According to Coinatmradar’s data, Australia now enjoys 234 crypto ATMs, which puts her in the third spot globally after the United States and Canada. In three weeks it outperformed Spain, which possesses 222 crypto ATMs. Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
Acclaimed Bitcoin analyst Trader_J on Twitter has raised an alarm over the current trend of the flagship cryptocurrency. He considered some historical data to suggest the possibility of an imminent crash in market prices, following the recent rally.In a Twitter post, Trader_J shared a screenshot of a similar trend sometime in the middle of 2022. During this period, the Bitcoin price surged, moving from $38,000 to $48,000 over a short period. Following this surge was a sharp drop in price that sent Bitcoin to much lower levels, leading to the recent lows at sub $20,000 levels. More
(Reuters) – Crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments is gearing up for a prolonged legal fight with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to create a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund, the company’s chief executive officer said.As the company awaits a court ruling on a June lawsuit against the SEC, CEO Michael Sonnenshein said he was prepared to appeal if the court backed the SEC’s decision to reject the bitcoin ETF proposal.”The only option the SEC left us with was to turn around and say, you know what, this just isn’t right,” Sonnenshein said. Suing the regulator was one of the most important decisions he had made as CEO, and was “one that I did not, and we as a team, did not take lightly,” he said.The SEC rejected Grayscale’s application to covert its flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF in June, arguing that the proposal did not meet standards designed to prevent fraudulent practices and protect investors. Grayscale sued the SEC almost immediately after its proposal was denied, claiming that the regulator was acting arbitrarily in rejecting applications for spot bitcoin ETFs when it had previously approved bitcoin futures ETFs. The case is being heard in front of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. If either party were to appeal the ruling, the case would either go to the U.S. Supreme Court or an en banc panel review. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled to occur March 7 and Grayscale expects a final ruling on the case in the fall, said Sonnenshein. The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust has $14.5 billion assets under management, according to Grayscale’s website. The GBTC discount to bitcoin is hovering around 41%, coming under pressure after crypto exchange FTX collapsed and crypto lender Genesis suspended withdrawals. There are further concerns about contagion. Genesis and Grayscale are both owned by venture capital Digital Currency Group (DCG), and questions as to whether DCG would have to sell its GBTC holdings have also weighed on the discount. Genesis’ crypto lending unit filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 19. Grayscale had no operational reliance on DCG or Genesis, and was unaffected by the bankruptcy, Sonnenshein said. Still, Genesis owned about 5% of total GBTC shares outstanding, according to a person familiar with the matter. Genesis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Grayscale is a standalone entity with its own leadership, governance, budgets, policies and procedures, and the assets underpinning the Grayscale family of products belong to its respective shareholders,” Sonnenshein said. If its legal challenge to the SEC was unsuccessful, Grayscale would explore options to return a portion of GBTC’s capital to shareholders, Sonnenshein told investors in a letter in December. More
COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s central bank held interest rates steady for a third straight meeting on Wednesday, as widely expected, saying the prevailing tight monetary stance is crucial to taming still-high inflation and restoring economic stability.The island nation of 22 million people, which is trying to clinch a $2.9 billion IMF funding package, is in the grip of its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948. The Standing Lending Facility rate was held steady at 15.50% while the Standing Deposit Facility Rate was kept unchanged at 14.50%, remaining at their highest levels since August, 2001.”The Board … was of the view that the maintenance of the prevailing tight monetary policy stance is imperative to ensure that monetary conditions remain sufficiently tight to rein in inflationary pressures,” the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) said in a statement.”Market rates are adjusting as expected, so there was no need to touch policy rate,” said Udeeshan Jonas, chief strategist at CAL Group.The CBSL had increased rates by a massive 950 basis points between August 2021 to July 2022 to fight runaway inflation. Policymakers are still grappling with challenges on several fronts including a shortage of foreign currency, a collapse in the rupee, a steep recession and slowing global growth. CBSL Governor P. Nandlal Weerasinghe said there was little room to cut rates until the foreign exchange reserves position stabilises.However, the situation has improved and the market can support around $1 billion in imports, he said.Tight monetary and fiscal policies will help bring down inflation to desired levels by the end of 2023 and restore price and economic stability over the medium term, CBSL said in the statement.After hitting an annual peak of 68.9% in September, consumer inflation moderated to 57.2% in December.IMF DEAL CRITICALSri Lanka is committed to meeting all its debt repayments and is hoping to complete debt restructuring negotiations in the next six months, Weerasinghe said in a speech to the private sector on Tuesday and expressed optimism about talks with creditors at today’s news conference.”If IMF gets assurances, then expect the program to be unlocked in the first quarter of this year,” he told reporters.India told the IMF last week that it strongly supports Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring plan, a crucial endorsement for Colombo as it tries to secure the four-year $2.9 billion programme with the global lender.”It is important CBSL is clear in their communications about domestic debt restructuring, whatever the eventual decision, since that’s the big driver of the risk premia attached to market rates,” said Thilina Panduwawala, head of research at Colombo-based Frontier Research.Weerasinghe said it was too early to discuss domestic debt restructuring. MARKET RATES FALLINGMarket interest rates have begun to move down and are expected to ease further, the central bank said.Interest rates on three-month government securities have eased to about 30% from a peak of around 32% earlier this month.”They may only start looking at policy rate revisions once inflation makes a substantial turn and the IMF deal is through,” said CAL Group’s Jonas. More
The head of Europe’s largest chip company ASML said he expects demand for semiconductors to recover in the second half of the year as the company reported a record order backlog of over €40bn and forecast sales to increase by 25 per cent this year.“The expectation of the duration of a potential recession in the minds of our customers is much shorter than the average lead time of our machines,” said Peter Wennink, chief executive of ASML. “They want to prepare — because of the strategic nature of our machines — for an upturn in the second half of the year and 2024.”The Dutch chip tool supplier plays a critical role in the global semiconductor industry. It is the only company in the world capable of producing the complex extreme lithography (EUV) machines that are essential for manufacturing advanced semiconductors used in electronics.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Intel and Samsung all rely on ASML’s machines and services for the EUV tools to build cutting-edge chips.Demand for chips used in smartphones, computers and data centres fell significantly last year driven by fears of a recession, high inflation, soaring interest rates and the Covid-19 crisis in China, one of the biggest markets for semiconductors.The company, which has a market capitalisation of €248bn, has been entangled in the trade war between Washington and Beijing since 2019, when a shipment of one of its EUV machines to China was blocked.The US has introduced increasingly tough restrictions preventing its companies from supplying tools, equipment and personnel that could support the advancement of China’s advanced chipmaking. Japan and the Netherlands, two of the most important countries in the global chip supply chain, are poised to adopt similar restrictions in the coming weeks after months of lobbying from Washington.“We’re business people. We’re not politicians,” Wennink said on Wednesday. “We just have to wait for the governments and the politicians to keep talking and come to a reasonable solution.”In October, Wennink said that the US sanctions could impact up to 5 per cent of ASML’s order backlog, though he noted that the company’s main business in China depended on less advanced technologies that did not fall under the remit of the latest restrictions.
Wennink said on Wednesday that nothing had “really changed” since October, when Washington unveiled new export restrictions. He said ASML was still unable to ship EUV machines to China but it could ship less sophisticated DUV systems as well as other tools. The Veldhoven-headquartered company also makes deep lithography (DUV) machines to etch circuits into silicon wafers, in a process that is usually used for simpler chips.ASML expects to make 60 EUV machines and 375 DUV machines in the current financial year. More
Australia’s inflation rate hit a 33-year high in the final quarter of 2022, pushed higher by rising costs of energy and new homes and a rebound in tourism, but the government said it hoped that price growth had peaked. Official data on Wednesday showed that inflation rose 7.8 per cent year on year in the October to December quarter, the highest rate since 1990. The reading will dash hopes of a pause in rising interest rates, which have climbed 3 per cent since May, putting pressure on household finances. Jim Chalmers, Australia’s Treasurer, noted that the 1.9 per cent quarter-on-quarter rise was lower than the 2.1 per cent recorded in the three months to March, but added that price growth was nonetheless “unacceptably high”. He said that grappling with inflation had been the government’s “defining challenge” in 2022 and would be so again this year. “Our expectation and hope is that inflation has peaked,” Chalmers said.Adelaide Timbrell, senior economist at the ANZ bank, said the reading, which came in higher than forecasts, would cement the chances of a 0.25 per cent interest rate rise from 3.1 per cent next month, with a similar increase probable in March as consumers spend more on recreation.Gareth Aird, economist with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said inflation data would be a “smoking gun” for further rate rises, even as steadily increasing rates over the past seven months had done very little to drive down prices. The central Reserve Bank of Australia has sought to engineer a “softer landing” than in other global economies grappling with inflation because of its high levels of household debt and weaker wage growth.“There are no two ways about it — inflation was red hot in Australia over 2022, as it was in many parts of the world,” Aird said. Australia’s inflation has been driven by energy bills, new housing and food over the course of the year as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and flooding in the country’s agricultural areas sent the cost of fuel and fruit and vegetables soaring.
The government has intervened in the energy sector to try to reduce a projected 56 per cent surge in electricity costs this year. Chalmers said there were early signs that the move had “taken the sting out of” energy prices, which rose 8.6 per cent in the quarter on an annual basis.Housing prices rose 10.7 per cent year on year in the fourth quarter, while those of food and non-alcoholic beverages jumped 9.2 per cent.Entertainment and recreation was another big factor in price rises in the December quarter, gaining 9 per cent year on year on the back of increasing flight and accommodation prices as the tourism sector rebounded from Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns put in place in 2021.Inflation has become a political issue across the Tasman Sea, where Chris Hipkins, who was sworn as New Zealand’s prime minister on Wednesday following Jacinda Ardern’s abrupt departure as leader, has reset his government’s priorities on inflation and the cost of living. New Zealand announced on Wednesday that annual inflation was 7.2 per cent in the fourth quarter. While this figure was lower than in countries including Australia and the UK, Hipkins said his new government needed to do “whatever it takes” to alleviate the impact of higher prices on household budgets. More
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australian inflation shot to a 33-year high last quarter as the cost of travel and electricity jumped, a shock result that adds to the case for the country’s central bank to raise interest rates again next month.Investors sharply narrowed the odds on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) lifting its cash rate by a quarter point to 3.35% when it meets on Feb. 7, sending the local dollar up to a five-month high of $0.7085.Analysts had thought there was some chance the RBA might even pause its tightening campaign, but the sheer pace of inflation put paid to that.”While this is expected to be the peak in inflation in this cycle, the RBA’s hawkish communications lead us to expect another rate rise in February, with another increase likely to follow in March,” said Sean Langcake, head of macroeconomic forecasting for BIS Oxford Economics.Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday showed the consumer price index (CPI) surged 1.9% in the December quarter, outpacing market forecasts of 1.6%.The annual rate climbed to 7.8%, from 7.3%, the highest since 1990 and more than twice the pace of wages growth. For December alone, the CPI rose a startling 8.4% compared to the same month a year ago, up from 7.3% in November.Price rises were broad-based with a closely watched measure of core inflation, the trimmed mean, rising 1.7% in the December quarter. The annual pace accelerated to 6.9%, well above forecasts of 6.5%.Costs pressures were also building in the service sector which recorded its largest annual rise since 2008, driven by holiday travel, meals out and takeaway food.Travel was one of the main cost culprits in the December quarter with prices for domestic holidays up 13% and overseas jaunts almost 8%.”Strong demand, particularly over the Christmas holiday period, contributed to price rises for domestic holiday travel and international air fares,” said Michelle Marquardt, ABS head of prices statistics.”The rises seen for domestic and international travel were notably higher than historical December quarter movements.”With inflation pressures broadening yet further, markets moved to price in the risk of at least two more rate hikes from the RBA with swaps implying a peak above 3.60%.Futures for three-year bonds sharply reversed course to be down 3 ticks at 96.910, having been up as high as 97.090 before the CPI data. More
Weaker international demand for Chinese goods has led to a rise in shipping cancellations at the country’s biggest ports, putting a damper on the expected economic boost from its emergence from zero-Covid policies.Industry participants in China point to an increase in “blank sailings”, where carriers miss ports because there is not enough cargo to pick up or they fear delays.While cancellations are typical within the industry and usually rise during lunar new year, the supply chains data provider Drewry said the rate is “exceptionally elevated” this year, because of a drop in demand in the West. China’s exports have fallen for three consecutive months, weakening a core pillar of its struggling economic model.The cancellation rate for ships travelling east from Asia across the Pacific or to Europe will reach 31 per cent over the coming weeks, compared with 23 per cent over the same period last year and 16 per cent in 2021, Drewry said.As well as weak demand there is less to be shipped after hundreds of millions of estimated Covid-19 cases over the past month added to pressure on the country’s supply chains, leading to staff shortages and factory closures.“What happened to the shipping market as the virus spread everywhere in China . . . is worse than my worst projection,” said Mark Young, chief executive of Shanghai-based Asia Maritime Pacific, which owns a fleet consisting of dozens of ships.“The market has many empty ships but fewer cargo ready to be shipped,” he added, comparing the situation with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.China’s vast infrastructure linking factories and ports has grappled for three years with a strict zero-Covid regime that required frequent quarantines for personnel and “closed-loop” operations. The policy led to delays and cancellations, but exports largely boomed over that period as demand for goods soared. Simon Sundboell, founder and chief executive of data provider eeSea, said the nature of the disruption had now changed, from a scenario driven by delays within a “hot market” to one of weaker demand.“The industry is coming slowly back to normal and you do need to cancel more because of demand lowering,” he said. “Last year, that was down to all these excessive delays.”One Shanghai-based manufacturer who asked to remain anonymous said the carriers “just aren’t coming into the ports because there’s no volume”. He added that a fall in demand “is resulting in shipping lines reducing the number of vessels in circulation”.Jan Dieleman, head of Cargill Ocean Transportation, said the coronavirus outbreak was “absolutely” contributing to an increase in blank sailings. The commodity shipping group has not cancelled deliveries but has reduced coal shipments to China in recent months, in part because of seasonal changes in demand.
Young said Asia Maritime Pacific had been forced to cancel a sailing to a port on the Changjiang river to collect steel-related cargo because the factory could not produce it in time. He expects to send another ship to collect it in a month. Blank sailings have increased globally over the past year on a weakening economic backdrop. In China, the first nationwide outbreak of coronavirus coincided with the build-up to lunar new year. Maersk, the Danish container shipping company, said demand can be “expected to be volatile given the holiday closure in China combined with both the Covid situation and the ongoing inventory correction in US and Europe”.Anne-Sophie Zerlang Karlsen, head of ocean operations for Asia-Pacific at Maersk, nonetheless suggested that the wider relaxation of Covid-19 measures was “a very positive development that has the potential of lifting the Chinese economy significantly”.Cargill’s Dieleman said the shipping industry was now relying on a rebound in economic activity. “People think that the first [Covid-19] wave will go,” he said. “There is going to be stimulus from the government. So people start being bullish.” More
