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Ian inflicts staggering losses on Florida’s growth machine
“No pun intended: This is the perfect storm,” said Chris Brown, executive director of the disaster policy group SmarterSafer Coalition. The price tag from Ian’s destruction will easily reach the tens of billions of dollars, insurance experts say. Early projections from after Ian’s landfall showed overall insured losses alone topping $30 billion, said Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson with the Insurance Information Institute. Much of that will be from flooding, said RMS, an analytics firm that’s part of credit-rating agency Moody’s. “Just because you’re not in a ‘flood zone’ does not mean that you’re not at risk of a catastrophic event like this,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said during a briefing Wednesday. “This is an issue we’re going to have to deal with.” “You’re looking at...
Bitcoin profitability for long-term holders decline to 4-year low: Data
Bitcoin’s (BTC) long-term profitability has declined to levels last seen during the previous bear market in December 2018. According to data shared by crypto analytic firm Glassnode, BTC holders are selling their tokens at an average loss of 42%. Bitcoin long term holders. Source: Glassnode The Glassnode data indicate that long-term holders of the top cryptocurrency selling their tokens have a cost basis of $32,000, meaning the average buying price for these holders selling their stack is above $30,000. The current market downturn added to the declining profitability can be attributed to several macroeconomic factors. The BTC market still has a heavy correlation with the stock market, especially tech stocks, which are currently seeing an even bigger downtrend than crypto. The rising inflat...
Bitcoin sees first difficulty drop in 2 months as miners sell 8K BTC
Bitcoin (BTC) miners remain under stress at current price levels as data shows large outflows from miner wallets returning. According to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, monthly miner sales totaled up to around 8,000 BTC in September. Bitcoin miners see heavy sales In contrast to the June lows, when BTC/USD hit its current multi-year floor of $17,600, miners are currently selling considerable amounts of BTC. According to Glassnode, which tracks the 30-day change in miner balances, at the start of the month, miners were down a maximum 8,650 BTC over the month prior. Bitcoin miner net position change chart. Source: Glassnode While this subsequently reduced, taking into account changes in the BTC price, miners are still selling more than they earn on a rolling monthly basis. As of Sept. 29,...
DEX dev Uniswap Labs looks for new funding at unicorn valuation: Report
Major decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap is in the early stages of raising significant funds to further expand its decentralized finance (DeFi) offerings, according to a new report. Uniswap Labs, a DeFi startup contributing to the Uniswap Protocol, is engaging with a number of investors to raise an equity round of $100 million to $200 million, TechCrunch reported on Sept. 30. The startup is working with investors like Polychain and one of Singapore’s sovereign funds as part of the upcoming funding round, the report notes, citing two anonymous people familiar with the matter. According to the report, Uniswap would be valued at $1 billion, but the terms of the deal are subject to changes as the discussions around the round have not been finalized. The new funding reportedly aims to bring m...
Mainstream media sentiment shifts in favor of Bitcoin amid fiat currency woes
Despite USD bringing an onslaught to stocks, commodities and its rival currencies, BTC holds steady at the $19,000 to $20,000 mark, leaving mainstream media no choice but to put BTC into the headlines. American daily newspaper The New York Times highlighted BTC’s 6.5% increase in the last seven days and noted that this had caught the attention of crypto bulls and bears. Meanwhile, Fortune Magazine’s crypto outlet has also compared Bitcoin’s standout performance to other assets like the Japanese yen, Chinese yuan and gold, apart from the euro and pound. With fiat currencies like the euro and the Great British pound sterling failing to hold their ground against the United States dollar (USD), mainstream media outlets have started to put Bitcoin (BTC) into the spotlight for its st...
Hurricane Ian heads for Carolinas after pounding Florida
With winds holding at 85 mph (140 kph), the National Hurricane Center’s update at 5 a.m. Friday placed Ian about 145 miles (235 km) southeast of Charleston and forecast a “life-threatening storm surge” and hurricane conditions along the Carolina coastal area later Friday. The hurricane warning stretched from the Savannah River to Cape Fear, with flooding likely across the Carolinas and southwestern Virginia, the center said. The forecast predicted a storm surge of up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) into coastal areas of the Carolinas, and rainfall of up to 8 inches (20 centimeters). In Florida, rescue crews piloted boats and waded through riverine streets Thursday to save thousands of Floridians trapped amid flooded homes and buildings shattered by Hurricane Ian. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at l...
Jay Powell takes on the world
Powell’s actions have caused a flood of money to flee the shores of other countries for safer American investments that offer a much more attractive payoff because the U.S. now has its highest interest rates since 2008. A stronger dollar means the cost for Europeans of heating their homes and powering their cities, already driven sky high by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is getting even greater. And smaller developing countries could begin to drown in ever-more-burdensome debt payments. Fed officials are in regular communication with their counterparts in other countries, and Steven Kamin, who led the Fed board’s international finance division until 2020, said Powell and his fellow policymakers are going to hear a lot of anxiety from foreign officials about the fallout caused by the centra...
The Fed’s Powell is squeezing the global economy
Powell’s actions have caused a flood of money to flee the shores of other countries for safer American investments that offer a much more attractive payoff because the U.S. now has its highest interest rates since 2008. A stronger dollar means the cost for Europeans of heating their homes and powering their cities, already driven sky high by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is getting even greater. And smaller developing countries could begin to drown in ever-more-burdensome debt payments. Fed officials are in regular communication with their counterparts in other countries, and Steven Kamin, who led the Fed board’s international finance division until 2020, said Powell and his fellow policymakers are going to hear a lot of anxiety from foreign officials about the fallout caused by the centra...
‘I’ve done nothing wrong’ — Lark Davis denies ‘pump-and-dump’ allegations
Crypto influencer Lark Davis has refuted new allegations from Twitter “on-chain sleuth” ZachXBT of shilling “low cap projects” to his audience “just to dump them shortly after.” Davis was responding to a Twitter thread posted by Zach on Sept. 29, containing allegations that he profited over $1.2 million through selling tokens from crypto projects which he was allegedly paid to promote without disclosing. In a 17-part thread, Zach pointed to eight examples of what is supposedly Davis’ crypto wallet receiving tokens from new crypto projects, with Davis subsequently tweeting or posting a video on them, and then selling the tokens shortly after. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Zach said he received requests from multiple people who lost money on the tokens shared by Davis asking to “take a closer l...
Texas, Vermont regulators object to Celsius stablecoin sale plan
State regulators from Texas and Vermont have filed a motion objecting to embattled crypto lender Celsius’ plans to sell off its stablecoin holdings. Separate motions from both regulators filed on Sept. 29 argue that there’s a risk the firm could use the capital to resume operating in violation of state laws. The filings come after a Sept. 15 notice from Celsius’ legal team asking the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York for permission to sell its stablecoin holdings, reportedly worth around $23 million. A hearing to accept or decline the motion will occur on Oct. 6. However, the move has not gone down well with the Texas State Securities Board (SBB), the Texas Department of Banking, and the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation, who filed obj...
BlackRock’s newest ETF invests in 35 blockchain-related companies
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has just launched a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) providing European customers with exposure to the blockchain industry, while reports indicate a Metaverse-focused ETF may be on the way. The new blockchain ETF launched on Sept. 27 is called the iShares Blockchain Technology UCITS ETF (BLKC). BlackRock said 75% of its holdings consist of blockchain companies such as miners and exchanges, while the other 25% are companies that support the blockchain ecosystem. The fund includes 35 global companies out of a total of 50 holdings, which also includes fiat cash and derivatives, but does not directly invest in cryptocurrencies. BLKC marks the latest of a series of moves into the digital assets space for BlackRock, with the m...
Researchers allege Bitcoin’s climate impact closer to ‘digital crude’ than gold
The Bitcoin (BTC) bashing has continued unabated even in the depths of a bear market with more research questioning its energy usage and impact on the environment. The latest paper by researchers at the department of economics at the University of New Mexico, published on Sept. 29, alleges that from a climate-damage perspective, Bitcoin operates more like “digital crude” than “digital gold.” The research attempts to estimate the energy-related climate damage caused by proof-of-work Bitcoin mining and make comparisons to other industries. It alleges that between 2016 and 2021, on average each $1 in BTC market value created was responsible for $0.35 in global “climate damages,” adding: “Which as a share of market value is in the range between beef production and crude oil burned as gasoline,...
