure, more banks may have to admit they have a problem. Last week, PacWest Bancorp finally succumbed to the inevitable and agreed a merger with Banc of California, sending its shares bouncing like a penny stock.
Another source of volatility came from the perceived stability of the US economy, as ratings agency Fitch downgraded America's credit rating from AAA to AA+ in a surprise move, prompted by concerns about its debt burden.
Crypto Keeps Traders On Their Toes
Bitcoin's price declined as low as $28,700 on Tuesday, before briefly pushing back above $30k on news that Michael Saylor was backing the truck up again. It's currently sitting at $29,200.
The Fear and Greed index is neutral, with the RSI at 44 on the daily—still plenty of room to go lower. Having dropped back towards the bottom of that $28-30k support zone, the price action is somewhat bearish; falling below $28,000 will likely open the way for further declines.
Not everyone is pessimistic, though. After all, when bearish sentiment is high enough, there's no one left to sell.
#bitcoin Weekly Chart is giving me May 2016 vibes.
— Bob Loukas 🗽 (@BobLoukas) July 31, 2023
Clown Hair Vs Bald
There's plenty of major news in the crypto space this week, not much of it good.
One positive story is that US presidential hopeful Ron De Santis has promised to bring an end to Biden's "War on Bitcoin". "We are going to allow Americans to invest in things like bitcoin and cryptocurrency," he said at a campaign event on Monday. "No one is forcing you to do it, if you want to do it, you can do it.”
"War against Bitcoin" isn't hyperbole, at least not on the part of De Santis. Remember, this Elizabeth Warren has stated she is building an "anti-crypto army" as part of her campaign.
There was the BALD P&D, which saw a scammer launch and rug a memecoin on Coinbase's L2, netting themselves almost $6 million in the process. It's not a great look for an organization that's fighting the SEC in court. Conspiracy theories abounded on Twitter/X, with rumors that Sam Bankman-Fried was responsible, despite being under house arrest. Critics were quick to point out that he has little access to the internet, but the evidence doesn't exactly put him in the clear.
Ok yup it’s SBF or another Alameda person.
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) July 31, 2023
Only a handful of people had access to Serum Twitter account.
And other than SBF senior harem, nearly none of them were around at the time of Sushiswap votes.
So I think SBF just rugged people *again* https://t.co/EHQxwwPSpi
Speaking of Coinbase, the exchanges lawyers will file to dismiss the SEC's case against it entirely later today. Fingers crossed...
Curve lost $1.5 billion in TVL after tens of millions of dollars were stolen from its pools courtesy of a malfunctioning reentrancy lock. Meanwhile, the SEC continues to wage its own war against crypto, this time going after HEX and its founder.
Today we charged Richard Heart (aka Richard Schueler) and three unincorporated entities that he controls, Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX, with conducting unregistered offerings of crypto asset securities that raised more than $1 billion in crypto assets from investors.
— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) July 31, 2023
Finally, bookending the summary some (arguably) better news, Microstrategy picked up an additional 467 BTC for $14.4 million in July and now holds 152,800 BTC. The company has plans to sell more stock to raise a further $750 million for, among other things, yet more bitcoin purchases.
What's New In The SKALEVERSE?
DCA trading has launched on Ruby! Check out our guide on How To DCA On Ruby, and our in-depth research, What DCA Interval Is Best?
That's all for this week!
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