🐳 Daily Edition: Bitcoin Rises Amid Government Shutdown

Despite the US Government shutting down yesterday, crypto is full of green today as Bitcoin climbs back towards the $120k mark. The narrative of “digital Gold” means BTC should perform well in times of turmoil, and we should expect to see more outperformance as long as this lasts. Interestingly, the Government shutdown means the SEC is not operating nor making decisions on ETF filings. This means any altcoins that may have been expecting ETF announcements soon will have to wait until regulators get back into office. It also means traditional market investors interested in crypto exposure will have to stick to Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs for the time being, which is why I’ll look for the two largest crypto assets to perform well in the near future.

For whatever reason, altcoin traders seem to be interested in reviving Zcash once again, a privacy coin that has been around since 2016. The privacy sector is undoubtedly interesting especially given the resurgence of Monero, but why traders would all decide to buy Zcash at the same time after it went down 99% due to its team selling supply is a mystery to me. To be fair, there aren’t many legitimate tokens within the privacy sector, so there aren’t many other places for interested money to flow. The gold standard remains Monero, though the chains security was recently put in question during Qubic’s attempted 51% attack. Many crypto market participants joined the space with dreams of decentralization and cyberpunk culture of which financial privacy is an important part, however from an investment perspective it’s hard to find a class of assets that would annoy regulators more than inaccessible dark money pools. Trade those at your own risk.

Bold is popular for his artwork, but he’s a legend for his counter-signals.

The Beluga intern has been hard at work gathering all the most important crypto news stories so you have them in one place!

The Majors

• Tether adds $1B in Bitcoin to reserves as USDT supply nears $175B, blockchain data shows

Alt Coins and Stocks

• Sui digital asset treasury company plans to launch two stablecoins: report

• Ripple’s David Schwartz announces departure as CTO by end of year

Crime

• Chinese woman convicted in UK for leading $6.9B Bitcoin scam

• Pendle downplays major break after seemingly lone actor began minting PT and YT token swaps

Prediction Markets

• Robinhood explores launching prediction markets outside the US