Monthly Archives: June 2021

Longtime crypto bull Meltem Demirors reiterated her confidence in the cryptocurrency Tuesday, telling CNBC she believes the correction in bitcoin is simply weeding out the investors with "paper hands."

Paper hands is a term used in the crypto community to characterize people who sell a digital asset such as bitcoin when turbulence strikes markets. It's the opposite of so-called diamond hands, or ardent believers who say they will hold for the long term.

"We had 200 days of market expansion. You can't have a number go up forever. That doesn't happen in any market," Demirors said on "The Exchange." "What we're seeing is a correction, a contraction, and a lot of what is getting shaken out is what we call the 'paper hands,' the 'weak hands.'"

Demirors, the chief strategy officer at digital asset investment firm CoinShares, pointed to transaction activity on the bitcoin blockchain to support her view.

"There's a lot of retail that entered, didn't do their research, and is now selling. There are not a lot of long-term holders selling," she said. "If we look at on-chain activity, wallets that have been holding for a long time have actually been using this opportunity to accumulate."

Demirors' remarks on CNBC follow a wild ride for bitcoin Tuesday, which began with a heavy drop below the key $30,000 support level beforebouncing back into positive territoryin the afternoon. Analystshad been watchingthe $30,000 level after the cryptocurrency experienced a series of losses in May.

Earlier Tuesday morning, Wall Street strategist Tom Lee hadtold CNBCthat the world's largest cryptocurrency by market value faces a rough technical picture in the near term but that he still believes that bitcoin by market value could reach $100,000 per token by the end of 2021.

Like Demirors, Lee said he believes a lot of the recent selling has been from retail traders who jumped into bitcoin earlier this year when the cryptocurrency was marching higher toward its all-time high near $65,000 in April.

"I think we're going to continue to see consolidation here," Demirors said. "There is a lot of macro-uncertainty. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty around policy. There's also a lot of negative headlines."

China has recently been intensifying its crackdown on cryptocurrency.

"I think part of this is just the cycle we go through every several years with crypto, but we are seeing a lot of new inflows. We are seeing a lot of activity, in particular, on the market side," Demirors said.

While Demirors said "bitcoin has always been volatile," she explained that during the steep pullback in May, there was "a bunch of leverage coming off across the board. Now, we're done deleveraging. Now we're seeing a lot of cash selling."

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Crypto strategist says bitcoin pullback is shaking out investors who have 'paper hands' - CNBC

Well, that was fast. Bitcoin has gone from a death cross to nearly a bull market in just a few short days.

Bitcoin formed that death crosswhat market technicians call the moment when the 50-day moving average drops below the 200-day moving averageover the weekend. It was a sign that more selling could be on the way.

And selling happened for a couple of days. Bitcoin went from more than $36,000 to less than $29,000 between Sunday and Tuesday, and had lost more than half its value from its all-time high.

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Then the selling stopped. Bitcoin is back near $34,000 Wednesday, an 18.5% bounce. Another 1.5 percentage points and Bitcoin will have gained 20%, which would qualify as a bull market.

Although with all the volatility, maybe typical bull and bear market designations dont apply to the cryptocurrency.

Al Root

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White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci called the Delta Covid variant the greatest threat to U.S. efforts to defeat the virus, with infections doubling about every two weeks.

Whats Next: Fauci said studies have shown that the Pfizer - BioNTech vaccine is 88% effective against the Delta variant two weeks after the second dose, and he urged Americans to get fully vaccinated to crush the outbreak.

Janet H. Cho

Investment bank Morgan Stanley told its staff on Tuesday that employees, clients, and visitors will have to prove they have been fully vaccinated before being allowed access to the firms offices in New York.

Whats Next: Morgan Stanley could follow Goldman Sachs in requiring employees to disclose their vaccine status. Such disclosure is voluntary at Morgan Stanley, as it is at JPMorgan.

Pierre Brianon

The Federal Trade Commission will review Amazon.coms planned takeover of the Hollywood studio MGM. The regulators new chair, Lina Khan, has been critical of the online retailers size and influence.

Whats Next: FTCs Khan, confirmed to the commission last week, made her name in antitrust circles by criticizing Amazon and broadly has argued that U.S. antitrust enforcement needs major changes to rein in dominant companies.

Liz Moyer

The median existing home price rose 23.6% to a record $350,300 in May, the highest year-over-year jump in at least 22 years, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. More buyers, lower borrowing rates, and fewer available homes pushed prices up.

Whats Next: Homes spent only about 17 days on the market in May, and sellers are getting multiple offers, fueled by low mortgage rates. More than half of homes sold above their list price in May, real-estate brokerage Redfin said.

Shaina Mishkin and Janet H. Cho

Peloton Interactive, once a stay-at-home darling, is shifting gears for the return to the office.

Whats Next: Some analysts have questioned whether Peloton can keep up its pandemic-fueled growth. Offering programs for large corporations could be one area for the company to attract new customers.

Connor Smith

Dear Quentin,

My fiance and I are currently in the process of planning a wedding, reassessing where wed like to buy a house. She is about to begin her 10-month unpaid internship in order to complete her Masters degree.

Throughout all of this, the biggest issue were facing is the wedding. We have been together for close to 11 years, and have been engaged for one year.

For the longest time, I thought we were on the same page---small wedding, no engagement photos, save the money, get a house, why go into marriage in debt?

As we begin to peel the layers of the onion, her thoughts have changed dramatically. She now envisions a wedding with 80-plus guests in a rented venue. She wants engagement photos. She wants to provide either plated or buffet food.

All of these things are adding up, even though we set a hard budget at $15,000, and we dont even have a quarter of that saved. I have money in stocks and I have savings, but I am strongly refusing to touch either of them for the sake of this joyous occasion.

Her parents have offered close to $10,000 to help, but I have insisted that money is better suited for a downpayment on a house when the time comes.

Im being looked at as simply someone who is unwilling to budge, and shes asked if I truly even want to get married.

How do I go about approaching this? I dont want to stonewall her at every turn. I want her to have an amazing day we remember for the rest of our lives, but shes yet to propose a plan on how we can save this money. I am beginning to feel as though shes looking at me to foot the bill almost entirely by myself.

Marriage sure does make love suck. Please tell me if Im pinching my pennies a little too tightly, or if Im right on the money.

Frustrated With Financials

Read The Moneyists response here.

Quentin Fottrell

Newsletter edited by Liz Moyer, Mary Romano, Matt Bemer, Ben Levisohn

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Bitcoin Prices Wild Ride: From Death Cross to a Near Bull Market. - Barron's

Like most economists, I have always been a Bitcoin skeptic. The question has always been, What purpose does it serve?

The idea that it would be a useful alternative currency is laughable on its face. How can you have a currency that wildly fluctuates year to year and even hour to hour? Imagine if you had a wage or rent contract written in Bitcoin. Both your pay and your rent would have more than tripled over the last year, likely leaving you unemployed and unable to pay your unaffordable rent. Economists often exaggerate the problem of inflation, but having currency that has large and unpredictable increases and decreases in value is a real problem.

So, Bitcoin may not be very useful as a currency, but maybe we can just treat it as an outlet for harmless speculation, like baseball cards or non-fungible tokens. Well, it turns out that Bitcoin is not entirely useless. It is the currency of choice for those engaging in illegal activities like dealing drugs and gunrunning, and, of course, extorting companies with ransomware. (Its value for this purpose took a major hit when the FBI was able to retrieve much of the money paid by Colonial Pipeline to the hackers who infiltrated its system. Apparently, Bitcoin transactions are not as untraceable as advertised.)

But Bitcoin cannot be dismissed as just fun and illegal games; it turns out it is also a major contributor to global warming. Bitcoin mining, the process by which new bitcoins are brought into existence, uses up an enormous amount of electricity. According to ananalysisby researchers at Cambridge, Bitcoin mining uses more energy in a year than the country of Argentina.

This means that a lot of greenhouse gases are being emitted for essentially nothing. Most greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are due to things like heating and cooling our homes, transporting our food and ourselves, and also producing our food. These are all real needs. We can find ways to emit less GHG, for example, by traveling less or switching to an electric car that will hopefully be fueled by clean energy, but these involve some sacrifice or some expense.

Doing with less Bitcoin should be easy by comparison. That is the logic of taxing Bitcoin transactions; we tax the items of which we want to see less.

First and foremost, a tax on Bitcoin transactions would raise revenue. I would propose a substantial tax on transactions of 1 percent annually. This compares to the tax 0.1 percent on stock trades that has been put forward by Representative Peter DeFazio in the House and Senator Brian Schatz in the Senate.

The reason for suggesting a higher tax on Bitcoin is that there would be little consequence for the economy if the Bitcoin market were seriously disrupted. People engaged in ransomware attacks might see somewhat more volatility in the value of their payments, and may find it slightly more difficult to change them back into traditional currencies, but otherwise there would be little economic impact.

By contrast, even with all the speculative trading on financial markets, they do still serve a productive purpose, so we would want to be cautious about imposing a tax that could be destabilizing. As it is, a tax of 1 percent is hardly without precedent. The United Kingdom currently has a tax of 0.5 percent on stock trades. It had been 1 percent until 1986. Nonetheless, the UK had one of the largest stock exchanges in the world.

Clearly, a 1 percent transactions tax on Bitcoin will not shut down the market. However, it will substantially reduce the volume of transactions. It also is likely to make the currency less attractive to anyone who doesnt need it for illicit purposes, which will reduce its value. This should mean that people will devote fewer resources to mining Bitcoin, which is a real win for the world.

There is also the issue of how much revenue a Bitcoin tax would raise. Currently,trading volume is around $1 billion a day, or $350 billion a year. A tax of 1 percent would get us $3.5 billion a year, if there were no decline in trading volume. But, of course, the whole point of the tax is to reduce trading volume and interest in Bitcoin. If we see volume cut in half, due to both less trading and a lower Bitcoin price, then we would raise $1.75 billion a year, or $17.5 billion over the course of a ten-year budget horizon.

This is not huge money in terms of the whole budget. The Center for Economic and Policy Researchs Its the Budget, Stupid budgetcalculator tells us that is would be equal to 0.03 percent of the total budget. Thats not a huge deal, but not altogether trivial. The annual take is equal to roughly 110,000 food stamp person-years.

But there is another benefit of going the Bitcoin transaction tax route. We can experiment with enforcement mechanisms with little downside risk.

It is often claimed that financial transactions taxes are unenforceable. The evidence suggests otherwise. The UK raised an amount equal to 0.2 percent of GDP annually (roughly $44 billion in the US economy) from its tax on stock trades. (Other financial assets are not subject to the tax.) There are manyother countriesin the world that raise substantial revenue from financial transactions taxes.

We also have a modest financial transactions tax in the United States already. Stock trades are subject to a tax of 0.0042 percent. The tax raises roughly $500 million annually, which is supposed to finance the operation of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Clearly, financial transactions taxes are enforceable, but there are certainly many trades that escape taxation. Evasion is likely to be an even bigger problem with Bitcoin, where many of the transactions involve illegal activity.

This is why we have a great opportunity to innovate. In addition to the other mechanisms available for enforcement, we can also offer a reward to people turning in tax evaders. We can, for example, give them 20 percent of the tax collected from their lead.

To take an example, suppose someone trades $200 million in Bitcoin. With a 1 percent tax rate, they would owe $2 million. If they chose not to pay their taxes, and an employer reported this person to the IRS, they would stand to collect $400,000, which would be a pretty payday. This sort of reward system would give workers a strong incentive to report the tax evasion of their bosses.

A tax on Bitcoin transactions would be a great place to test run this sort of incentive. Since there is little reason to care if the Bitcoin market is disrupted, there is not really a downside. If the reward system proves effective in cracking down on evasion, we have a new tool that can be applied elsewhere if we choose to tax financial transactions. We also can see any problems that might appear in this system and make the necessary adjustments so that we are better prepared to implement a financial transactions tax to larger financial markets.

In short, the Bitcoin market gives a great laboratory for experimenting with financial transactions taxes. While there is enough experience both here and elsewhere in dealing with financial transactions taxes that we can be reasonably confident that one can be implemented without great difficulty, until there is the political will to put in place a broadly based tax, we can use the Bitcoin market as a place to practice.

The rest is here:
We Need to Start Taxing Bitcoin - Jacobin magazine

The cryptocurrency aficionados mantra that Bitcoin is equivalent to digital gold is winning converts among the worlds biggest holders of the precious metal.

In India, where households own more than 25,000 tonnes of gold, investments in crypto grew from about $200 million to nearly $40 billion in the past year, according to Chainalysis. Thats despite outright hostility toward the asset class from the central bank and a proposed trading ban.

Richi Sood, a 32-year-old entrepreneur is one of those who swerved from gold to crypto. Since December, shes put in just over 1 million rupees ($13,400) some of it borrowed from her father into Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ether.

And shes been fortunate with her timing. She cashed out part of her position when Bitcoin smashed through $50,000 in February and bought back in after the recent tumble, allowing her to fund the overseas expansion of her education startup Study Mate India.

Id rather put my money in crypto than gold, Sood said. Crypto is more transparent than gold or property and returns are more in a short period of time.

Shes part of a growing number of Indians -- now totalling more than 15 million -- buying and selling digital coins. Thats catching up with the 23 million traders of these assets in the U.S. and compares with just 2.3 million in the U.K.

They find it far easier to invest in crypto than gold because the process is very simple, said Sandeep Goenka, who co-founded ZebPay and spent years representing the industry in discussions with the government on regulation. You go online, you can buy crypto, you dont have to verify it, unlike gold.

However, authorities show no signs of embracing cryptocurrencies. The nations central bank says it has major concerns about the asset class and six months ago the Indian government proposed a ban on trading in digital coins though it has been silent on the topic since.

I am flying blind, said Sood. I have a risk-taking appetite, so Im willing to take a risk of a ban.

The official hostility though means many bigger individual investors are reluctant to speak openly about their holdings. One banker Bloomberg spoke to who invested more than $1 million into crypto assets said with no clear income tax rules at present he was concerned about the possibility of retrospective tax raids if he was publicly known to be a big-ticket crypto investor.

Hes already got contingency plans in place to move his trading to an offshore Singapore bank account if a ban was to be introduced.

To be sure, the value of Indian digital asset holdings remain a sliver of its gold market. Still, the growth is clear, especially in trading -- the four biggest crypto exchanges saw daily trading jump to $102 million from $10.6 million a year ago, according to CoinGecko. The countrys $40 billion market significantly trails Chinas $161 billion, according to Chainalysis.

For now, the increasing adoption is another sign of Indians willingness to take risk within a consumer finance sector thats plagued with examples of regulatory short falls.

I think over time everyone is going to adopt it in every country, said Keneth Alvares, 22, an independent digital marketer who has invested more than $1,300 in crypto so far. Right now the whole thing is scary with regulation but it doesnt worry me because Im not planning to remove anything for now.

More here:
Bitcoin becoming the new gold as Indians pour billions into crypto - Economic Times

In 2020, the Film & TV industry experienced unprecedented growth. Amidst the global pandemic, audience demand for streaming services surged, production spending grew, and TV series budgets reached all-time highs.

The industrys growth isnt likely to slow down anytime soon and with the recent slew of media mergers, even more change is on the horizon.

What key developments in the Film & TV industry are worth paying attention to? Based on research compiled by Purely Streamonomics, heres a look at the four emerging trends that could revolutionize the industry as we know it.

As worldwide lockdown measures drove people indoors, audience demand for home entertainment surged.

Between 2019-2020, the number of global online video subscriptions increased by 26%, reaching 1.2 billion subscriptions. This growth is expected to continue in the coming yearsin fact, by 2025, subscriptions are expected to reach 1.6 billion worldwide.

In tandem with this growing audience demand, new streaming platforms are entering the market at an accelerated pace. 2020 welcomed four new subscription video on demand (SVOD) platforms: Apple TV, HBO Max, Peacock, and Disney+.

New SVOD platforms have garnered large audiences in a short amount of time. For example, Disney+ has already gained over 100 million subscribers since its launch in November 2020.

In addition to SVOD services, advertising video on demand (AVOD) platformswhich generate revenue through ads instead of subscribersare also gaining popularity. Some of these ad-funded services have built up larger audiences than their SVOD counterparts. For instance, IMDbs free platform IMDbTV has 55 million monthly active users, which is more than Hulus number of paid subscribers.

As more platforms emerge and audience demand grows, spending on content production continues to ramp up as well.

In 2020, a record-breaking $220.2 billion was spent on making and acquiring new feature films and TV programmingthats a 16.5% increase compared to production spending in 2019.

Where in the world is all this production spending coming from? Perhaps unsurprisingly, over two-thirds of global spending in 2020 came from the U.S. and Canada.

Despite Hollywoods dominance, its worth noting that smaller markets in regions such as Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East experienced significant growth in 2020.

With overall content spending at an all-time high, the independent film (indie) market is experiencing growth as well. In fact, of the billions spent on content production, over half went to indie filmmakers.

Keep in mind, this estimate includes direct spending on indie content, along with indirect funding through licensing and co-financing agreements with big studios. In other words, players like Disney and Warner Bros. still technically produce the most contenthowever, they often outsource production work to independent filmmakers, or buy the rights to indie content, to distribute on their streaming platforms.

All in all, global spending on indie content increased by 25.3% in 2020, year-over-year. And this indie growth could continue into 2021 and beyond, as distributors and streaming giants rush to fill their content pipelines that have run dry because of production challenges and delays caused by COVID-19.

As more competition enters the streaming market, producers are facing pressure to up their production value so they can keep their audiences attention. In other words, because the stakes are getting higher, the cost of production is risingespecially for TV.

In 2020, the budget for an average TV series in the U.S. was $59.6 million, a 16.5% increase year-over-year. One of the most high-cost TV shows last year was WandaVision, a Marvel Cinematic Universe series that cost Disney approximately $200 million (which breaks down to around $25 million per episode).

As series budgets rise, the line between film and TV has started to blur. For instance, characters and narratives from WandaVision will have direct ties to the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel, which gives fans an extra incentive to watch the Disney+ series.

Despite months of disruptions caused by COVID-19, the Film & TV industry showed resilience in 2020. But its only just the beginningas audience demand continues to grow, and budgets keep rising, growth has become the new normal.

This graphic is brought to you by Purely Streamonomics, a monthly newsletter that provides key insights into the global Film & TV market.

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Visualizing the Carbon Footprint of Gold and Bitcoin - Visual Capitalist