🇺🇸 Who is rocking the crypto market?

📉 The crypto market felt very uncertain last week, with the price of BTC falling from $58,000 to $53,000 and altcoins even more affected.

🙀 The reason has not changed: fear of recession. Despite the Fed's promise to cut rates on September 18, the Nasdaq index falling (by 2%). Against this background and as a risky asset, crypto is "shaking" even more.

⏳ The Fed's rate cut is good, but the regulator is probably lagging behind. It may take a long time - from a couple of months to half a year - until the effect of the rate cut (or multiple cuts) affects the markets.

🗽 Arthur Hayes, for instance, is confident that the Democrats will do something before the presidential elections in November. So probably the bull run will not happen in September, but some changes are possible in October or November, before the elections.

🇧🇷 Maybe move to Brazil?

🧑‍⚖️ Recently, Brazil's supreme court banned social network X from operating in the country due to non-compliance with a court order.

💯 Nevertheless, as the largest LatAm economy, Brazil is a very large crypto market and a place for fintech and digital innovation. For instance, it's now testing a joint CBDC program with Mastercard.

🪪 How can you get a Brazilian passport and how easy is it to transact crypto legally here?

🌱 Spoiler: very easy to get even without licenses and a passport; there is an option to get one in two years. More about all this in a new article.

🇦🇪 Bybit got local license in UAE

🏛 Dubai’s main crypto regulator, VARA has approved Bybit's application for a VASP license. This means that Bybit now can operate in Dubai with local retail and institutional investors. The company was already fully licensed for operations in Kazakhstan two weeks ago.

🛡 Bybit is currently one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world and is second only to Binance in terms of trading volume. Obtaining licenses in UAE and Kazakhstan secures the company from potential legal conflicts with US and EU authorities. The company was previously forced to suspend operations in France due to problems with local fintech regulator, AMF.

💯 The rate cut is coming today

✌️ The Fed will make a decision on rate cuts in three hours... and many people predict a bullish trend for crypto based on the cut.

🔻 However, rate cuts usually pull stocks & crypto down at first, so please be careful. The rate cut will increase volatility in the market!

-0,5%

🇯🇵 Bank of Japan leaves interest rate unchanged

🔼 Contrary to fears, the Bank of Japan has not raised its interest rate, leaving it at 0,25%. Combined with the Fed's rate cut of 0.5%, this is a great bullish signal for the markets to rise in the long term.

🐼 But I'm still a bit bearish - market move down in the first two months after a Fed rate cut is still very likely. The fear of recession in the global economy remains.

🤯 Everything is very good... or is it?

🏛 As I have already written many times, the state of the crypto market depends on the policy of the world's monetary regulators. Simply put, central banks.

💚 Over the past two weeks we received three positive signals at once.

🇺🇸 The Fed lowered the rate by 0.5% in a single move.

🐉 This week, the Bank of China adopted a stimulus program. It lowered capital requirements for banks and lowered the mortgage rate.

💹 The Bank of Japan, which lends to speculators, kept its rate at the same level. Its previous rate hike of 0.15% in July hurt the markets.

📈 All this combines into a good signal - in the long run.

🙀 But there's a problem. If the world's central banks are gleefully lowering rates, it means they fear a recession in the economy.

🏺 Markets react positively to rate cuts, but that was the case in 2001 and 2008... then the stock market panic started and it took several years for US indices to recover to previous highs (from 2001 to 2007 and from 2008 to 2013).

🤔 No one knows what will happen this time.

🇨🇳 Monetary pump

🚀 The Chinese stock market is booming after PBoC announced its new stimulus program last week. The CSI 300 Index showed +8% growth.

🌐 If this trend continues on the global stock market, it will push crypto, too.

🌏 Taiwan has started VASP registration and other regulatory news in Asia

🇹🇼 The main financial regulator in Taiwan published VASP registration rules yesterday.

🏯 Currently, Asia is the largest crypto market in the world and some other countries have new regulation updates too:

🇮🇩 There is a great move in Indonesia: Tokocrypto, Binance's local subsidiary, received its license in September.

🇮🇳 India is expected to publish a new concept of crypto regulation by the end of October.

🇭🇰 Hong Kong unveiled new rules for OTC trading.

🇹🇭 Thailand's second-largest bank, Kasicornbank, will launch the first licensed crypto custodian in the country. Thailand already legalized Bitcoin ETFs this year, following Hong Kong's example.

📊 Volatility is decreasing...

🗺 The panic associated with geopolitical factors has calmed a bit and BTC is back above $60,000. Coinbase analysts record a significant decrease in volatility in anticipation of a new Fed rate decision in November and the results of the U.S. presidential election.

🇺🇸 In general, the crypto market is hovering in a sideways trend and the regulators' rate cuts are not leading to a new bull cycle yet, nor is there a strong fall due to recession fears - regulators are taking action. It is likely that this situation will last until the US presidential election.

💱 Stablecoin market and Tether FUD

🎤 Tether’s CEO, Paolo Ardoino gave an interview to Cointelegraph amid the delisting of USDT from European exchanges and circulating rumors about the company's issues. In the face of competitive pressure, even a giant like Tether needs to reassert its position in the market.

🤑 Stablecoins are attracting more and more attention with their high levels of profit: the USDT issuer earned $6,3 billion in 2023, $700 million more than BlackRock. The company has also surpassed VISA and Mastercard in transaction volume. Against this backdrop, Revolut and PayPal are creating their own stablecoins, while VISA is developing solutions to transfer cryptoassets via Swift.

🇺🇸 Tether is still the leader, but there is some distrust in the company, due to the low level of transparency of reserves. Paolo Ardoino probably decided to dispel these doubts and, during the interview, noted that Tether has a good relationship with the US government - working closely with the FBI and other intelligence agencies- and at the same time storing $98 billion in US Treasuries. That's comparable to the reserves of major economies like Brazil.

🗺 From this interview, we can also highlight the reason why USDT has not yet received a license in the EU: the company is focused more on markets in Asia and other countries where the demand for the dollar in digital form is higher and less focused on over-regulated markets such as the EU. As Ardoino said: “'There is no point for us to compete in the US and Europe. Our focus has to be where we are needed the most.“

🎓 In my opinion, for Tether, a lower level of transparency is a necessary business approach to reduce business costs and protect against competitors. So there is no real threat for USDT now. However, no one prevents users from reinsuring themselves and transferring part of their reserves to other stablecoins, such as USDC. Futhermore, Tether is developing its business with TON ecosystem. Currently $768 mln of USDT is available on TON blockchain and its transaction fees are lower than on Tron.

❓Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

🎥 Authors of the HBO movie have recognized developer and member of the Bitcoin Foundation Peter Todd as the creator of Bitcoin. Other popular versions are Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Len Sassaman. Of course, this is most likely not true, also because Peter Todd is alive, and we haven't had any signs of activity from the real Satoshi since 2011. And he's pretty much 100% dead.

💸 Given the intense scrutiny of even small early BTC holdings by researchers, special forces, and criminals, the real Satoshi Nakamoto would have been uncovered long ago if he was alive. Or at least would sell some Bitcoin - there is little doubt about that.