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U.S. economy slowed to a 2% rate last quarter in face of Covid
Airlines have reported growing passenger traffic, businesses are spending more on equipment and wages are increasing as employers struggle to draw more people back into the job market. A resurgence of consumer spending could help energize the economy as the year nears a close. At the same time, though, rising prices, especially for gasoline, food, rent and other staples, are imposing a burden on American consumers and eroding the benefits of higher wages. Inflation has emerged as a threat to the economic recovery and a key concern for the Federal Reserve as it prepares to start withdrawing the emergency aid it provided to the economy after the recession struck last year. Thursday’s report from the government, the first of three estimates of last quarter’s GDP, showed that consumer spending...
El Salvador buys additional 420 bitcoins as price dips
Bitcoin has dropped below the $60k level for the first time in over a week, with investors taking advantage of the price dip. El Salvador is one of the most progressive countries in terms of cryptocurrencies. The president has been an advocate of cryptocurrencies and took a bold step in making Bitcoin a legal tender in the country. The Central American country holds bitcoins in its balance sheet. However, President Nayib Bukele hasn’t had enough, and he took full advantage of the recent dip in the leading cryptocurrency’s price. President Nayib Bukele revealed that El Salvador had bought 420 bitcoins worth $25 million earlier this week. The coins were added to the country’s treasury as he encouraged more people to buy the dip. The president added that they are already making a profit from ...
Shiba Inu overtakes Dogecoin in terms of market cap
The cryptocurrency space is undergoing a correction at the moment, but Shiba Inu has been performing excellently. The cryptocurrency market has been underperforming over the past few days, with numerous coins losing more than 5% of their values during that period. Bitcoin dropped below its $60k psychological level after reaching an all-time high above $67k last week. However, it is now trading at $59k per coin. Ether, Solana, XRP and Polkadot are some of the other leading cryptocurrencies also recording losses at the moment. However, one cryptocurrency that has defied the market’s direction is Shiba Inu. The meme coin has performed excellently in recent days, leading it to overtake Dogecoin in the market. Shiba Inu has been up by more than 140% over the past week, causing its price to surg...
El Salvador buys a smokin’ hot 420 more Bitcoin
The President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele tweeted earlier today that his government has taken advantage of the recent Bitcoin price drop and added 420 additional BTC to the nation’s stash. “It was a long wait, but worth it,” he tweeted, “We just bought the dip!” Shortly after he tweeted: “We’re already making a profit off the #Bitcoin we just bought.” During the time between the tweets, the value of the country’s Bitcoin grew by around 0.4% or $100K. How do we make a profit if 1 #BTC= 1 #BTC? We have a trust fund accounted in USD, but the trust is funded by both USD and BTC. When the BTC part revalues in comparison to the accounting currency (USD), we are able to withdraw some USD and leave the trust with the same total. — Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) October 27, 2021 Many onlookers ...
SEC reportedly knocks back Valkyrie’s leveraged Bitcoin ETF
Reports are emerging that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected one, or possibly two, recent Bitcoin exchange-traded fund applications signaling that the regulator is not quite ready for more exotic futures products just yet. Just a day or so after Valkyrie filed for a leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF and Direxion applied for an inverse fund for bears, the SEC appears to have vetoed them both. On Oct. 28, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas referred to a Dow Jones alert indicating the Valkyrie leveraged fund had been shelved by the SEC. He added that the move was likely also to apply to the inverse fund application. Looks like the SEC not having it w the levered (and likely inverse) Bitcoin futures ETFs. Can’t hurt to try tho. Had they gone through likely billion ...
US gov attorneys to target individuals and gatekeepers for crypto prosecutions
A group of high-level U.S. government attorneys has oulined their priorities for the enforcement and prosecution of individuals and companies that have committed crypto-related crimes. Enforcement officials from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) spoke about the direction their agencies will take at a panel discussion at the American Bar Association’s annual institute on white-collar crime in Miami on Oct. 27. In addition to corporate players, lawmakers are taking a closer look at individuals according to a report of the event by Law360. Principal deputy assistant attorney general of the DoJ’s Criminal Division, Nicholas McQuaid, stated the prosecution of individuals in white-collar cas...
Nifty News: Wolf snaps up Punk, Disney NFTs, Economist mag cover fetches $422K…
The wolf of nonfungible streets Erstwhile crypto skeptic Jordan Belfort has bravely outed himself as an NFT proponent amid the booming growth of the sector in 2021. Belfort is known for his dodgy antics while working as a stockbroker on Wall Street, with his story being captured in “The Wolf of Wall Street” film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The 59-year-old has slammed crypto on multiple occasions, and in 2018 he even compared Bitcoin to the level of fraud that his firm Stratton Oakmont used to engage in before he was indicted for securities fraud and money laundering in 1999. On Oct. 25, Belfort revealed to his 600,000 followers that he purchased CryptoPunk #6033, depicting a male wearing a durag and smoking a vaporizer pen. According to the transaction history on OpenSea, Belfort spent 102...
Mort Sahl, Top Comedian & Host of First Grammy Awards Ceremony, Dies at 94
At a time when comics often traded in tired jokes about their mothers-in-law, Sahl demonstrated that he had read the paper. Mort Sahl, one of the most successful and influential comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, died Tuesday at age 94. On top of many other things, Sahl owns a little piece of Grammy history. On May 4, 1959, Sahl emceed the presentation of the first Grammy Awards in the Grand Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. The black-tie dinner and awards presentation, which was not televised, drew such guests as Henry Mancini (whose Music From Peter Gunn won album of the year), Frank Sinatra (who was the night’s leading nominee with six nods but won only for best album cover), Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Gene Autry, Johnny Mercer and Andre Previn. Sahl was al...
Elton John, Rüfüs Du Sol Aiming for Top Debuts on Australia’s Albums Chart
It’s all still to play for, as Rüfüs Du Sol’s latest effort Surrender aims high. The Sydney electronic act, now based in Los Angeles, is coming off a career-defining release in 2018’s Solace, which was nominated for two Grammy Awards (for best dance/electronic album and best dance recording) and three ARIA Awards (winning for best dance release) and was voted as the best electronic album of 2018 by Billboard’s Dance. None of the act’s three previous albums have charted lower than No. 2. Their debut Atlas (from 2013) and Bloom (2016) both hit No. 1 in Australia, while Solace peaked at No. 2. Keep an eye out for Lana Del Rey’s chart position with Blue Banisters, which could give the American alternative pop singer her seventh Top Ten title and second album for 2021. And finally, British...
Newsom targets oil drilling over union objections
“We have a stockpile of foreign goods sitting in container ships up and down the coast — a visual reminder of California’s overdependence on other countries, most with little to no environmental or labor standards,” said Robbie Hunter, the group’s president, in a statement. Officials acknowledged the tension during Newsom’s unveiling of the draft rule in the port town of Wilmington, in southern Los Angeles County. Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) pointed out that his bill to mandate such buffer zones died last year “in the face of the powerful combined opposition of big oil, and the State Building and Construction Trades unions” and that “this fight is not over.” California is the seventh-largest petroleum-producing state in the country; u...
El Salvador Buys $25 Million USD Worth of Bitcoin
El Salvador, a nation that recently became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as a national currency, bought 420 Bitcoin (roughly $25 million USD) on Wednesday. President Nayib Bukele, a vocal supporter of the cryptocurrency, tweeted about the country’s acquisition. It was a long wait, but worth it. We just bought the dip! 420 new #Bitcoin?? — Nayib Bukele ?? (@nayibbukele) October 27, 2021 “We just bought the dip!” he wrote, implying that the country bought the currency when it was down from its all-time high of $66,976 USD earlier this month. As of Wednesday evening, the coin was hovering around $58,700 USD. Bukele announced that the country bought 200 Bitcoins in September, worth approximately $21 million USD at the time of purchase. According to Bloomberg, El Salvador ...
Voyager Digital will be crypto brokerage partner for Dallas Mavericks
Crypto trading platform Voyager Digital has inked a deal with the Dallas Mavericks basketball team aiming to make crypto more accessible through fan engagement and other educational programs. In an Oct. 27 announcement, Voyager Digital said it would become the Mavs first cryptocurrency brokerage and international partner in a five-year deal. The trading platform will also have naming rights over the franchise’s Mavs Gaming Hub in Dallas, a venue for the Mavs NBA 2K League team. “This partnership gives us the opportunity to educate people all over the world on ways to use crypto in their everyday lives,” said Voyager Digital co-founder and CEO Steve Ehrlich. “We want to help people learn alternate ways to grow their wealth to achieve true financial freedom and build intergenerational ...
