GDP

Data from the United States commerce department suggests America has entered a technical recession, but market analysts have highlighted key metrics that suggest investors are optimistic. The American economy shrunk for the second consecutive quarter, according to government data released on Thursday, fitting the criteria for a technical recession. The Biden Administration maintains that the U.S. is not in a recession, highlighting low unemployment rates and other metrics that counter the argument. Mati Greenspan, founder & CEO of Quantum Economics, addressed the topic in his latest QE newsletter, noting a paradoxical effect between the GDP drop and a surge in stocks and other risk assets. He attributed this move to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates by 0.75%, which saw cryptocurrency markets outperform stocks, with Ethere (ETH) surging 5% immediately after the announcement. Related: Bitcoin bull run ‘getting interesting’ as BTC price hits 6-week high Greenspa..

Bitcoin (BTC) sought to pin $24,000 as support before the July 29 Wall Street open as fresh inflation data sparked worries for the euro. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingViewEurozone inflation estimate shows no peakData from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD maintaining most of its latest gains after spiking to nearly $24,500 overnight. The day’s macro action delivered painful news for the European Economic Area (EEA), as the latest estimates for euro inflation came in at 8.9% for July — still climbing from June’s 8.6%. “Looking at the main components of euro area inflation, energy is expected to have the highest annual rate in July (39.7%, compared with 42.0% in June), followed by food, alcohol & tobacco (9.8%, compared with 8.9% in June), non-energy industrial goods (4.5%, compared with 4.3% in June) and services (3.7%, compared with 3.4% in June),” an accompanying report compiled by Eurostat read. The data provided a curious contrast in ..

After failing to go live last month, the Cardano Vasil hard fork is delayed again as teams behind the Cardano blockchain development target a smooth network upgrade. Input Output Global (IOG), the organization responsible for Cardano’s research and development, released a YouTube update on Thursday on the upcoming Vasil hard fork. IOG technical manager Kevin Hammond announced that the Vasil hard fork will be postponed one more time to ensure that all parties, including exchanges and API developers, are “all ready for that.” Hammond said: “Obviously, from where we are, there could be a few more weeks before we go to the actual Vasil hard fork [...] This is incredibly important. All the users must be ready to progress through the hard fork to ensure a smooth process.”Hammond pointed out that IOG has been focused on solving some testnet issues, progressing with the Cardano node version 1.35.2. The new node version fixes issues related to stake pool operators, decentralized application (DA..

The governance discussion intensifies as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) become more popular in the blockchain space. The dilemma between giving power to a specific few and the freedom to voluntarily delegate decision power was highlighted in a Twitter thread created by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. In a tweet, Buterin brought up an old adage pointing out that power-hungry individuals are not suitable to lead. The Ethereum founder highlighted that the saying can be applied to DAOs and argued that transferable governance tokens in DAOs contradict the whole point of DAOs. Buterin noted that if governance can be transferred, it enables those who are after power. While the Ethereum founder presents a valid point, some reacted with contrasting opinions. In a reply, Twitter user Muki pointed out that it’s inevitable to delegate decision power. According to the community member, expecting everyone to participate is impossible, and a voluntary delegation of decision power i..

Bitcoin (BTC) delivered a swift six-week high into July 29 as the aftermath of the latest macro developments boosted risk assets. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingViewMonthly close could seal 20% gainsData from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView captured local highs of $24,445 for BTC/USD on Bitstamp, its best since the week beginning June 13. After consolidating around $23,000, bulls got a second wind to propel the market higher on the back of the United States Federal Reserve’s latest rake hikes and GDP data confirming that the U.S. was now in a recession. Risk assets outperformed across the board, with Bitcoin and altcoins joining gold in giving traders and analysts cause for positivity on the outlook. “This is getting interesting,” on-chain monitoring resource Material Indicators tweeted in an update on its short and long signal thread for the daily BTC/USD chart on June 28. It eyed the potential for Bitcoin to make a higher high (HH) next: “All Tren..

According to Senator Pat Tomey, famous for his vocal support for the crypto industry, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could have prevented the loss of $12 billion in assets by investors who trusted Celsius, a crypto lending platform, that froze their deposits in June. An official letter from Toomey to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, dated by July 26, suggested that the Commission’s inability to clarify how it would apply existing securities laws to digital assets and services drew undesirable repercussions. As Toomey writes: “Companies could have adjusted product offerings accordingly, preventing investor losses today, and the SEC would have been free to focus enforcement efforts on the worst actors.”According to Toomey, the SEC didn’t properly explain how the Howey and Reves tests applied to crypto lending platform products that paid interest to customers making crypto deposits. Instead, he emphasized, the SEC is choosing to regulate by selective enforcement. T..

Legal marriage proceedings, court case disputes and government services may one day be offered on the Metaverse, according to a Singaporean government minister. Speaking at the TechLaw Fest 2022 on July 20, Singapore’s Second Minister for Law Edwin Tong argued even highly personalized, intimate events such as the solemnization of marriages have taken place online in the Metaverse: “It would not be unthinkable that, besides registration of marriages, other government services can soon be accessed online via the Metaverse.”On the subject of legal services in the Metaverse, the Minister added that there is “no reason why the same cannot be done for legal services.” “The pandemic has already shown us that even dispute resolution — once seen to be a physical, high-touch process [...] can also be held almost entirely online.” Tong gave the example that a legal dispute involving an accident on a construction site for example could be viewed in three dimensions via a “single virtual platform”..

Professional English soccer team Crawley Town F.C. have followed through on a community vote by fans and nonfungible token (NFT) holders who were recently given a voice on what type of player the team should recruit next. The vote, which took place on June 15 and was the first team decision opened up to fans, took place for verified NFTs hodlers via a temporary Discord channel. Votes were also taken from nearly 1,000 season ticket holders. Speaking with the Daily Mail on Thursday, Crawley Town co-owner and former ESPN gambling analyst Preston Johnson emphasized the significance of being able to offer fans a stake in the club via NFTs: “A lot of NFT projects are just speculation with no real tangible spine, no real true story. Having a football club to root for every week? That’s a spine that people attach themselves to.”“If we can bring that to this crypto audience, especially if we’re able to actually achieve promotion and move up the ranks of the English football league, then it’s..

Crypto lender Voyager Digital has been directed to remove “false and misleading” statements that its user’s deposit accounts are FDIC insured. In a joint letter written on Thursday by Seth Rosebrock and Jason Gonzalez, assistant general counsel at the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to Voyager Digital, the authors said the representations “likely misled and were relied upon” by customers who placed funds with Voyager who now no longer have access to it: “These representations are false and misleading and, based on the information we have to date, it appears that the representations likely misled and were relied upon by customers who placed their funds with Voyager and do not have immediate access to their funds.”The Fed and FDIC allege that Voyager “made various representations online, including its website, mobile app, and social media accounts” which suggested it was: “(1) Voyager itself is FDIC-insured; (2) customers who invested with the Voyage..

Celsius depositors should be on the lookout for phishing scams after the company revealed some of its customer data had been leaked in a third-party data breach. On Tuesday, Celsius sent an email to its customers informing them that a list of their emails had been leaked by an employee of one of its business data management and messaging vendors. According to Celsius, the breach came from an engineer at the Customer.io messaging platform, who leaked the data to a third-party bad actor. “We were recently informed by our vendor Customer.io that one of their employees accessed a list of Celsius client email addresses,” said Celsius in its email to customers. The data breach is part of the same incursion that leaked OpenSea customer email addresses in June. Celsius has, however, played down the incident stating that it did not “present any high risks to our clients,” adding that they just wanted users to “be aware.” On July 7, Customer.io wrote in a blog post that “We know this was a re..