“A a 75 basis point (0.75 percentage point) hike is suddenly seen as all but certain. Up until last week, economists predicted a 50 basis point rate increase, as happened in May. But a U.S. government report Friday showed the consumer price index, which tracks inflation, rose to a new high of 8.6% instead of an expected slowdown. Now, the central bank is entertaining the possibility of accelerating its rate hikes.
As a result, Goldman Sachs (GS) changed its forecast to 75 basis points for the next rate increase. Similarly, the CME FedWatch Tool, which uses 30-day Fed Funds futures data, shows traders see a 94% chance of a 75 basis point hike, compared with 35% just one day ago.
Our best guess is therefore that the [WSJ] article is a hint from the Fed leadership that a 75bp rate hike is coming.”
“Crypto-tracked futures lost over $1 billion in the past 24 hours, weighed down by a weak sentiment for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies amid a weak global economic outlook. Bitcoin accounted for over $532 million of all liquidations, followed by ether (ETH) at $317 million and Solana’s SOL token at nearly $20 million, with some 213,000 individual trading accounts seeing liquidations in the past 24 hours.
Open interest – or the number of unsettled futures contracts – decreased by 7% in the past 24 hours to $23 billion, suggesting a considerable number of traders closed their positions expecting further market volatility.
Much of the decline in the past few months has come as the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) plans to hike rates in the coming months to battle the ill effects of record inflation – a move that has inadvertently caused a slide in global stocks and subsequently cryptocurrencies as investors take money off assets deemed risky.”
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“A bill intended to specify the rules and roles for crypto regulation could inadvertently “undermine” other market protections, U.S. SEC Chair Gary Gensler said Tuesday.
Gensler suggested many crypto companies are already engaging in behaviors overseen by his agency, pointing to companies that offer yield for staking as one example. Gensler said most crypto exchanges list hundreds of tokens, and ‘it’s highly unlikely that all of them, 100% are not securities.’
His counterpart at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Rostin Behnam, previously said the bill ‘does a very good job.'”
See Also: SEC Launches Inquiry Into Insider Trading at Crypto Exchanges: Report
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“OpenSea is revamping its back end and moving from the Wyvern protocol to its self-developed Seaport protocol. OpenSea says the switch could significantly reduce transaction costs on the platform, lowering gas costs by about 35%. The company estimates the switch will save users $460 million in the next year.
In addition to lowering gas costs, moving to Seaport will allow OpenSea to eliminate initiation fees, let users make offers on entire collections and make its wallet signatures “easier to read and understand.”
Seaport is a game changer, it’s open source, inherently decentralized and a modern foundation that will help us (and any teams using it) build and release new features more quickly.”
“Researchers at the federally funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have combined statistical mechanics and information theory to design a class of stablecoin dubbed the Electricity Stablecoin (E-Stablecoin) that would transmit energy as a form of information. Livermore’s Maxwell Murialdo and Jonathan L. Belof say their innovation would make it possible to transmit electricity without physical wires or a grid and create a fully collateralized stablecoin pegged to a physical asset – electricity – that is dependent on its utility for is value.
According to the scientists, the E-Stablecoin would be minted through the input of one kilowatt-hour of electricity, plus a fee. The stablecoin could then be used for transactions the same way as any stablecoin, or the energy could be extracted by burning it, also for a fee.
Investors would be able to mint E-Stablecoins in regions where electricity prices are low and burn the tokens where electricity is more expensive.“
The Disrupt 