Trump found time on his Friday afternoon to pledge additional 10% tariffs on yet another $300bn in Chinese imports, just after trade reps from both countries reconvened last week in a futile attempt to address the impasse. It’s almost as if he’s set out to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, wreck havoc in the economy to prove his point to Jerome Powell that a long-term deleveraging is indeed needed.
Over the weekend, yet another tragic shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso left 20 dead and 26 wounded. Trade wars, domestic terrorists… sounds like the leader of the free world had one hell of a weekend.
Turns out, he was more interested in testing out his shiny new golf clubs.
CZ reckons POTUS #45 will finally come to his senses and load up on Bitcoin after he leaves office. That is a lot of faith on a man that clearly takes conflicts of interest seriously.
Markets however, had no time off. Equities continue to lag, copper threatened to slice through 2yr support while the CNY breached the 7-handle, the first time in eleven years.
CNHCNY spreads widen… expect active cross-border arb traders to be in the driver's seat. Bitcoin difficulty however, punched through an all-time high further strengthening the security of the protocol.
HSBCs CEO John Flint announced his departure less than two years in the job as the bank looks to shred 500 jobs ahead of a $1bn buyback. The bank “does not expect to achieve its targeted 6% Return on Tangible Equity.” You can outperform the too-big-to-fail-bank by 200bps simply by staking stable coins with Nexo.io. These banks have proved creative when it comes to charging their customers but Southern District of New York Judge Katherine Polk Failla is having none of it as she overrules Chase’s motion to dismiss a class-action suit brought against them as they treated (and charged) crypto purchases on credit as “cash advances.”
And while the debate on Libra continues, Walmart has submitted a patent for what appears to be a stable coin while Shariah-compliant Amanie Advisors pushes the envelope for the Muslim financiers to get on a halal coin already.
Following his comments of wanting to use BCH as a data layer for Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has announced his support for the EVM to house the Bitcoin Lightning Network as he sees the future of crypto being “Pluralist.” Surprised to see $ETH +5.1% considering the sway Buterin has in the Ethereum dev community. The same can be said of $BSV +3.9% as the Bitcoin fork witnesses a three-chain split.
A bit of validation doesn’t hurt especially if it comes from top shelf institutions like MIT where researchers after vetting $6bn in bitcoin transactions has deemed just 2% of the 200K coins traded were used in money laundering. Just the fines for committing the felony were bigger for a few banks… #TheFutureIsHere
- Grayscale to use Coinbase’s custody solution for c.$3bn crypto holdings
- Bitmain posts $625mn loss during 1Q19 as per local press as they continue their efforts to go public.
- Circle head of OTC trading Daniel Matuszewski and at least 5 others leave.
- Shinhan Bank (055550 KS) -0.12% to launch Blockchain based P2P stock loan service.
- Iran will not recognize crypto as legal tender, despite permitting mining of cryptoassets.
- PBoC names research on a CBDC as one of the eight government priorities for 2H19.
May the trend be your friend… Happy trading! TGIF
