Thu Mar 23 2023
Yesterday, the Fed delivered on its dovish hike of 25 bps and it downgraded its views of further increases to “some additional policy firming” from “ongoing increases in the target range.”. However, while Powell insisted that US banks are well capitalized and sound, Yellen announced in front of the Senate Committee that a “blanket” deposit insurance has not been considered. Equity markets and risk assets quickly dived to close deep red. BTC promptly went from $28.3k to $26.9k into the close yesterday. Today morning, they have recovered some of their losses: BTC is now at $27.4k and ETH is at $1.75k. Equity markets are also opening higher, with SPX at 1.24% and NDQ at 1.95%. The BoE and Swiss central bank have also hiked rates today. The liquidation has been wild, with more than $180 million longs liquidated. BTC’s volatility has outperformed ETH for the first time in a year. Also, BTC’s correlation with gold is on the uptrend, while that with the equity market is decreasing. By mid day , BTC has already recovered from yesterday losses.
https://mrktkap.substack.com/p/thu-mar-23-2023
The jobless claims today reflected a strong labor market. The banking crisis has increased the likelihood of no further hikes this year to 50%.New home sales also came in below expectations, though still positive. The 2Y10Y Treasury Basis seems to have peaked, although historically, the period after this does not bode well for equities.
Yesterday saw a slew of legal activities. The SEC sent a Wells Notice to Coinbase over crypto offering. Cathie Wood’s ARK sold $13 million worth of COIN holdings, and the stock is down 13%. Last month, Paxos was the recipient of a similar notice. The SEC also announced civil charges against Tron founder Justin Sun and eight celebrities. The White House economic report that came out yesterday harped on the stability of traditional banks and was very negative of digital asset-based financial innovation. The founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, has reportedly been arrested in Montenegro. In other scandalous news , short seller Hindenburg Research has a new report on Block Inc. and its use of inflated metrics; the shares are down 10% for the payment firm.
Today is the day of the ARB airdrop. On a daily basis, the chain already sees more transactions than Ethereum.The price of the token is now at $1.3, coming all the way down from $11.1. OKX leads on ARB spot volume, while Uniswap V3 is also up there on the charts. LTC is up 11% for the day, probably due to the halving later this year. Telegram is now allowing users to transfer USDT via chat. Kraken will suspend USD ACH deposits. Coinbase will suspend ALGO staking rewards, possibly as an aftereffect of the SEC/staking discussion.
Roofstock, in collaboration with ReaIT, sold an Atlanta home after tokenizing it via Ethereum-based NFT on OpenSea — its second such transaction.
