4th December 2024 > > New SEC Chair & LINK.

tl;dr

The new SEC Chair has been chosen. LINK proves the value of the EU’s crypto regulatory regime, an issue that the new SEC Chair must get to grips with immediately.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

The prospect of regulatory clarity in the US is driving the price of XRP closer to its all-time high of $3.84 achieved way back in January 2018. With a market cap of $150bn and being very likely to be one of the clear winners in the next year or more, there is still plenty of scope to grow from here. Still, if you invested at any time from Spring 2018 onwards whilst avoiding the 2021 bull, there is the glorious option of now taking out your initial investment (and then some) whilst keeping a significant portion as a moon bag. Lovely.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – New SEC Chair

Paul Atkins, previously a commissioner for the SEC under George Bush, has been picked by Trump for the now vacant position of Chair of the SEC.

Smarting from being described by a judge as acting “arbitrarily and capricious”, Gensler’s tenure as Chair was no longer tenable under a Trump administration, to the huge relief of all supporters of liberty, privacy, and freedom. Gensler signally failed in his primary ambition to trash the price of BTC so that he could personally load up in size once he left the SEC, safe in the knowledge that any successor would embrace the crypto revolution. Still, as he kept telling everyone during his frequent appearances at Congressional hearings, he is already a very rich man. It looks like he will be buying at around $100k when he steps down on 20th January next year, a price far above his personal target of $10k according to my insider.

Paul Atkins is a vocal proponent of cryptos. If Paul can deliver clear regulatory guidance so that entrepreneurs and businesses are given clarity about what they can and cannot do, the pace of crypto adoption can only accelerate.

First on his to-do list is rescind SAB 121 on day one. Go on, Paul, you know you can do it.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – LINK

We have often discussed the potential and promise of LINK, an on-chain oracle, in these near-daily missives of ours.

If you believe that DeFi can only continue to grow, and you subscribe to Larry Fink’s assertion that tokenisation of real-world assets is the single biggest opportunity in finance today, then the use-case for LINK makes itself.

European fintech company 21x has partnered with Chainlink to offer to develop the tokenisation industry within the EU. Angie Walker, Global Head of Banking and Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs, explains to the CC community:

“We’re excited to partner with 21X and help foster the adoption of regulated blockchain-based markets across Europe. By leveraging the Chainlink standard, 21X will ensure its matching and settlement system is underpinned by highly accurate and reliable market data.”

Max Heinzle, founder and CEO of 21X, is equally thrilled:

“By leveraging Chainlink’s technology, we will offer a secure and efficient platform for trading and settlement on a public permissionless blockchain.” 

The price of LINK has been on a tear as a result, again offering smart investors the opportunity to now take out all their upfront investment (and then some) whilst keeping a significant portion as a moon bag. With a market cap of a mere $15bn, there is potential upside here. We will see a lot more of this type of price action and outcome for long-term investors who have been using DCA over the years as the alt season gets going.

But back to LINK. This could not happen at scale without the EU’s globally leading crypto regulation MiCA. This legislation will encourage crypto innovation and adoption within the EU, leading inevitably to a growing cascade of tax dollars for the political and technocratic elite to spend on their pet projects, and to provide better salaries and fatter pensions for the army of administrators in the public sector who work from home. And who’s to say they don’t deserve it.

MiCA is already beginning to pay dividends, a fact that will not be ignored by the new SEC Chair Paul Atkins, and his superiors.