8th August 2022 > > Update.

tl;dr

Two updates to recent stories, one that is very important, and one that is frankly on the trivial side of things.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Price action in cryptos has been steady and boring of late. I think that might be a very positive signal, though the legions of techies out there will not agree with me.

Occasional Series – The politician formerly known as Dishi Rishi

The CCC remains fiercely apolitical as always. But I do have a question that I hope you can help me with.

Sunak has been stout in his prosecution that tax cuts are inflationary.

Sunak, just this weekend, has promised billions of pounds of handouts to cope with the cost of energy crisis (*).

This leaves me a touch confused.

How is it that putting money into peoples’ pockets through tax cuts is inflationary, whilst putting money into peoples’ pockets through handouts is not inflationary?

Answers, as ever, on a postcard to CC Towers please. You know where to find us.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – US regulation update

Just yesterday the CCC reported on the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act. The key objective of this legislation is to hand over responsibility for the regulation of all digital asset platforms to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

This would be a powerful tool for those who believe that all cryptos, not just BTC and ETH, are commodities, and not securities.

A source of mine claims that this bill is already dead in the water, for reasons that were not disclosed to me.

This is not good if true.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Tiffany update

On the 2nd August 2022 the CCC reported that Tiffany the jewellers was selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that could be redeemed for a precious stone studded pendant if one was a owner of a CryptoPunk.

Priced at 30 ETH, approximately $50k, all 250 NFTs were sold in 20 minutes.

The current floor price is 27 ETH.

To claim the physical pendant redemption must take place by August 12th. The speculators who bought the NFTiffs in the hope of flipping them to actual owners of a CryptoPunk will start to panic very soon. As any options trader will tell you, theta (the derivative that measures the deterioration of price as time passes) can be very scary for your book, depending on spot versus exercise price.

…

(*) A crisis, incidentally, that is a direct result of Conservative government policy for the last twelve years and has little to do with the war in Ukraine.

An alternative reality to those twelve years of dysfunctional decision making that we have suffered could have resulted in the UK being a net beneficiary of increases in the wholesale price of gas.