The News From Planet Ruby—Friday, May 26, 2023
- Signal: $34 trillion US debt. 21 million BTC.
- Noise: DXY. CSW. SBF. SEC.
Dollar. Debt. Drama.
The DXY continues its rise, with the dollar putting in 12 straight green weeks in a row. However, as analyst Michael Pizzino notes, it's on low volume. USD's move upwards is running on fumes, meaning a reversal soon is likely.
Meanwhile, though, that strength has been hitting precious metals, oil, and just about every other risk asset. That's despite the incredible amount of debt the US has been accumulating. The government is expected to rack up another $1 trillion this month, bringing the total to $34 trillion.
This colossal liability has been causing problems in Congress, where Kevin McCarthy's support for a deal ultimately led to him being removed as Speaker, to be replaced (temporarily) by Patrick McHenry—a notably pro-crypto Congressman, who has played an important role holding the SEC's feet to the fire. However, it's unclear what the implications are for the next shutdown deadline, which will come in mid-November.
Uptober Starts In Style
Following a surprisingly bullish September (usually a bad month for bitcoin), October began with a bang. BTC spiked above the previous local high, touching $28,600 before retracing. The 200-day moving average, currently at $28,000, served as strong resistance.
Alts, too, enjoyed significant gains, though suffered on the pullback. The question now is whether BTC will break resistance and continue upwards, or drop back to support at around $26,200.
At present, bitcoin is trading at around $27,600.
Max Leverage On Crypto Entertainment
There's just too much going on in the crypto world to do it justice in such a short update, but we have to provide some of the highlights.
The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried has begun. SBF faces a sentence of up to 115 years for various crimes related to the collapse of FTX last year.
Separately, there have been revelations that SBF considered paying Donald Trump an incredible $5 billion not to run as president.
BREAKING: TRUMP OFFERED $5 BILLION BY FTX'S SBF TO NOT RUN FOR PRESIDENT
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 2, 2023
Sam Bankman-Fried apparently toyed with the idea of offering Donald Trump $5 billion to abstain from the 2024 presidential race, according to insights by Michael Lewis, author of "The Big Short."
In a "60… pic.twitter.com/Z9mq0HmJIk
That figure apparently came from Trump's team. The conversation didn't go any further because, well, SBF was having cashflow problems.
There's been massive drama in the BSV community, as billionaire Calvin Ayre has pulled the plug on Craig Wright's financial and legal support. Ayre has challenged Wright to sign a message with the keys to the Genesis block. The implication? Ayre no longer has confidence that his boy really is Satoshi, whatever he says publicly.
There's been a slew of legal and regulatory news. Nine ETH futures ETFs launched on Monday, albeit to only moderate trading volumes. Grayscale has applied to the SEC to have their ETH fund upgraded to a spot ETF. Following their victory in court against the SEC in August, it almost feels like they're trolling the regulator now.
A judge has rejected the SEC's attempt to appeal the recent Ripple verdict, which established that most XRP sales were not unregistered securities offerings.
In a separate case, the SEC has asked the judge to reject Coinbase's appeal to dismiss their lawsuit against the exchange. Coinbase's lawyers maintain that the assets they list are not securities, and are outside the SEC's jurisdiction—something that the Ripple verdict helps establish.
A preliminary note: over and over again the SEC makes sweeping claims of what the law is/must be without any legal citation. See, e.g., p 8,17-18,21. 2/7
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) October 3, 2023
Meanwhile, CZ and Binance have been hit with yet another lawsuit, alleging foul play in the case of FTX. The class action maintains that CZ's tweets around the time of the fall of FTX, such as drawing attention to the fact Binance was selling its FTT holdings, were intended to cause damage to the exchange, and helped precipitate its collapse.
Finally, Microsoft is integrating a crypto wallet into its XBox gaming console.
Phew.
What's New In The SKALEVERSE?
A proposal has been posted on the SKALE forum, suggesting a way forwards for chain pricing and network economics, as the ecosystem moves out of its bootstrapping phase. Please give any feedback you have. You can read a summary of the post on REX Wire.
That's all for this week!
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