3rd January 2024 > > EUR CBDC & ETF naysayers.

tl;dr

Lagarde speaks her truth about a EUR CBDC, and it sure ain’t pretty. Let’s hear from a couple of ETF naysayers.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

That overnight flash crash from over $45.6k to $40.7k was a classic long squeeze. Perpetual futures funding rates got way out of whack between yesterday’s CCC and today’s. Half a billion dollars of leveraged longs lost their collateral. Trading crypto futures is a mug’s game, always has been, always will be. Now that the leveraged children have slunk away to cry, we can get on with the real business.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – EUR CBDC

https://twitter.com/MasonVersluis/status/1644123600390348800

I am not sure how I missed this explosive interview with Convicted Criminal Christine Lagarde, head of the ECB. She makes her views plain about our personal rights to financial privacy:

“… you know … but you know what, now in Europe, we have a threshold that above EUR 1,000 you cannot pay in cash. If you do … you take the risk … you get fined or you go to jail.”

Scary stuff, eh.

But her dystopian desires become ever darker:

“… but, you know, the digital euro will have unlimited control … we are considering for very small amounts we could have a mechanism for zero control … but that could be dangerous.”

CCC Lagarde tells you how it is going to be with CBDCs. No-one can ever accuse her of hiding her true controlling motivations – she has warned us in advance.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – spot BTC ETF scepticism

The doom-mongers are out in force today.

First up Matrixport declares that approval for a spot BTC ETF from the SEC is unlikely because “all applications fall short of a critical requirement that must be met before the SEC approves.” Which is a bold statement without stating what that critical requirement happens to be. Gensler’s personal seal of approval perhaps, but whatever it is, tell us what it is. Or shut up.

https://www.matrixport.com/institutions/research/matrix-on-target/813

Matrixport makes the wholly unsurprising prediction that rejection once more will lead to a sell-off. Though this is likely I suspect it would be seen as a buying opportunity and prices will quickly revert.

…

Next, we have long-term crypto sceptic Peter Schiff. The balance on his leveraged short account, if he had taken his own advice, would impoverish most of the world’s billionaires. But that doesn’t hold him back:

“Be careful what you wish for. The promise of a U.S. listed spot BTC ETF has been supporting the BTC price and speculative demand for years. Once the ETFs are launched and the highly anticipated institutional and other new investor demand does not show up, look out below!”

His logic is impeccable but what he fails to recognise is the huge amount of money and senior management time invested in the process of launching spot BTC ETFs by the leading asset managers. This has not been done on a whim – it is in response to customer demand. It is possible that all the customers have been lying, but I put the probability of that outcome somewhere in the region of my picking the two winning lottery tickets in consecutive draws.