Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 125 Shares139 Views

    in Economy

    Euro zone at risk of “inflation psychology”, ECB's Lane says

    Once inflation psychology sets in, consumers bring forward their spending to beat the rise in prices while businesses start lifting their own prices, expecting higher costs, with both behaviours perpetuating inflation.”We have very high inflation rates now, and clearly we could be in a world where inflation psychology is taking hold,” Lane told the annual dinner of Britain’s Society of Professional Economists in London. More

  • 138 Shares159 Views

    in Economy

    Crypto lender Babel Finance wins debt repayment reprieve after withdrawal freeze

    Cryptocurrency valuations have plunged in recent weeks as investors dump risky assets in a rising interest rate environment. Bitcoin BTC=BTSP, which reached a record high of $69,000 in November, lost more than half its value this year.In an update on its website on Monday, Babel said it carried out an emergency assessment of its business operations to determine the company’s liquidity status.Crypto lenders gather crypto deposits from retail customers and re-invest them, proclaiming double-digit returns and attracting tens of billions of dollars in assets. However, lenders have been unable to redeem their clients’ assets during the recent meltdown.”Babel Finance will actively fulfill its legal responsibilities to customers and strive to avoid further transmission and diffusion of liquidity risks,” the company said.Babel, which has 500 clients and only deals in bitcoin, ethereum and stablecoins, raised $80 million in a funding round last month, valuing it at $2 billion. It had ended last year with $3 billion of loan balances on its balance sheet. More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Cryptocurrency

    Tron’s Stablecoin USDD Lost Dollar Peg Again

    The USDD stablecoin slipped to the lows of $0.9256 on June 19, losing nearly 3.3% in a few hours as seen on CoinMarketCap. Earlier last week Tron’s stablecoin experienced another 3.2% decline, sliding from $0.9907 to $0.9582 on Wednesday. The coin has not regained its original peg since then and trades at around $0.9585 at the time of writing.Accordingly, Tron’s native coin TRX briefly slipped below 26% to $0.4773 before regaining the current value of $0.0609.
    Launched in the first days of May, Tron’s algorithmic stablecoin is considered to have a 1:1 peg to the United States dollar. The coin was widely labeled as an exact copy of notorious Terra’s UST, which had identical mint and burn mechanisms and solely relied on the algorithm to maintain a $1 value and failed. Simply speaking, the mechanism burned Tron’s native governance coin TRX to mint USDD and vice versa in order to keep stablecoin stable.To safeguard from the same ending, Tron upgraded its USDD earlier in June, partially backing it with various digital assets of Tron DAO Reserve in order to support the dollar peg. The Tron then officially named USDD as the world’s first over-collateralized stablecoin. The issuer also said that updated USDD has a 130% collateralization rate and will be collateralized to the extent of $10 billion.As stated on the official website, Tron DAO Reserve currently has total collateral of $2.3 billion, while the total supply of USDD accounts for more than 723 million USDD stablecoins. Withdrew Billions of TRX However, the USDD slipped from its 1:1 peg twice in a single week. Tron’s founder Justin Sun then blamed large numbers of short-sellers targeting TRX on the Binance crypto exchange.He further hinted at injecting $2 billion to fight the short-sellers and predicted the short squeeze to appear for the TRX market. Instead, Tron DAO withdrew 1.5 billion of TRX out of Binance “to safeguard the overall blockchain industry and crypto market”, as it then stated.In other words, Justin Sun and Tron DAO withdrew TRX coins from the market to push the price of its USDD stablecoin higher. If the price of Tron’s governance coin keeps dropping and fails to stabilize, it will not be valuable enough to redeem in USDD.Following the mechanics of algorithmic stablecoins, this should have worked if the proper amount of TRX tokens will get burned or removed from the circulation. However, the exact opposite has happened and the stablecoin of a $693 billion market cap went down further to $0.92. Furthermore, the on-chain data showed, that only $544 million worth of TRX coins are transferred to the network’s dead wallet at the time of writing.Why You Should CareAt the time of writing, Tron DAO Reserve holds 10.8 billion TRX, more than 14K of Bitcoins, over 140 million USDT, and more than 1 billion USDC. If the TRX price fails to stabilize, the Tron DAO Reserve will need to deploy more reserve assets to help maintain its 1:1 peg to the US dollar.In the times when the macroeconomic landscape remains gloomy due to the upcoming recession and prominent crypto hedge funds face liquidations, the crash of yet another stablecoin might have continuous ripples on the cryptocurrency market and even send Bitcoin down to the new lows long unseen. Continue reading on DailyCoin More

  • 150 Shares159 Views

    in Cryptocurrency

    Hodl the lines, El Salvador’s President advises Bitcoin investors to remain calm

    The price of Bitcoin plunged to an 18-month low, just below $18,000 over the weekend. But Bukele urged Salvadorans to quit looking at the charts and just “enjoy life.”Bukele acquired the first set of Bitcoin for the El Salvador treasury in early Sept 2021 when the flagship cryptocurrency was trading at a little over $51,000. He bought200 BTC on two different occasions costing around $10 million at the time. According to the Bukele portfolio tracker, the final purchase took place on May 9 to the tune of 500 BTC.As it stands, El Salvador has accumulated 2,301 BTC currently worth $46 million, down 56.4% from purchase prices that total $105.6 million. The dollar cost average is currently $45,908 per BTC, more than double its current price.El Salvador’s Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya also played down worries that the crypto market crash has damaged the country’s economy. He stated last week that “the fiscal risk is extremely minimal […] forty million dollars does not even represent 0.5% of our national general budget.” He stressed that as long as the coins have not been sold, no real loss has been incurred.Meanwhile, Julio Sevilla, the Associate professor at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, said in a radio interview over the weekend that:Over the weekend, the market capitalization of the general crypto market fell to its lowest level since Jan 2021, and according to CoinGecko, the Sunday slump resulted in a fall to $847 billion in total cap. There are still fears of a further slump as Bitcoin miners might still have some selling to do.Continue reading on BTC Peers More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Cryptocurrency

    Makers of “Silicon Valley” tap on NFTs for user-generated comedy

    As more celebrities throng the space, the brains behind the comic play “Silicon Valley” are joining the trend via the launch of an experimental project called “Terrible Pets.”Terrible Pets are Ethereum-based digital collectibles that “turn content itself into LEGO blocks.” According to CEO Adam Altman and co-founder Fika Media, holders will have permission to build memeable content online with these LEGO blocks.The Terrible Pets collection consists of eight anthropomorphic creatures which can be described as “human-like animals with relatable traumas, wrapped in absurdism.” And unlike other animal-themed NFTs, it won’t be an animal profile picture with randomized visual traits. Rather they are “one liner blocks of performance” that can be arranged randomly to create digital content just like LEGO blocks.Holders of particular NFTs in the collection will enjoy different benefits within the app Fika is building on behalf of Terrible Pets.Alec Berg is the executive producer and showrunner of Silicon Valley. He is also a co-founder of the show alongside producers Jonathan Dotan and Bubba Murarka.Berg opined that the process of creating scripted media hasn’t changed much over the years despite the evolution of television and film technology, stressing further that Web3 offers a new way to co-create and collaborate with a wider and more diverse range of audiences.Meanwhile, Altman was inspired by the success of the audio chat app Clubhouse during the early days of the pandemic. He amassed a reasonable following on the app and sought to channel the same social energy and gather people from diverse backgrounds with creative content alongside Murarka and Berg.The tech entrepreneur agrees with Berg on the idea that “the greatest creativity in the world is in the far corners of the internet.” He added that “An 8year-old in Indonesia can blow my mind on a Saturday morning, when done right.”Fika intends to use technology in enhancing creative seeds via Terrible Pets with the help of well-funded professionals, thereby making a way for a community to share all kinds of content and improve on existing works.Continue reading on BTC Peers More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Economy

    Fed's Bullard: I hope U.S. economy repeats outcome of 1994's soft landing

    “That tightening episode caused some disruption that year,” Bullard said during an event held by the AXA-Barcelona School of Economics in Barcelona, Spain. “However, I have always felt that set up the U.S. economy for a stellar performance in the second half of the 1990s … I hope we can get something like that this time.” Bullard has been a vocal backer of aggressive Fed action to tame stubbornly high inflation that is running at more than three times the U.S. central bank’s 2% goal. The 1994 tightening cycle saw the Fed double interest rates to 6% in seven rapid-fire hikes that included one 75 basis point and two 50 basis point moves. The Fed’s so-called soft landing, in which a recession was averted, was followed by a period of rapid growth and a historically tight labor market.Last week on the heels of another worse-than-expected inflation report, the Fed raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point to a range of 1.50%-1.75%, but now forecasts borrowing costs more than doubling from that level over the next six months. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that he anticipates either a 50 or 75 basis point move in July, and since then several policymakers, including those previously more cautious in their approach to reducing price pressures in case the central bank sent the economy into recession, have appeared to back a whatever-it-takes approach.On Saturday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller called for the Fed to implement another 75 basis point increase at its next meeting in July, saying the central bank is now “all in” on restoring price stability.Bullard noted the Fed still has some way to go in reducing inflation. “We are moving quickly, but moving from a low level and from the very accommodative monetary policy we put in place,” he said. More

  • 113 Shares199 Views

    in Economy

    British Ryanair pilots accept post-COVID pay restoration deal- union

    The breakthrough in one of Ryanair’s largest markets came as unions representing cabin crew in Belgium, Portugal, France and Italy prepare to strike for between one and three days each later this week.”Following the intense negotiations Ryanair put forward a revised offer. BALPA members were balloted and voted to accept the offer,” a union spokesperson said in an email.In July 2020 BALPA members voted overwhelmingly to accept temporary pay cuts in order to avoid jobs losses due to COVID-19 groundings. Chief Executive Michael O’Leary in January then said that management had begun discussions with unions across its network about accelerating pay restoration in a deal he said might result in the extension pay agreements by a year or two.Asked how many pilots had accepted deals covering post-COVID pay restoration, a Ryanair spokesperson said over 70% of its pilots are covered by “newly renegotiated agreements”. There are pay agreements in place for all pilots, the airline said. BALPA last month said it was in negotiations with management “to end the COVID-19 mitigation measures … and to see some recognition, from management, of the loyalty and sacrifices the workforce has made.” It declined to provide further details of the approved deal. Ryanair shares were up 5.3% at the close of European trading. More

  • 150 Shares159 Views

    in Economy

    Countries would implement minimum corporate tax to avoid revenue loss, says Yellen

    “When some countries opt into this (minimum corporate tax) and put these taxes in effect, it’ll begin to be more and more that see that it’s in their interest to join up,” Yellen said at a discussion with Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland in Toronto.Some 136 countries agreed a global deal in October 2021 to ensure big companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15% and make it harder for them to avoid taxation, but such a tax has not yet been implemented anywhere. More