Aurelia Butler

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    in Cryptocurrency

    ‘Black Swan’ Author Taleb Breaks Down Bitcoin Crash Top Reason

    Recently, major Japanese Nikkei 225 stock index experienced a drastic plunge after the Japanese central bank conducted an interest rate hike. Taleb commented that the BOJ (Bank of Japan) had kept zero interest rates for almost 33 years, and for 23 years until now it had injected quantitative easing measures into its economy. All of these measures, Taleb stated, “come at a price you eventually must pay.”He also pointed out that many experts have always named Japan as the place where this QE strategy has been successful. Unlike Japan, the U.S. has been frequently combining the tightening and loosing strategies regarding the interest rate. Still, the country has been facing big inflation over the past few years.While the BOJ is considering further interest rate increases, many experts around the world are criticizing the Japanese central bank for this move, believing that it was made untimely. Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at Daiwa Securities Co, believes that before making its next move, Japan needs to see which direction the U.S. economy will go — whether it will enter a recession or make a soft landing.Bitcoin advisor to the El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, Max Keiser, has also commented on the recent situation in the financial markets, mostly referring to the U.S.He stated that the damage has been minor and that if he were in the Fed’s shoes he would leave the interest rates unchanged to “let another 40% or more of air out of these markets.”This article was originally published on U.Today More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Cryptocurrency

    Binance attracts $1.2 billion in net inflows in past 24 hours despite selloff

    The large capital influx reflects users’ trust in Binance and their positive outlook on the cryptocurrency market’s future, even with recent volatility, DeFiLlama said.The massive inflows are also a positive sign for Richard Teng, who took over as CEO following a multibillion-dollar US penalty for illegal activities and the departure of founder Changpeng Zhao.Richard Teng comments: “This marks one of the highest net inflow days of 2024. Despite facing significant market downturns over the past several hours, this potentially indicates investors’ confidence and interest in buying in at a lower cost when they deem it’s the right timing.””The current market trends also validate this observation, as we are witnessing a rebound in the prices of major tokens. According to our internal data, yesterday also was one of the highest trading volume days in 2024,” he added.In January alone, Binance attracted $3.5B, just two months after its owner pleaded guilty to crimes like money laundering and sanctions evasion. The exchange managed to pay the full $4.3B DoJ fine without selling any crypto assets. That said, Teng still faces numerous challenges. He must establish a global headquarters, appoint a board, and ensure an independent monitor for three years. Binance also still lacks full licenses in major crypto hubs, and its U.S. affiliate is dealing with a lawsuit from the SEC. The risks of operating in local markets without official approval popped up recently when India blocked access to Binance and other offshore platforms by removing their apps from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) stores. Last year, countries from Australia to Belgium also cracked down on Binance for operating without the necessary permits. More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    Top cryptocurrencies: Polkadot is delivering on its promise

    Although cryptocurrency markets are trading lower this week in sync with other financial markets, several digital currencies are attracting investors’ attention.Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who according to recent polls has a strong chance of winning the elections in November, spoke at the Bitcoin 2024 conference.He proposed a strategic national crypto stockpile, advising, “Never sell your bitcoin,” and hinted at a promising future for cryptocurrency. Democrats are urging Harris to align with their stance on crypto policy, a topic that has gained significant political traction due to the industry’s substantial spending on this year’s elections.The star of the day is Polkadot (DOT), rising by 13% and fulfilling its promise. The market is demonstrating confidence in Polkadot, driving its value up.Here are four top cryptocurrencies to keep an eye open for:Ethereum (ETH) Ethereum is in the process of becoming a financial platform for global scale money and any kind of new applications. As such Ethereum offers unstoppable peer-to-peer contracts and applications which run with no interference or control by intermediaries making it a versatile and resilient foundation for various decentralized apps (dApps) including Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), etc This makes Ethereum 2.0 even more appealing to developers as well as investors since these updates aim at enhancing scalability, security, and sustainability.Bitcoin (BTC) Bitcoin has been the most successful and widely used cryptocurrency since its introduction.Invented in 2009, Bitcoin introduced the concept of decentralised digital currency which is now acknowledged by regulators worldwide over time. Despite market turbulences as well as regulatory challenges, Bitcoin continues to grow while maintaining its dominance within the cryptocurrency market. Its relevance remains largely due to its fixed supply and growing adoption both as store of value and medium of exchange.Polkadot (DOT) Polkadot intends to create an exclusive protocol that can interconnect several chains into one network for better blockchain interoperability. With this interoperability, data can be easily transferred across different blockchains leading to increased scalability too. By allowing cross-chain communication & collaboration efforts Polkadot tackles one of the biggest problems on blockchain space. Interest in this platform is due to its ability to connect multiple blockchains forming a synergistic network making it very popular with developers who want innovative decentralized solutions.Solana (SOL) Solana has a high throughput rate coupled with minimal transaction costs owing to its unique consensus mechanism called Proof of History (PoH).This makes the process faster and Solana can handle thousands of transactions per second. Currently, Solana’s performance is good and the fees are low, hence, this makes it an ideal platform for dapps that require fast cheap transfers.Growing adoption rate of Solana because of its expanding ecosystem as well as partnerships facilitates more investment opportunities.These cryptocurrencies are advancing strongly this week which highlights their respective unique strengths with regard to innovation that comes about every day in the world of digital assets.However, promising as they may be, individuals need to conduct extensive research and consider other factors before making any investment decisions.Over the past 12 months, ETH has increased by almost 70%, BTC by 118%, DOT by 5%, and SOL by 592% following Pay’s integration with Shopify (NYSE:SHOP). Market turbulence should be considered for long-term investments.***This article does not give any financial advice or any recommendation. More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    Curio Announces $5.7 Million Funding Round to Launch Duper Season One, Co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and SevenX Ventures

    Duper invites players to experience high-stakes fun and strategic gameplay.Curio, a games studio and developer, today announced it has raised an additional $5.7 million in capital, co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and SevenX Ventures with participation from OKX Ventures. The latest round builds upon the $2.9 million raised in 2022 led by Bain Capital Crypto. Concurrently, Curio has released Duper, their flagship strategy game, along with the launch of its first season. Duper is a wagering social strategy game that highlights collusion, deception, and social team-play, where 5 players engage in 40 minute high-stakes matches filled with strategic maneuvers and pure chaotic fun. Duper takes inspiration from real money skill based games like Poker, while combining it with a digital medium strategy players are familiar with, in the browser. To begin playing Duper and stay up to date on upcoming announcements, users can visit duper.gg. About Curio Curio is a leading crypto games studio on a mission to create groundbreaking games that leverage blockchain technology to enhance player experiences. Curio’s first game, Treaty, is a 4X strategy game that allows players to create arbitrary on-chain social agreements and “treaties” with each other. Curo is backed by Bain Capital Crypto, SevenX Ventures, TCG Crypto, OKX Ventures, Formless Capital, Smrti Labs, and Robot Ventures.About DuperDuper is a unique social strategy game that combines wagering with elements of collusion and team play. Launched in May 2024, Duper offers an immersive and replayable gaming experience where players can engage in high-stakes strategic battles.For additional details and to stay updated, users can follow Curio and Duper on Twitter: Curio Twitter and Duper Twitter.ContactSenior PR ManagerKayla [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    Sui Sets The Standard for Blockchain Speed with New Mainnet Consensus Mechanism

    Sui’s new Mysticeti protocol cuts consensus latency to 390 ms, elevating its industry-leading tech and developer stack to new highs.Sui, the pioneering Layer 1 blockchain known for industry-leading performance and infinite horizontal scaling, today announced the successful deployment of Mysticeti on Sui Mainnet after a successful run on Testnet. This innovative protocol cuts consensus latency to an astonishing 390 milliseconds, establishing Sui as the fastest consensus layer in the industry.Developed from extensive research into Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanisms, Mysticeti represents a significant advancement from Narwhal-Bullshark, the consensus algorithms launched with Sui Mainnet over a year ago. Mysticeti achieves unprecedented transaction speeds, extending Sui’s impressive low latency performance across all transaction types on the network.Sui’s object-oriented architecture allows the network to process transactions differently based on the characteristics of the transaction and the objects involved. Transactions on Sui involving only “owned objects,” such as peer-to-peer transfers, bypass the need for consensus, following a fast-path execution that completes in a shorter time. Now, with Mysticeti, transactions involving shared objects, such as those in marketplaces or collaborative game assets, are processed using an optimized version of BFT consensus that results in lower latencies nearly akin to those of owned object transactions. Mysticeti minimizes cross-validator communication and fully utilizes network bandwidth to maintain high throughput.Live on Testnet for the past three months, Mysticeti’s remarkable results – including an 80% reduction in latency – generated significant buzz within Sui’s developer community and a broad desire to see the update pushed to Mainnet. With the update now live, the Sui Network can handle tens of thousands of transactions per second with end-to-end latencies well below one second.“Mysticeti’s successful deployment is a testament to the collaboration between research and engineering, and the validator community that has integrated this new consensus mechanism,” said Dmitri Perelman, Head of Engineering at Mysten Labs. “Mysticeti is a next-generation consensus protocol that sets a new standard for blockchain transaction speeds and puts Sui at the forefront of our industry.”Kevin Nelson, Co-Founder & CTO of Aftermath Finance, which created a leading DeFi protocol on the network said, “Mysticeti’s shift to minimizing latency for the general case—shared object transactions—marks a significant advancement across many sectors on Sui, particularly within the Sui DeFi ecosystem. The rollout to Mainnet has already begun to show tangible results, with noticeable latency reductions across our entire product suite. At Aftermath, we are excited to leverage Mysticeti’s full capabilities to deliver more efficient, lower latency products to market.”Rabeel Jawaid, Co-founder of leading derivatives exchange Bluefin said, “On-chain settlement latency just dropped significantly on Bluefin with the Mysticeti upgrade! P50 consensus latency currently is just under 400ms and E2E client latency when measured via a fullnode is under 1s for P50, which as far as I know is the fastest in Web3 right now – especially at scale with parallelization. With this upgrade, the trading experience on Bluefin has already become more seamless for retail, and our institutional partners have started to scale their flow and liquidity on the platform.”Bonkman, the pseudonymous Founder of Hop, a DEX aggregator on Sui said, “Hop allows users to interface with Sui DeFi. This makes it dependent on Sui’s consensus mechanism and before Mysticeti swaps took roughly 2-3 seconds. Now, nearly every single swap takes less than 1 second to execute and reach finality. In all of web3, there has never been a better DeFi experience that is present today on Hop via Mysticeti.”ContactSui [email protected] article was originally published on Chainwire More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    Bitcoin (BTC) Price to Explode If This Happens

    In a short squeeze, short sellers are forced to buy back their positions in order to prevent further losses when the price of an asset that has been heavily shorted begins to rise. A quick and notable price recovery may result from this buying pressure, pushing the price even higher.The accumulated liquidation orders at $56,000 in the case of Bitcoin imply that a breakthrough at this point might cause such a squeeze, driving up the price. Bitcoin is trading near this crucial level right now at about $55,190. The price might reverse the recent downtrend if it breaks above $56,000 as a result of a short squeeze that would happen afterward.In this case, the price recovery would probably be amplified by drawing in additional buyers. But it is imperative to exercise caution. An optimistic outlook is provided by the possibility of a short squeeze, but the recent significant price decline may cause the downtrend to continue. If sellers are not worn out, the market sentiment could continue to be bearish.It is imperative to keep a close eye on the dynamics of the market, especially the activity surrounding the $56,000 price range. More broadly, a number of factors such as macroeconomic conditions, institutional behavior and market sentiment impact the price action of Bitcoin.Investors must remain ready for any changes as the market remains volatile. Given the accumulation of liquidation orders and the potential for a short squeeze, Bitcoin’s price has the potential to soar if it breaks through the $56,000 barrier.This article was originally published on U.Today More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Economy

    Brazil central bank will raise rates if needed, minutes show

    SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazil’s central bank won’t hesitate to raise interest rates if necessary to bring inflation down to its target, minutes from its July 30-31 policy meeting showed on Tuesday.The monetary authority called for greater “vigilance” as inflation expectations have shown further de-anchoring, and policymakers left the door open for a potential rate hike ahead, although they said they were not committed to a policy strategy.Brazil’s central bank last week kept interest rates unchanged at 10.50% for a second consecutive meeting, as expected, flagging worsening inflation expectations and recent market swings. The decision was unanimous.The rate-setting committee, known as Copom, said it “unanimously believes that the current stage is of even greater caution and of diligent monitoring of inflation conditioning factors,” according to the minutes.”Copom unanimously reinforced that it will not hesitate to raise the interest rate to ensure inflation convergence to the target if it deems it appropriate.”Following publication of the minutes, the real strengthened 1% against the dollar and Brazil interest rate futures now price in a 62% chance of a 25-basis-point rate hike at Copom’s next meeting in September, up from 43% on Monday.”The minutes came in a lot more hawkish than the policy statement,” said BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY) economist Laiz Carvalho. “The central bank is effectively saying that it could hike rates, and I think the most important thing is that it is unanimous.”Inflation projections in Latin America’s largest economy have been climbing and now stand at 4.12% for 2024 in the central bank’s weekly survey of economists.Estimates for 2025 and 2026 are currently at 3.98% and 3.60%, respectively, also above the bank’s 3% target.Sticky services inflation pushed up consumer prices more than forecast in the month to mid-July, recent data from statistics agency IBGE showed.”Various measures of underlying inflation are above the inflation target in recent releases,” the central bank said.Copom said that market doubts about the Brazilian government’s ability to meet its goal of eliminating its primary deficit this year have had significant impact on asset prices and inflation expectations.The real has plunged nearly 15% so far in 2024, pressured by concerns about domestic public finances and a strong U.S. dollar. According to the central bank, the recent exchange rate moves could have “significant” inflationary impacts.Copom reinforced that the lack of commitment to fiscal discipline has the potential to raise Brazil’s neutral interest rate, with “harmful impacts on the power of monetary policy and, consequently, on the cost of disinflation.”Meanwhile, economic and labor market indicators continue to show more strength than expected, making the process of inflation convergence to the target more challenging, the policymakers added. More

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    in Economy

    Migrants struggle to cope with Portugal’s ‘suffocating’ housing crisis

    LISBON (Reuters) – Seeking a more comfortable life, 50-year-old carpenter Andreia Costa moved to Portugal from Brazil in 2022, but within months her hopes were dashed, as the country’s housing crisis left her unable to afford accommodation and forced to live in a tent. On a site on the outskirts of Lisbon she was joined by other migrants and some locals, priced out of a city where rents have soared 94% since 2015 and house prices have risen 186%, according to housing data specialists Confidencial Imobiliario. Meanwhile, Portugal remains one of western Europe’s poorest nations with the region’s lowest average wages.The housing crisis is rooted in a chronic shortage of affordable housing, aggravated by the arrival of wealthy foreigners lured by residency rights linked for some years to property investment and tax breaks offered by the state.A tourism boom has seen a surge in short-term holiday lets, further squeezing the housing market.Costa arrived legally with just 600 euros and could only find cleaning jobs paying the then national minimum wage of 760 euros a month. Rent of 400 euros a month for a small room quickly became unaffordable.”I shouldn’t have to pay more than 50% of my salary for a room,” she said. “Renting really suffocates people’s lives.”Costa bought a small tent and set it up on a nearly empty plot on the outskirts of Lisbon. As months passed, more people moved in before they eventually had to leave the plot for another site as it was privately owned. Life was hard. She had to fetch water from beach showers nearby, use portable cooking devices and walk home in complete darkness as there was no street lighting.Migrants are particularly vulnerable amid the housing crisis, as they are more likely to have precarious jobs and lower salaries, according to the Migration Observatory (OM).’TWO EXTREMES’Portugal’s foreign population stood at more than one million in 2023, more than double 2018’s figure of 480,000. Brazilians make up the biggest migrant community but an increasing number are arriving from Southeast Asia to work in agriculture, hospitality, ride-hailing or delivery.”There are two extremes: migrants who are so-called poor… and a ‘rich’ migration of investors, pensioners and highly qualified professionals,” said housing researcher Simone Tulumello.”This development model, heavily focused on real estate and tourism, is causing this explosion in housing prices, which impacts everyone.”Researcher Marina Carreiras said migrants often face discrimination in accessing housing and have less information on how to seek support.Even those who speak Portuguese, such as Brazilians, face discrimination due to their accents. One migrant cited in a recent study by migration association Casa do Brasil spoke of a rental notice saying they don’t rent to Brazilians.OM data showed 19% of people from outside the European Union in Portugal live in overcrowded accommodation compared to around 8% of Portuguese, with people from nations such as Nepal and Bangladesh particularly affected.”Foreigners with low incomes have to live in overcrowded conditions to somehow have a roof over their heads,” said OM Director Catarina Reis de Oliveira, adding that many were renting beds to rest for a few hours during the day.Tulumello called for rent controls and more social housing, and an end to the need for a guarantor or advanced payments.’VICIOUS CIRCLE’Portugal’s centre-right government announced in June a new plan toughening some migration rules.It outlawed a widely-used mechanism called “manifestation of interest”, which for years allowed non-EU migrants without an employment contract to move to Portugal and request residency after paying social security for a year.A source from the ministry handling migration said the system in place before the new government took power in March had left 400,000 people waiting for their status to be settled.”This situation, with hundreds of thousands of cases pending a decision…was truly despicable from a human perspective,” the source said, adding the new government had closed the door on irregular migration and would speed up visa processes.Oliveira said insecurity about their status could leave migrants even more vulnerable.Portugal also plans to adapt its golden visa scheme to allow wealthy foreigners seeking residency rights to invest in affordable housing for locals or accommodation for migrants.Costa kept a positive mindset through the months living in her tent, and formed a strong camaraderie with another Brazilian campmate, Marcia Leandro. She eventually managed to save enough to buy a small, old caravan.”I don’t need more than this space to be happy,” said Costa, whose dream is to one day buy a plot of land where others affected by the housing crisis can live. More