30th September 2022 > > The world is not doomed.

tl;dr

It really isn’t all bad news, despite what the press says.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Market headlines continue to paint a picture of market turmoil, but I just cannot see it in the numbers.

According to Yahoo, GBPUSD was at 1.125 the night before the mini-budget, and is now quoted at 1.115, a minor move for volatile FX markets, though the over-reaction in the days following the mini-budget gave many juicy opportunities for the brave.

Global stocks are down a touch, cryptos are up. 10-year gilt yields are up, but the move pales in comparison to the 6-month sell-off we had been experiencing across the entire fixed income world, which though dwarfing this week’s rise, was never presented by the press as a calamity.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – A few brief positive pieces of news for cryptos

Just to try to change the incorrect but commonly held narrative (see above), that all risk assets are now doomed.

Non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) are back with a vengeance. CryptoPunk #2924 sold for 3,300 ETH, more than $4mm:

This one is much sought after as it is an Ape with a hoodie, which is important to some. It was last sold on 13th November 2020 for 150 ETH, worth a measly $70k at the time. Nice work.

Off the back of this, secondary trading volumes surged.

Blackrock – the world’s largest investment manager with $10 TRILLION AUM (assets under management) has launched yet another crypto related ETF (exchange traded fund), this time with the objective of investing in miners, exchanges, and other companies that support the blockchain ecosystem. Omar Moufti, product strategist at BlackRock, had this to say:

“We believe digital assets and blockchain technologies are going to become increasingly relevant for our clients as use cases develop in scope, scale and complexity.”

Following this, we should also expect to see an ETF related to the Metaverse out of BlackRock, but this has not been confirmed in response to a Bloomberg article. BlackRock Technology Opportunities Fund co-portfolio manager Reid Menge, who labelled the Metaverse a “revolution in the making.”

There is ever growing institutional and retail demand for the crypto space.

Telefonica – a telecoms giant based in Spain, has teamed up with cryptocurrency exchange Bit2Me to allow payments on Telefonica’s own website for its vast array of goods to be paid for in cryptos. Personally, I am surprised we have not seen more of this in the past.

Iota has launched its layer 1 solution that will allow NFTs, tokenised real-world assets, and stablecoins to be deployed without fees. Owners of IOTA who staked using Firefly, are now the proud owners of billions of SMR tokens (see CCC 19th December 2021). It won’t be long before we can evaluate the monetary value of this windfall.