Markets Hint All Is Not Well

The news from Planet Ruby—Friday, April 5, 2024

• Signal: Larry
• Noise: Barry

TradFi Digests A Paradox

It's been a week of uncomfortable news for the TradFi economy. The DXY broke higher, pushing through resistance. It reversed, abruptly losing a full point from its high of 105.1, but it's unclear which way the trend will go.

Either way, the dollar is relatively strong, but this doesn't appear to be having its usual effect. Gold also hit a new all-time high, and key TradFi markets aren't far off, despite a stronger dollar typically being a headwind for risk assets. Jobs data is weaker than previously thought, though such downward revisions of the data aren't uncommon.

Peter Schiff sees the problem of higher-than-expected inflation and a weak economy at the root of this paradox. Gold is gaining more attention, as it paints a technically bullish formation on the chart and looks set to break much higher.

Tesla is having a tough time, as quarterly sales have plummeted 9%. Overall, the company has lost 60% of its value since the peak in 2021.

Tesla Faces “Disaster” As Sales Plummet

Tesla’s sharp fall in sales highlights a growing problem at the company.

REX WireBender Smort

Bitcoin Heads South

Bitcoin experienced heavy selling at the beginning of the week. The long Easter weekend meant institutions were absent, and the markets were characterized by low liquidity and high volatility.

On Tuesday, Ark's ETF experienced a large outflow, eclipsing GBTC for the first time, though this was an anomaly. Grayscale's flagship fund has lost almost half of the coins it started with. After a rough start to the week, outflows may finally be slowing, but its trajectory is clear.

Instead, BlackRock has taken the volume crown, and isn't likely to give it back any time soon. IBIT will soon hold more bitcoins than GBTC.

Bitcoin crashed below $65,000 on Tuesday. As the dollar stays high, and crypto exchange volumes fall, it's hard for BTC to challenge those recent highs. An attempt at the $69k resistance level on Thursday abruptly failed. At the moment, BTC is in a holding pattern: Higher lows, but no breakout yet.

Meanwhile, ETH lost its 0.05 BTC support, potentially opening the way for lower prices. With hopes of an ETH spot ETF waning, and a wider crypto correction under way, there may be much more pain ahead.

If you're looking for some good news, Tether added 8,888 BTC in Q1, and the Halving is coming up in just over two weeks. Previous cycles have seen pre-Halving corrections, so the current drawdown is nothing out of the ordinary; if anything, it's happened later than expected, and has been a milder correction so far.

In other news, after being declared legally not Satoshi, Craig Wright appears to have taken down his website, CraigWright.net. Something similar happened in 2015 after the signing that turned out to be not a signing.

What's New In The SKALEVERSE?

SKALE continues to go from strength to strength, with record gas savings for March. In the last week of the month alone, users saved the equivalent of 56,000 ETH!

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