NEAR, that ambitious minstrel, climbed 17%, its “Confidential Intents” a lute strummed in the dark, outshining even the CoinDesk 20 and its privacy-coin cousins. A 40% weekly rally, a fireworks display for the cryptosphere.
Well, folks, it’s back! The once-forgotten dream of banning the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC has been resurrected, lurking in the halls of Senate legislation. And just when you thought it was safe to forget about it, here it is again-months after its last humiliating failure to sneak into last year’s National Defense Authorization Act. They never give up, do they?
Bitmine Immersion Technologies, them clever varmints, have been stackin’ Ethereum like it’s goin’ outta style. Their treasury’s bustin’ at the seams with 4.47 million ETH, pushin’ their total stash of crypto and cold hard cash near $10 billion. And they ain’t lettin’ no market wobbles or geopolitical hullabaloo slow ’em down. Them recent purchases, coupled with their staking windfalls, have their balance sheet lookin’ sturdier than a Missouri mule.
Oh, the folly of it all! Bitcoin, having formed a base above the $65,500 zone, embarked on a fresh increase, breaching the $66,500 resistance with the fervor of a zealot. It rallied above $68,000, and even the bearish trend line at $66,800 was but a fleeting obstacle. But alas, the bears, those eternal pessimists, emerged near $70,000, forming a high at $70,100 before the price corrected, retreating like a coward from a battle it could not win. A move below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the upward move from the $63,030 swing low to the $70,100 high-a technical detail, yet a harbinger of doom.
On the frosty evening of January 31, CZ, co-founder of Binance, ventured into the wild terrain of public speculation and media frenzy during an AMA session, like a lion stepping into a den of foxes.
PayPay, a SoftBank Corp-backed payments company that owns a 40% stake in Binance Japan, is seeking to raise as much as $1.1 billion in a U.S. initial public offering, Reuters reported Monday. The company’s strategy seems to be: “Let’s take the most confusing parts of finance and crypto, mash them together, and call it ‘innovation.’” Which, honestly, is a plan that’s worked remarkably well for exactly zero people in history.
The saga unfolded on X, where Eleanor Terrett, armed with her keyboard and a dash of drama, recounted the White House’s latest stablecoin showdown. Patrick Witt, the self-proclaimed digital asset sage, had dared to set a March 1 deadline for legislation, a date as elusive as spring in Siberia. Meanwhile, an unnamed source, cloaked in mystery, painted the negotiations in shades of doom-only to be met with the banks’ collective yawn, their “perplexity” a polite mask for their refusal to dance to anyone’s tune but their own.
With inflation hotter than a spicy schnitzel and the U.S. and Iran playing a game of “Who Blinks First,” traders are sitting on their hands like they’re waiting for the punchline to a bad joke. Spoiler: the punchline is their portfolios taking a hit.
Dear reader, consider this: when the West’s iron birds clawed at Tehran’s sky, the people did not weep. No-they fled to the cold embrace of foreign exchanges, their coins whispering promises of salvation. A paradox! To seek liberty in the very tools forged by the technocratic oligarchs of Silicon Valley.
By noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, that venerable barometer of economic health, had slipped a mere 0.08% to 48,936.56, having earlier fallen more than 500 points, because why not add a bit of drama? The S&P 500 gave a cheeky nod upwards, rising 0.06% to 6,883.21, and the Nasdaq Composite, feeling particularly sprightly, rose 0.35% to 22,746.56, recovering from its deeper morning dips like a cat landing upright.