Otavio Costa, a Macro Strategist at Crescat Capital, a multidisciplinary asset management firm, has expressed concern about the state of the U.S. government securities liquidity index and its potential implications for the future of U.S. debt. He suggested that the U.S. is on the verge of experiencing its own ‘Bank of England’ moment prior to […]
Bitcoin News
Celsius Fights To Reclaim $2 Billion Withdrawn Prior To Bankruptcy Declaration
According to a Bloomberg report, Celsius Network, the crypto platform that filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, demands that major customers who collectively withdrew over billion before the bankruptcy return those funds to avoid potential litigation.
An oversight committee formed during Celsius’s Chapter 11 case has begun contacting customers who withdrew more than 0,000 during the period leading up to the company’s bankruptcy filing. This recovery effort aims to repay creditors who did not withdraw funds from Celsius.
Settlement Offered To Celsius Users
Per the report, the oversight committee’s recovery process will impact around 2% of Celsius users who, in total, withdrew approximately 40% of the platform’s assets within the 90 days preceding the Chapter 11 filing.
Celsius reported billion in assets, 1.7 million registered users, and 300,000 active users with account balances exceeding 0 at the time of bankruptcy.
Notably, the oversight committee has offered customers who may face clawback suits a settlement option, providing them with a “favorable rate” if they choose to settle.
Customers who opt for settlement would have their potential liabilities determined based on the value of their assets at the time of their 2022 withdrawals. This means that settling customers would retain any appreciation in the value of their digital assets resulting from the surge in crypto prices over the past year.
Legal Consequences If Settlement Offer Is Declined
According to Bloomberg, customers who decline to settle may be subject to significantly more liability through potential litigation. The committee’s letter warns customers about the potential consequences of not accepting the settlement offer.
In November, a bankruptcy judge approved Celsius’ plan to distribute billions of dollars in assets and transform into a creditor-owned Bitcoin mining firm. According to a court filing by the company’s lawyers, Celsius has already distributed around billion in assets.
Overall, Celsius Network’s oversight committee is pursuing the recovery of over billion in withdrawals made by major customers shortly before the company filed for bankruptcy. By offering settlement options based on the value of assets at the time of withdrawal, Celsius aims to alleviate potential litigation and expedite the repayment of creditors.
As the process unfolds, impacted customers decide to settle potential liabilities or face potential litigation with potentially higher consequences.
Currently, the network’s native token, CEL, is trading at .1862, reflecting a significant year-to-date decline of over 49%.
In shorter time frames, the token has experienced a 12% decline in the last 24 hours, a 32% decline in the last week, and a 27% decline in the last fourteen days, highlighting the limited interest and lack of confidence among investors in the CEL token.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com
JPMorgan Economists Discard Prior Recession Prediction, Foresee US Economic Resilience
JPMorgan’s economists have jettisoned previous predictions of an impending U.S. recession. Their chief U.S. economist, Michael Feroli, is confident that the American economy will maintain a modest but steady growth trajectory throughout the remainder of the current year and well into 2024.
JPMorgan Foresees U.S. Economic Growth Amid ‘Ridiculous’ Fitch Downgrade and Recession Fears
Echoing Bank of America’s revision of its economic outlook, JPMorgan’s team of economists have likewise set aside their earlier recession projections. The top-ranking bank in the nation initially forecasted a downturn for 2023. However, their principal U.S. economist, Michael Feroli, now holds a more optimistic view that the U.S. can successfully dodge a full-scale recession.
“While a recession is no longer our modal scenario, risk of a downturn is still very elevated,” Feroli wrote on Friday. “One way this risk could materialize is if the Fed is not done hiking rates. Another way in which recession risks could materialize is if the normal lagged effects of the tightening already delivered kick in.”
Feroli, alongside his cohort of economists at JPMorgan, now foresees an economic resurgence in 2023, followed by a period of “modest, sub-par growth” in the subsequent year. This projection defies the widespread dissenting opinion that a recession, or even a depression, within the U.S., is inevitable. Danielle DiMartino Booth, the CEO and chief strategist at QI Research, argues that the repercussions of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increments and quantitative tightening have yet to fully manifest in the U.S. banking industry.
Moreover, JPMorgan’s perspective comes on the heels of Fitch Ratings’ decision to lower the credit rating of the United States. Unfazed by Fitch’s downgrade, JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon, dismissed the move as “ridiculous” in an interview. Speaking to CNBC, Dimon downplayed the significance of the downgrade, saying “it doesn’t really matter that much,” and emphasized that the United States remains “the most prosperous nation on the planet, [and] the most secure nation on the planet.”
Dimon and his team at JPMorgan perceive a budding growth in the U.S. economy, prompting their economists to doubt their previous forecasts. “Given this growth, we doubt the economy will quickly lose enough momentum to slip into a mild contraction as early as next quarter, as we had previously projected,” Feroli concluded in his missive to investors last Friday.
What’s your take on JPMorgan’s about-face concerning its earlier recession projections for the United States? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.
Report: SEC Asked Coinbase to Delist All Crypto Assets Except Bitcoin Prior to Filing Lawsuit
According to Brian Armstrong, the CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, the U.S. securities regulator reportedly told his company to delist all digital assets save for bitcoin. Armstrong said acceding to the SEC’s demand would have “meant the end of the crypto industry in the U.S.”
SEC Reportedly Refused to Explain Why It Classifies Digital Assets as Securities
Prior to suing Coinbase, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly asked the cryptocurrency exchange to delist all other digital assets except bitcoin. Brian Armstrong, the founder and CEO of Coinbase, claimed in an interview with the Financial Times that the U.S. regulator’s stance suggested it considered every other digital asset a security.
According to the CEO, the SEC only filed its lawsuit against Coinbase after the latter ignored the regulator’s advice. However, in its lawsuit filed on June 6, the SEC only identified 13 coins as assets that meet the SEC criteria for investment contracts. Besides accusing Coinbase of selling unregistered securities, the regulator said the crypto exchange had failed to register its staking-as-a-service program.
SEC Denies Asking Companies to Delist Crypto Assets
Commenting on the crypto exchange platform’s encounter with the SEC just before the lawsuit was filed, Armstrong said the regulator even refused to explain why it wanted the trading of other assets to be halted.
“They came back to us, and they said … we believe every asset other than bitcoin is a security. And, we said, well how are you coming to that conclusion, because that’s not our interpretation of the law. And they said, we’re not going to explain it to you, you need to delist every asset other than bitcoin,” the Coinbase CEO said.
Armstrong added that when the SEC made the demand, Coinbase chose to go to court because acceding to the regulator’s directive would have sparked the demise of the crypto industry in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the same Financial Times report said the SEC has denied asking “companies to delist crypto assets.” The regulator also suggested that its staff may have created the impression that the SEC views all digital assets except bitcoin as securities, noting:
“In the course of an investigation, the staff may share its own view as to what conduct may raise questions for the commission under the securities laws.”
What are your thoughts on this story? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Ex-Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison’s Google Docs Diary Exposes Struggles Prior to FTX Collapse
According to the New York Times and several sources familiar with the matter, Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, maintained a diary on Google Documents that provides a brief glimpse into the challenges she faced before the collapse of FTX. Excerpts from the diary suggest Ellison lacked confidence in her role. After her breakup with Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX co-founder, her enthusiasm for Alameda “significantly decreased.”
Ellison Didn’t Think She Was Well Suited to Lead Alameda Research
Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, reportedly maintained a diary on Google Documents. The New York Times, in a report dated July 20, 2023, confirmed with four people familiar with the matter that the publication reviewed the documents.
Attorneys involved in the case against Bankman-Fried have allegedly circulated these Google documents in court. Ellison’s diary provides insight into her personal and professional life while working under the now-defunct FTX cryptocurrency empire.
In February 2022, Ellison expressed her dissatisfaction and overwhelmed feelings in regard to her job. “At the end of the day I can’t wait to go home and turn off my phone and have a drink and get away from it all,” she said.
Diary excerpts note a romantic relationship between she and Bankman-Fried, adding an element of “weirdness” and causing “drama.” In one document, Ellison further explained her belief that she was not qualified to serve as Alameda’s chief executive. Ellison wrote:
Running Alameda doesn’t feel like something I’m that comparatively advantaged at or well suited to do.
According to the report, when Bankman-Fried’s billion empire collapsed, Ellison expressed relief that the chaos was ending. “I just had an increasing dread of this day that was weighing on me,” Ellison wrote. “Now that it’s actually happening it just feels great to get it over with.”
Ellison is scheduled to testify against Bankman-Fried in his October trial, along with two other coworkers. In her testimony, published in December 2022, she alleged that Bankman-Fried had instructed her to commingle customer funds since 2019. Furthermore, it’s possible that Ellison underperformed in her role at the quantitative trading firm and may have held an FTX margin position that was negative .3 billion in May 2022.
What do you think about Caroline Ellison’s alleged Google Documents diary excerpts? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.
Here Are Two Scenarios For Bitcoin A Month Prior To FED Announcing Possible Interest Rate Hike
Bitcoin was rejected once more as it approached the mid area around its current levels. The first crypto by market cap has been trending to the upside over the past week but has been unable to break above critical resistance.
Related Reading | TA: Ethereum Eyes Key Upside Break, K Holds The Key
As of press time, BTC’s price trades at ,691 with a 1.1% loss in the last 24 hours.
BTC rejected near ,500 on the daily chart. Source: BTCUSD Tradingview
One month from now, on March 17th, the U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to possible announced a shift in its monetary policy and to begin its tapering process on their asset purchasing program. In addition, the financial institution could announce a hike in interest rates.
The possible shift in monetary policy has been contributing with the global markets current trend to the downside as investors attempt to price-in the FED’s future action. Bitcoin has been impacted by this risk-off environment, but a lot of uncertainty surrounds the crypto market.
Director of Global Macro for investment firm Fidelity, Jurrien Timmer, recently presented two scenarios that the markets could follow as the FED prepares to increase interest rates.
In the first of these scenarios, the market “tightens on its own” to “tame” inflation, as Timmer said, with a potential top in 2023 of 2% in interest rate hikes incremented at 25 bps or 0.25% starting next march. This could be the most bullish scenario for Bitcoin and the rest of the global market.
The U.S. financial institution could operate with a passive approach, and not force the financial sectors to enter a massive selloff. The second scenario seems more aggressive, according to Timmer:
The ongoing inflation news will force the Fed to tighten so many times that it eventually “breaks” something, which will in turn force it to pivot much like it did in 2018 after a 20% sell-off in equities.
The Best Moment To Buy The Bitcoin Dip?
Fidelity’s Director of Macro seems optimistic, at least at the moment. Timmer believes the inflation narrative hasn’t force the FED to take extreme measures, so interest rates could top at around 2% which could be the less painful path for Bitcoin and the global financial sector.
Timmer compared the current macro-economic situation with the tightening cycle of 1994. During this period, the market wasn’t expecting the FED to hike interest rates and was also surprised when the institution stopped its tightening program. Time will tell if this cycle will be similar.
On the other hand, Jarvis Lab’s Ben Lilly believes there is room for a Bitcoin rally before the FED turn full-on hawkish. Lilly presented two previous scenarios, 2004 and 2015, when the financial institution was about to increase interest rates.
Related Reading | TA: Bitcoin Fails to Test K, Why Dips Could Be Attractive
As seen below, in 2004, the Nasdaq index trended higher before a sell-off which, as Lilly said, was a good opportunity to buy the dip. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could follow the same pattern as the market enter a “soft period” on higher rates expectation. Lilly said:
Market went soft in anticipation of higher rates. Do we go bullish until the actual hike takes place in mid-March? Then once the hike happens, and market sells off, will it be the best BTD (Buy the Dip) opportuniry for next couple years?
Source: Ben Lilly via Twitter
NewsBTC
Bitcoin to Soon Form Signal Last Seen Prior to 2,000% Rally in 2017
Bitcoin has undergone a strong rally over the past few months. From the March lows, the cryptocurrency has gained over 200%, rallying from ,500 to ,700 now.
While already impressive, the coin is about to form a pivotal buying signal that may suggest more upside is likely. The signal in question last formed when the cryptocurrency was trading under ,000 at the end of 2016, prior to the 2017 exponential rally.
Related Reading: Here’s Why Ethereum’s DeFi Market May Be Near A Bottom
Bitcoin Forms Pivotal Buying Signal
According to data from Crypto Quant shared by a crypto-asset analyst, Bitcoin is about to form a long-term buying signal. The signal is the Miners Reserve, which tracks the BTC reserves of entities tied to mining pools.
According to the chart, the indicator is poised to undergo a positive crossover, with the short-term moving average crossing below the long-term moving average.
This signal is important as it was last seen at the end of 2016, prior to Bitcoin’s 2,000% rally in 2017. This signal also preceded two other macro rallies that brought BTC exponentially higher.
The same trader pointed to a swath of other on-chain trends showing that the long-term trend is favoring bulls.
Chart of BTC's price action since the start of its trading around a decade ago with on-chain analysis by CryptoQuant. Chart shared by Coiner Yadox (Yodaskk on Twitter). Chart from CryptoQuant and TradingView.com
Related Reading: Tyler Winklevoss: A “Tsunami” of Capital Is Coming For Bitcoin
Fundamental Trends Favoring Bulls
Fundamental trends favor Bitcoin bulls, analysts say.
Macro investor Raoul Pal recently said in an interview with publication Stansberry Research that Bitcoin is likely to reach a price of million in the coming five years. He thinks that investment by institutional players will drive the cryptocurrency this far to the upside:
“Just from what I know from all of the institutions, all of the people I speak to, there is an enormous wall of money coming into this. It’s an enormous wall of money — just the pipes aren’t there to allow people to do it yet, and that’s coming. But it’s on everybody’s radar, and there’s a lot of smart people working on it.”
Pal has said that he thinks Bitcoin may be the best investment in existence right now due to macro trends.
Related Reading: 3 Bitcoin On-Chain Trends Show a Macro Bull Market Is Brewing
Featured Image from Shutterstock Price tags: xbtusd, btcusd, btcusdt Charts from TradingView.com Bitcoin to Soon Form Signal Last Seen Prior to 1,000% Rally in 2017
Trader Claims Uniswap’s UNI Will Plunge to $2.00 Prior to Platform’s V3 Launch
Uniswap’s UNI token has been struggling to garner any sustainable upwards momentum over the past few days and weeks, with each rally being met with massive inflows of selling pressure that force its price lower.
There are no immediate catalysts for it to see any significant upside, as it will still be quite some time before any governance proposal is put forward and passed to distribute fees to holders, and there’s no definitive date for when V3 of the platform will be released.
Until either of these two events take place, it remains unclear as to when the cryptocurrency will be able to see any sustained upwards momentum.
One narrative that could bolster the cryptocurrency in the future is the regulatory clampdown and series of hacks seen by centralized exchanges as of late.
The 0m KuCoin hack a few weeks ago directed a spotlight onto the risks incurred by holding capital on centralized platforms. The recent arrest of the OKEx founder – which resulted in 200,000 BTC being locked within the platform, further bolstered the case for DEXs.
Despite this growing narrative, one analyst believes that Uniswap’s UNI will continue plunging lower in the days and weeks ahead, potentially hitting the lower-.00 region.
Uniswap’s UNI Struggles to Gain Momentum as Selling Pressure Mounts
Directly following the recent news of OKEx’s crypto withdraws being suspended, Uniswap’s token price rocketed higher, signaling that investors anticipated this news to provide DEXs with a boost.
It has since surrendered these gains and is currently trading down marginally at its current price of .00.
It does appear that a break below the .00 support level is imminent, which could kick off a fresh bout of selling pressure.
Analyst: UNI Likely to Plunge Towards .00 Before Rebounding
One analyst explained that he believes a move to .00 is imminent for Uniswap’s UNI.
However, he does note that the token could get a near-term boost if Yearn.finance decides to switch strategies from Curve to Uniswap in the near-term.
“UNI I’m shorting everything above .2. Alpha leak: Expecting YFI to change strategy from CRV to UNI long before UNI v3 launch,” he said.
Image Courtesy of Mac. Source: UNIUSD on TradingView.
Unless there’s some catalyst that shifts its near-term trend, Uniswap’s UNI will likely continue drifting lower in the near-term.
Featured image from Unsplash. Charts from TradingView.
Crucial Bitcoin Signal That Formed Prior to $2,000 Crash Returns
Bitcoin has undergone a strong rally over the past 10 days, moving from ,400 to a high near ,750. As of this article’s writing, the coin trades for ,400, far above those lows but still below those highs.
While some see this price action as consolidation before another thrust higher, Bitcoin has formed a strong bearish signal after this rally. Some fear that it is a precursor to a strong move to the downside, or at least one suggesting BTC will sink back towards the ,000s.
Related Reading: Here’s Why Ethereum’s DeFi Market May Be Near A Bottom
Bitcoin Price Forms Pivotal Sell Signal
Bitcoin is forming some short-term sell signals despite it holding quite well in the face of news that OKEx has frozen withdrawals. The leading exchange did so on Friday morning, announcing that one of the private key holders of the company has not been in contact with the exchange.
The cryptocurrency recently printed a Tom Demark Sequential “Sell 9” candle on its ten-hour CME futures chart, an analyst says.
This is important as this indicator has been extremely pivotal for Bitcoin over recent months. “Sell 9” candles have marked the ,500 highs in August, the ,000 local highs at the end of August preceding a ,000 drop, along with short-term bottoms and tops. This latest signal suggests that ETH will continue its descent in the days ahead.
Chart of BTC's price action over recent months with a 10-hour CME futures chart analysis by crypto trader Coiner Yadox. Source: BTCUSD from TradingView.com
Related Reading: Tyler Winklevoss: A “Tsunami” of Capital Is Coming For Bitcoin
Not the Only Short-Term Bear
He isn’t the only bear. JP Morgan strategists noted that the cryptocurrency faces some headwinds as it begins to trade above its intrinsic value. The JP Morgan team has been covering crypto for years now.
The company added that there is seemingly an overhang of net long positions on crypto futures platforms, which may suggest that the market is overleveraged to the upside. This means that there is a potential that the market will move in favor of shorts to reset this positioning, thus avoiding overleveraging by long holders.
“The JPMorgan strategists said they calculated an intrinsic value by effectively treating Bitcoin as a commodity and looking at the marginal cost of production.”
Chart of BTC's price action since the start of 2017 with an instrinsic value analysis by JP Morgan analysts.
Related Reading: 3 Bitcoin On-Chain Trends Show a Macro Bull Market Is Brewing
Featured Image from Shutterstock Price tags: xbtusd, btcusd, btcusdt Charts from TradingView.com Crucial Bitcoin Signal That Formed Prior to ,000 Crash Returns
Analyst: Bitcoin Looks Exactly As It did Prior to 2017’s 2,000% Rally
Multiple analyses have shown that Bitcoin looks primed to see a macro rally despite the ongoing uncertainty and lack of volatility.
Related Reading: BTC Just Confirmed a Signal That Preceded Historical 5,000% Rallies
Bitcoin Looks Extremely Similar to the Start of Previous Macro Rallies
According to a cryptocurrency trader, the simple chart below explains why he is currently bullish on Bitcoin. It shows the asset’s macro price action with annotations of the halving and key cycle events.
In sharing the chart, the trader is suggesting that Bitcoin currently looks almost exactly like it did prior to 2013’s and 2017’s parabolic surges. Each previous surge brought the asset to a high that was effectively an order of magnitude higher than the last.
Should Bitcoin follow its historical path, it will see a strong breakout in the months ahead, then hit a new all-time high rapidly.
Macro BTC analysis by trader "Ethereum Jack" (@BTC_JackSparrow on Twitter). Chart from TradingView.com
This analyst’s chart was published shortly after Charles Edwards, a digital asset manager and a prominent technical indicator creator, shared a similar chart.
Around the same time, Edwards also noted that one of his indicators, the Hash Ribbons, just confirmed a macro buy signal. The Hash Ribbons are an indicator that derives signals from a short-term and long-term moving average of the hash rate of the Bitcoin network.
This is important for BTC because each of these signals has preceded extremely strong rallies in this nascent market. In fact, analysis by Edwards has found that each time the signal has appeared, Bitcoin has rallied by approximately 5,000% on average in the months/years that followed.
Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Twitter’s “Bitcoin Scam,” Elon Musk & Dogecoin, Institutions Want BTC & ETH
The S&P 500 Effect
Despite this, a move lower in the S&P 500 could put a stop to any rally that the abovementioned analyses suggest.
As analysts on Wall Street and in the cryptocurrency space have recently noticed, a strong correlation has grown between Bitcoin and the S&P 500. There are multiple charts online showing that when the stock market moves, so does BTC, down to a few seconds or a few dozen seconds.
Bears may, unfortunately, take the upper hand as many have begun to predict a retracement in the stock market as valuations heat up. This sentiment is timely as we are entering the earnings season for Q2 2020, predicted by some to be the worst economic quarter in decades.
Scott Minerd, the global CIO of Guggenheim Investments, has predicted that the S&P 500 could drop to 1,600 in the months and years ahead.
There’s also financial analyst Gary Shilling, who suggested that the stock market currently looks like that seen in the Great Depression:
“I think we’ve got a second leg down and that’s very much reminiscent of what happened in the 1930s where people appreciate the depth of this recession and the disruption and how long it’s going to take to recover.”
Should stocks plunge dozens of percent again, it’s unlikely that Bitcoin won’t be affected in some negative way.
Featured Image from Shutterstock Price tags: xbtusd, btcusd, btcusdt Charts from TradingView.com Analyst: Bitcoin Looks Exactly As It did Prior to 2017's 2,000% Rally