“CPI, the most widely tracked benchmark for inflation, rose 8.6% on a year-over-year basis in May, topping expectations that it would decline to 8.2% from April’s 8.3%. On a monthly basis, the CPI rose 1% in May, ahead of expectations for a gain of 0.7%, and more than tripling from April’s 0.3% advance.
The unexpected fresh four-decade high of 8.6% in headline inflation is problematic for monetary policymakers who are in the middle of a rate hike cycle but may have been eyeing a pause at some point later this year. Now the question may be whether the U.S. Federal Reserve needs to raise rates by 75 basis points per meeting rather than the planned 50 basis points.
Bitcoin (BTC) – along with nearly all assets – has taken a major hit as western central banks have begun tightening monetary policy over the past few months. BTC has dipped to $29,500 from $30,000 in the minutes after the report.
There are certainly positive signs that would indicate the worst [on inflation] is behind us. The job market remains strong, which is putting money in people’s pockets. However, price increases are still outpacing people’s paychecks. Hopefully, this trend will reverse itself as inflation reaches its peak and begins to dissipate. Our purchase spending data suggests that this is the direction we are headed.
Friday’s inflation report is the last major economic indicator that the Fed sees before its next meeting June 14-15, at which time the central bank is widely expected to raise its benchmark federal funds rate by another 50 basis points, in what would be the third rate hike this year.”
See Also: Mike Novogratz Predicts Next Crypto Cycle Begins in October
“Officials from investment firms Grayscale and Bitwise are optimistic a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will finally be approved by the U.S. SEC.
Grayscale’s proposal to convert GBTC to an ETF is going through a public comment period, with the deadline for the SEC’s decision coming July 6. The deadline for a decision on the Bitwise application is June 29.
Eventually, [an ETF] will be the largest way that investors will hold bitcoin.”
“The U.S. Treasury Department is once again looking at a controversial proposal to identify who controls unhosted cryptocurrency wallets. Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the Treasury, said that storing crypto anonymously outside of regulated venues allowed people to bypass sanctions and anti-money laundering (AML) checks.
We’re working to address the unique risks associated with unhosted wallets.”
“The Abra Crypto Card will allow users to earn back crypto on any purchase, no matter the amount or category.
Cardholders can choose from any of the more than 100 cryptocurrencies supported on the Abra platform, with no annual or foreign transaction fees. The card will also come with Amex Offers for shopping, travel, dining and services as well as presale ticket access and purchase protections.
Amex retail offers from hundreds of merchants are integrated into the app with the whole fraud and purchase protection all integrated with the Abra wallet.”
See Also: Mastercard Now Allowing Cardholders to Buy NFTs on Several Marketplaces
“Layer 2 bridge Hop protocol has distributed 20.5 million governance tokens (HOP) to its users in the form of an airdrop. A total of 54.8 million tokens are available to be claimed by 145,329 eligible recipients.
Hop protocol currently supports Gnosis and Polygon as mainnet rollups but will soon offer support for Optimism and Arbitrum.”
See Also: Optimism Attacker Returns 17M Stolen OP Tokens
“Data has become a valuable resource in the digital universe, whether that’s aggregated data from people’s retail decisions or self-driven miles accumulated by the auto industry’s AI-enabled cars. However, the raw data sets needed to model outcomes or train machine-learning algorithms have tended to accumulate in the hands of a few very large companies – a situation Ocean aims to democratize for a Web 3 future.
Ocean’s version 3, released in late 2020, allowed particular data sets, the supply-chain data of a large company, for example, to be accessed using Ethereum-based “data tokens” that would enable the data to be shared and also monetized in decentralized data marketplaces. Version 4 of the protocol uses NFTs as a more flexible way to handle data ownership as it becomes a yield-bearing asset.
We saw that the ability for you to encode your ownership right of the data set into NFT was very powerful.”
See Also: CZ visits Palau to kick off BNB Chain-supported ID NFTs for digital residency program
See Also: Pussy Riot Crashes Texas State Capitol, Mints Commemorative Ethereum NFT
“Jack Dorsey’s beef with Web 3 has never been a secret. TBD – the bitcoin-focused subsidiary of Dorsey’s Block (SQ) – announced its new vision for a decentralized internet layer on Friday. Its name? Web 5. The Block subsidiary’s alternative ditches Web 3’s blockchain-centric model and places bitcoin at the forefront. But there is no official release date, as yet.
TBD lead Mike Brock explained that Web 5 – in addition to being “two better than Web 3” – would beat out incumbent models by abandoning their blockchain-centric approaches to a censorship free, identity-focused web experience.
This is really a conversation about what technologies are built to purpose, and I don’t think that renting block space, in all cases, is a really good idea for decentralized applications.”
The Disrupt 