Disclaimer: The following publication will review current market sentiment and activity using data from various analytical sources. Points made within this article are my thoughts and opinions and are in no way financial advice.
Today’s Topics
- Important Upcoming Dates That You Need to Know
- Binance Liquidating Over Half a Billion Dollars in FTT
- Google Validating the Solana Network
Important Upcoming Dates That You Need to Know
This week will be a busy one for the crypto and macro markets, as three key events are happening this week that will likely cause some volatility across various markets.
Nov 8th – Congressional Elections
The ever-so-entertaining 2022 midterm elections will happen tomorrow, November 8th, with 35 Seats in the Senate and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives up for grabs. Currently, the Democrats have control of the Houe, and the Republicans the Senate. Projections for both will likely make themselves known sometime tomorrow via early vote counts and polling, so keep an eye out for that.
It’s common for any primary political election to cause short-term market volatility, so that factor should be no surprise. Also, the months following mid-term elections traditionally perform very well. However, this mid-term is a little different as recession fears, whether you think we are in one or about to be in one, have grown exponentially over the last few months. Cryptocurrencies across the board have taken a hit leading into this week, but we’ll get into the real reason for that in the next topic.
Nov 10th – CPI Report
Whether you believe it to be overrated or not, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report is always something to keep your eyes on based purely on how much it affects market movement in the week before and after release. The CPI report is scheduled to come out this Thursday, November 10th, at 8:30 AM ET, with a projected m/m of 0.6% and a y/y projection of 8.0%.
On the day of last month’s CPI report on October 13th, Bitcoin saw a drop of around 4.6%, followed by a pump of approximately 10%, all intra-day. With the number of crazy events happening this week, it would be wise to prepare for volatility in either direction.
November 11th – Consumer Sentiment Report
The Consumer Sentiment Report is a significant economic indicator measuring consumer spending confidence. This report is essential because the market activity is at its highest when consumers are financially confident, AKA they are okay with throwing money at degen plays for significant gains and buying things they don’t need (joking, kind of). This directly affects markets like crypto, as any risk-on investment gets hit the hardest in times of low consumer spending confidence.
Binance Liquidating Over Half a Billion Dollars in FTT
Over the last 24 hours, industry leaders FTX and Binance have been involved in some spicy drama that has grabbed the attention of everyone in the crypto space. For context, Binance received $2.1 billion worth of BUSD and FTT as part of its exit from FTX equity last year. Yesterday morning, CZ, CEO of Binance, put out the following tweet announcing that Binance will be liquidating all FTT on their books that they received from the deal due to “recent revelations that have come to light.”
As you would expect from such a heavy statement, the FTT token dropped by 13% in a single hourly candle, followed by a handful of cryptos, as fear of FTX being insolvent started spreading like wildfire. This caused a ripple effect throughout the crypto market, as insolvency from an industry giant such as FTX would end any hope of upwards price action for years to come.
For reference, the following is the price action of top-ten cryptos immediately after the CZ tweet I shared above.
- Bitcoin: -3.1%
- Ethereum: -4.8%
- Binance: -7.4%
- Dogecoin: -10%
- Cardano: -6.2%
- Solana: -13.3%
Although Binance will be liquidating the remaining FTT from its books, they are kind enough not to do it all simultaneously, as CZ expressed that completing this task will likely take months due to current market conditions. What a nice guy. However, with that said, he sure is off to a hot start, as he confirmed a recent move of 22,999,999 FTT, $584,818,174, to a Binance wallet as part of the first batch of liquidations. Remember, the entire chunk of change will not be liquidated at once and will likely sell as bite-sized pieces for months to come.
However, this is not the end of FTX just yet! In the heat of battle, FTX CEO SBF fought back against accusations of FTX being near insolvency and released the following statement, “FTX is fine. Assets are fine.” We’re saved, Hurrah!
In all seriousness, FTX is one of, if not the biggest centralized exchange in the US and is heavily regulated. As far as insolvency goes, I doubt anything near that caliber will come of this situation. From the looks of it, the root of this conflict stemmed from FTX supposedly lobbying against Binance on the low, which fueled the fire of the insolvency rumors.
Google Validating the Solana Network
As far as blockchain integration in Web2 is concerned, Ethereum and Polygon are the two leaders, in my opinion, with Polygon being used by companies such as Reddit, Starbucks, Jp Morgan, etc., and Ethereum…well, is Ethereum.
However, with that said, Google has decided to explore other avenues, as they announced they would be participating in and validating the Solana network.
When the announcement went live, Solana $SOL saw an almost instant increase of around 12.5% but was sadly brought back to earth following the CZ tweet we discussed in the previous topic.
In addition to the validator announcement, Google also announced two other developments involving the integration of the Solana network:
- (1) they would be working on integrating Solana into the “Blockchain Node Engine,” a fully managed node-hosting service to minimize the need for constant maintenance of self-managed nodes.
- (2) Google Cloud will begin indexing Solana data and bringing it to BigQuery, an enterprise data analytics platform, next year to make it easier for Solana developers to access historical data.
According to the article linked above, Ethereum will be the first chain supported by the Blockchain Node Engine service, meaning that Solana will likely be the second. Therefore, regarding blockchain integration amongst major Web2 companies, Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana are the three chains that are getting the most action, at least recently. Although other Layer ones, such as Cardano, Polkadot, and Avalanche, are popular in the crypto community, they are falling behind in mainstream attention/adoption. However, competition is a rising tide that lifts all boats!
