“Legislators are responding fast to the madness surrounding Gamestop and AMC shares and the hedge funds selling them short. Earlier today, Robinhood and a number of other platforms aimed at retail investors cancelled buying on GME, in what many have been calling unfair collusion with the hedge funds in question.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who both sit on the House Financial Services Committee, both announced their firm opposition to Robinhood’s action, with AOC calling for a hearing as well.
People on Wall Street only care about the rules when they’re the ones getting hurt.
On Jan. 28, Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee Maxine Waters announced a coming hearing on short-selling. Sherrod Brown, the incoming chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, similarly called for a re-examination of stock market rules.”
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“Purportedly in response to the unprecedented trading action that has been threatening hedge funds like Melvin Capital, Robinhood has suspended the purchase of stocks that Redditors are pumping — such as GameStop, AMC Entertainment and others.
Yesterday, some brokers including TD Ameritrade restricted trades, while Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman said that the firm would consider halting trading for similar stocks with ‘unusual activity.’“
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“Reddit is growing its role in the Ethereum ecosystem, with the goal of building out scaling tools for the blockchain network. Reddit development resources, including a developer team, would be involved in this work.
In this new stage of our partnership, immediate efforts will be focused on bringing Ethereum to Reddit-scale production. Our intention is to help accelerate the progress being made on scaling and develop the technology needed to launch large-scale applications like Community Points on Ethereum.”
“Citing the need to deal with the “devaluation of money and credit,” the founder and co-chairman of the world’s largest hedge fund said he expects the firm to soon offer an alt-cash fund and a storehold of wealth fund.
Calling bitcoin “one hell of an invention,” Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio appears to have warmed a bit further to the largest cryptocurrency, saying it or its rivals could fill the growing need for alternatives to gold.”
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“Chief among EY blockchain lead Paul Brody’s predictions for 2021: Financial institutions will bring decentralized finance (DeFi) to a consumer audience. Asked which large companies he sees launching consumer DeFi, Brody believes this will emerge via app services: the Robinhoods, PayPals and Publics of the world.
Two major catalysts will help this DeFi conversion take place, according to Brody. Firstly, the testing, auditing and hardening of smart contracts; secondly, the inclusion of regulated stablecoins in the space. A final piece of the institutional DeFi puzzle is the introduction of real-world assets into the on-chain space.
Regulated stablecoins will make it a more mature sector for institutional investors and for the big money to come in.”
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“Trusts for aave, cosmos and polkadot, as well as privacy coin monero and cardano, have been registered in Delaware.
The filings do not, however, mean that trusts will necessarily be launched for the four new assets, but do indicate that the asset manager is laying the groundwork for potential launches. As reported on Jan. 22, Grayscale has registered trusts for chainlink, basic attention token, decentraland, livepeer, tezos and filecoin in the last few months.”
“The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it would keep U.S. interest rates close to zero and continue its $120 billion-a-month bond-buying program. The panel agreed to continue accommodative monetary policy until inflation averages 2% over time. On average, the Fed doesn’t expect 2% inflation until 2023.
The low-interest-rate environment is thought to be a boon for bitcoin and other high-yield investments that can offer the market alternatives to bonds.”
See Also: Fed Chair Powell: ‘We’d Welcome Higher Inflation’
“Financial authority figures from China and Singapore offered a glimpse at how the international roadmap for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) might play out, with the suggestion of an interoperability deal between the nations.
Let’s say if Singapore was willing to have the Chinese digital currency moving to Singapore and China was willing to accept the Singapore digital currency, maybe the two countries can sign a deal to work on those things.”
See Also: Central banks representing a fifth of world’s population likely to issue CBDC in 3 years: BIS
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“The rule would have prohibited U.S. banks from denying services based on ideological factors.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Thursday put former acting Comptroller Brian Brooks’ controversial “fair access” banking rule on hold pending a review by the new administration. The next OCC head will review the rule once he or she is confirmed.”
The Disrupt 