Aurelia Butler

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    Biden’s Ukraine Aid Risks Slowdown as GOP Balks at Covid Tie-In

    The Senate could vote on the emergency spending package next week, but the House will be on recess. Congress could finish by the week of May 9 and send it to Biden for his signature. But if Democrats insist on attaching long-stalled funding for Covid vaccinations and treatment to the package, action could be delayed indefinitely.  “That’s not going to happen. That’s an awful way to do business,” Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said about combining the two spending requests.Senate Democrats and Republicans previously hashed out a $10 billion compromise on Covid funding, but the effort stalled earlier this month when Republicans demanded a vote on an amendment that would reverse a decision to lift pandemic-related restrictions on migration across the southern border, known as Title 42. Vulnerable swing-state Senate Democrats have come out against lifting Title 42 and could feel compelled to approve a Title 42 amendment. Once the provision is part of the bill, that could poison the measure with Democrats in the closely divided House. Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who negotiated the Covid relief package with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, said senators still want to vote on extending Title 42. “I think the prospects of each being passed would be greater if they were kept separate and if each had the potential for amendments,” he told reporters. Biden urged Congress to tie the two together in his request. “Let’s get both of these critical tasks done,” he said Thursday at the White House.That has the support of many Democrats. Senate Health Committee Chair Patty Murray told reporters that Covid aid should be included with the Ukraine package.“It needs to get done. We need to have testing and new vaccines developed,” the Washington Democrat said. The administration’s proposal includes $20.4 billion in military and security assistance for Ukraine, $8.5 billion in economic assistance to help support the government in Kyiv, and $3 billion for humanitarian assistance and global food security, according to a White House statement.White House officials said the funding would cover Ukraine costs through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.The Ukraine aid generally drew support from key Republicans, who stressed the urgency of the situation on the ground. “There is a desperate need for this assistance. We can’t play politics with this. We have to get this done,” Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said.“The sooner the better on Ukraine,” Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said.The top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, said he is “pretty satisfied” with the request for the military although he had expected higher levels prior to the announcement.©2022 Bloomberg L.P. More

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    Goldman Sees Yen Falling Further With or Without Intervention

    As long as U.S. yields keep rising and the Japanese monetary authority sticks to its main yield curve control settings, the yen will remain under pressure as rate differentials play in the dollar’s favor, according to the bank.“We find it hard to see intervention driving a sustained appreciation without any shift in yield curve control expectations,” the firm’s New York-based strategist Karen Reichgott Fishman wrote in a note. “With risks to yields still skewed to the upside, FX intervention seems likely to be less effective.”The yen extended its decline to a 20-year low, breaching the highly-anticipated 130 mark against the dollar, as the BOJ pledged to buy an unlimited amount of bonds every day to cap yields while also delivering a strong message on its super easy stance. The slump led Japan’s finance ministry to step up, vowing to respond “appropriately” to the abrupt plunge in the currency. For Fishman, if the yen keeps depreciating there’s a “high risk of intervention,” based on past behavior of the central bank. The bulk of the BOJ interventions occurred when the yen was trading in the 127 to 130 per dollar range. If the monetary authority reviews the yield curve control settings and Japan’s rate differential to the U.S. narrows by 40 to 45 basis points, the yen could strengthen as much as 3%, according to Goldman. However, the bank doesn’t expect an immediate convergence of rates to the fair value, meaning the impulse to the currency would likely be smaller. ©2022 Bloomberg L.P. More

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    Dollar surges to highest level in 20 years

    The US dollar surged to its highest level in two decades on Thursday as investors ramped up bets that aggressive interest rate rises from the Federal Reserve will leave other big central banks trailing far in its wake.The dollar index, a gauge of the US currency’s strength against a basket of other developed world currencies including the euro, the yen, and the pound, climbed as much as 0.9 per cent to just under 104, its strongest level since 2002.Thursday’s move brings the dollar’s gains to more than 8 per cent this year, as markets position for a growing gulf in monetary policy between the US and other major economies. The immediate catalyst for the move came from the Bank of Japan, which on Thursday underlined its determination to buck the global trend towards tighter monetary policy by sticking with its promise to keep bond yields close to zero. The euro and sterling have also suffered as investors have increasingly begun to question whether the European Central Bank and Bank of England will be able to lift interest rates very far this year, with the eurozone’s energy-importing economy threatened by high oil prices and the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The European single currency fell to a new five-year low of $1.047, while the pound sank to its weakest in almost two years at $1.242.At the same time, the recent devaluation of China’s currency as the country battles a Covid resurgence has cast a shadow over the outlook for global growth, further boosting the dollar, which tends to benefit when investors shun risky assets.“We had two decades of the benefits of low inflation, but now central banks are trying to win back their inflation-fighting credibility,” said Jordan Rochester, a foreign exchange strategist at Nomura. “But the ECB is facing stagflation and will struggle to keep with the Fed, and the BoJ isn’t even coming to the party. With lower exposure to China, and lower exposure to Ukraine, the US stands out as resilient.”Markets are pricing in half percentage point interest rate rises from the Fed at each of its next three meetings, as the central bank tries to curb the highest inflation rate in decades — despite data showing the US economy unexpectedly contracted in the first quarter.The ECB is also expected by investors to begin raising interest rates later this year. But currency traders may start to question those expectations the longer the Ukraine conflict goes on, potentially dragging down the euro even further, according to Rochester. “Parity with the dollar is now a conversation that investors want to have,” he said. More

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    in Cryptocurrency

    Snowden Revealed He’s Behind Zcash Privacy Coin. Why Now?

    The former computer intelligence consultant leaked highly classified data from National Security Agency back in 2013 before fleeing to Russia, which granted him permanent asylum. Part of the CeremonyToday Edward Snowden confirmed to be a man behind the pseudonym of John Dobbertin, one of the six original Zcash privacy coin creators.The group of individuals, who calls itself “Ceremony”, formed back in 2016 to create the first units of privacy-preserving digital currency. Snowden named the team of “trusted academic cryptographers” as one of the reasons to join the Zcash’s inner rings. He further explained why privacy coins are the condition of the free society:“When we look in cryptocurrencies in general, we generally see cryptographic properties of it being used to make sure it’s fair ledger, but not that it’s been used to ensure that it’s a private ledger. Bitcoin quite famously is an open ledger. The problem with that is you can’t have truly free trade unless you have private trade, and you can’t have a free society without free trade,” Snowden stated.The former intelligence consultant has not revealed his role in the Ceremony. He only mentioned that he has nothing to do with the algorithm design and vaguely hinted to more intelligence-related expertise: “When they [Ceremony] came to this concept that they needed many people in many places all cooperating in the hopes that just one of them might not be compromised, might not work sort of against public interest… I was happy to say “Sure, I’ll help” Snowden shared in a video produced by a Zcash-related media house.Suspected for Sanctions EvasionLaunched back in 2016 as a code derivative of Bitcoin, the Zcash (ZCASH) privacy-preserving coin allows users to create end-to-end encrypted transactions. It uses zero-knowledge proofs and hides financial details from the public eyes.With a $2.1 billion market cap, Zcash is today one of the crypto markets’ leading privacy coins. Zcash recorded significant 114% growth during the first month since Russia invaded Ukraine and global allies punished Putin’s regime with unprecedented economic sanctions.Privacy coins have long been suspected of being a popular payment method among black markets, regimes, and shady financial actors.Why Now?The secret of Edward Snowden being John Dobbertin of Zcash came out after almost six years of hiding. As the limitation period looks highly unlikely when talking about cryptocurrency founders, a single question naturally arises: why now?The answer seems to hide in the plain ground, as Snowden dropped the informational bomb not elsewhere, but in a purely educational video. The one that was produced and published on the newly launched Zcash Media’s Youtube channel.The newly established production house is dedicated to creating and distributing documentary-style educational content on Zcash and related technologies.On the Flipside:Continue reading on DailyCoin More

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    Is Cardano’s Price Pull Back Preparation for Something Big?

    Cardano’s (ADA) price currently stands at $0.8347, which is a 6.32% decrease over the last 24 hours. The price of ADA is also 11.79% down for the week. Ranked in the top 10 list of cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap, ADA is ranked as the 9th biggest project and has a market cap of over $27 billion.ADA has also weakened against Bitcoin (BTC) by 1.17% and Ethereum (ETH) by 1.47% at the time of writing.The 24 hour trading volume for ADA is only slightly down when compared to the rest of the cryptocurrency market, and is 0.80% down in the last 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap. The daily trading volume totals around $1,082,217,262.The price of ADA is likely to recover significantly given the bullish momentum the project has built up over the recent few months and weeks. Some of the events that helped ignite this bullish momentum include hundreds of new projects being built on top of the Cardano blockchain, new listings for the coin, the launch of ADA incubators, and much more.Recent news is that IOG, Cardano’s developer, has proposed to increase the block size of the Cardano network. This will inherently increase the number of transactions that the Cardano network can process every second. This could attract more projects to the ecosystem, making it more valuable.As these projects join the ecosystem it could result in a snowball effect which will see the price of ADA rise dramatically.Continue reading on CoinQuora More

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    CoinQuora’s Top 5 Altcoins to Invest in Early 2022 – To The Moon!

    With the vast amount of coins and tokens in the market, it can be difficult to pinpoint potential projects that could go to the moon. So, we at CoinQuora have decided to help you out as we’ve handpicked five altcoins that are showing promise this 2022.These coins and tokens range from fitness-like apps, IoT-related apps, metaverse, governance tokens, and ecosystems.1. STEPN (GMT)STEPN (GMT) is a “Web3 lifestyle app” that contains GameFi elements on the Solana blockchain. The app has a move-to-earn concept that combines play-to-earn and a fitness app. Users purchase NFT sneakers to earn in-game currency while walking, jogging, or running.Users can get the application on Android and iOS and is currently in its beta version. STEPN has plans to optimize its features and launch on other chains in the future.In recent news, GMT grew over 3,000% since its launch on March 11. GMT rallied from $0.1008 on March 11 to $3.8 on April 20.Estimated price range of GMT from March 11 to April 20. At the time of writing, GMT trades at a price of almost $3.5 with a growth rate of over 330% over the past 30 days. It has a market capitalization of almost $2 trillion and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.5 trillion.2. ApeCoin (APE)ApeCoin (APE) is an ERC-20 governance and utility token for the APE ecosystem. APE holders govern themselves via a decentralized governance framework to control the ApeCoin DAO. Additionally, as part of its ecosystem, it will power the upcoming BAYC metaverse “Otherside.”APE launched on March 17 and it still continues to trend, with plenty of news and activities surrounding the project. Such as in March when Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa released a set of NFT music tracks, and when Yuga Labs raised $450 million from a seed round. Of course, there is also the ApeCoin-powered metaverse Otherside, which is scheduled to reveal more details on April 30.Estimated price range of APE over the past 30 days.At the time of writing, APE trades at a price of almost $20 with a growth rate of over 35% over the past 30 days. It has a market capitalization of almost $5.5 trillion and a 24-hour trading volume of around $1.5 trillion.3. Gamium (GMM)Gamium is a Web3 and metaverse company that aims to be the first platform to unite all metaverse by creating an interconnected multi-metaverse platform. The platform will provide avatars and assets that are multi-metaverse compatible. Gamium launched on March 30.On March 18, Gamium launched its Lands sales campaign in its metaverse. This allows users to purchase Lands and virtual plots ranging from 1 to 125 ETH. More than 200 Lands were sold after 10 minutes of launch, raising $1 million in Land sales within two weeks.Estimated price range of GMM over the past 28 days. Note the price soar by 450% since launch. At the time of writing, Gamium trades at a price of around $0.009 with a growth rate of over 60% over the past 14 days. It has a market capitalization of almost $33 million with a 24-hour trading volume of almost $8 million.4. JasmyCoin (JASMY)JasmyCoin (JASMY) is a utility token on the Ethereum blockchain. The project is designed to give people control of their own personal data stored in a “data locker” and sell it to companies that are willing to pay. JasmyCoin is under the Jasmy Corporation, a Toky-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) provider.JASMY’s price has not been entirely bullish over the past year. However, ever since the news of it committing to a metaverse fund, the price has slowly seen upsides. In a statement, Jasmy announced that “In light of the current financial market and other external market conditions, we are pleased to announce that we have decided to increase our investment budget more than originally assumed.”Estimated price range of JASMY from its peak in late March to April 27. At the time of writing, JASMY trades at a price of around $0.02 with a decline rate of around 40% over the past 30 days. It has a market capitalization of $98 million and a 24-hour trading volume of almost $360 million.While this price isn’t quite as high as previous graphs, it’s also worth noting that if the metaverse fund goes well and more news sprouts in the future – the price could go through a resurgence.5. Ethereum (ETH)Ethereum, as we all know, is a decentralized open-source blockchain system that features its own cryptocurrency – Ether (ETH). ETH works as a platform for plenty of other cryptocurrencies and for the execution of decentralized smart contracts. Ethereum’s goal is to become a global platform for decentralized applications.There is plenty of buzz regarding Ethereum in the news and why it’s a worthy investment. For one, Ethereum powers much of the Metaverse’s commerce. 80% of all NFTs are traded on the Ethereum network and many of the top tokens are Ethereum based. Secondly, the new Ethereum “Merge” is coming possibly “a few months after June.”At the time of writing, ETH trades at a price of almost $3,000 with a decline rate of around 12% over the past 30 days. It has a market capitalization of almost $350 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of almost $20 billion.As the Metaverse grows and the upcoming “merge” grows closer, it’s possible that Ethereum’s price would grow even further. These developments would help the ecosystem, and its projects, and will attract more activity to ETH.Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of CoinQuora. No information in this article should be interpreted as investment advice. CoinQuora encourages all users to do their own research before investing in cryptocurrencies.Continue reading on CoinQuora More

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    Investors Move Away From ETH Products Towards Layer-1 Altcoins

    It seems that institutional investors have shifted their interest from Ethereum to Layer-1 blockchains. Altcoins have been seeing great capital inflows over the last week while Ether (ETH) products have posted outflows over the same time period. This has been the case for the last three consecutive weeks.According to data from CoinShares’ latest Digital Asset Fund Flows report, investors loaded up on millions worth of altcoins over the last week. These coins include Avalanche (AVAX), Solana (SOL), Terra (LUNA) and Algorand (ALGO).AVAX reported an inflow of $1.8 million, SOL reported $800,000, LUNA had an inflow of $700,000 and ALGO reported a $200,000 inflow.While these coins had a fantastic week, ETH reported outflows that totaled around $16.9 million. ETH has seen these outflows for three straight weeks now and the total is now estimated to be $59.3 million.Over the past 10 weeks, ETH’s inflow only totaled around 68.5 million. This could signal a bearish trend by institutions towards ETH.Alternate Layer-1 blockchains have been growing in popularity. According to DappRadar, decentralized application (DApp) usage has increased on Solana. Usage on (DEX) Orca has also grown by 43% while (AMM) Raydium saw an increase of 15.5%.Over the last three weeks the outflow has only been around $219 million before cooling down to only $7.2 million over the last week. This is a big difference when comparing the numbers to the $134 million that left the market during the first week of April.Continue reading on CoinQuora More

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    2 More Days To Go, Don’t Miss Out StreamCoin

    One thing that the StreamCoin team has done is to build a crypto project with an incredible utility. This is a project with real-world use cases based on the products the team is building. Therefore, the StreamCoin token price will grow organically due to the mass adoption the project is getting.The StreamCoin team has already built one of the most powerful blockchains, Stream Chain, on which this ecosystem will be running. The Stream chain offers one of the fastest transaction speeds, and the gas fee is very low. But what makes this project attractive to crypto investors is the powerful streaming product, MeiTalk, which will be running on the Stream Chain.MeiTalk is the major product for the StreamCoin project. It is a global live streaming platform that will utilize Stream Chain to connect streamers with viewers directly. In addition, it offers other exciting features like auto-generated multiple languages, multicasting to over 50 broadcasting channels, and 100% revenue to streamers.It is also important to mention that MeiTalk will enable streamers to mint NFTs from their streaming videos and trade them on the Stream NFT marketplace, another exciting product in the StreamCoin ecosystem.MeiTalk also allows viewers to earn from watching streams and tip the streamer directly with GaStream tokens. These are just some of the exciting features that will make MeiTalk the best streaming platform.Therefore, MeiTalk is projected to be one of the biggest drives for the skyrocketing StreamCoin (STRM). Live streaming has been growing exponentially since the Coronavirus pandemic, and streaming is what streamers is looking for.There are millions of people streaming, which is a huge market that MeiTalk is tapping on. That’s how mass adoption of the StreamCoin project will be driven by MeiTalk. However, the StreamCoin team is also working on adding more products to its ecosystem, including a research platform.The StreamCoin public presale ends on 30th April. Don’t miss out on this gem!Disclaimer: Any information written in this press release does not constitute investment advice. CoinQuora does not, and will not endorse any information on any company or individual on this page. Readers are encouraged to make their own research and make any actions based on their own findings and not from any content written in this press release. CoinQuora is and will not be responsible for any damage or loss caused directly or indirectly by the use of any content, product, or service mentioned in this press release.Continue reading on CoinQuora More