Summarising weekly developments: 1T, Macro, TradFi, Crypto and much more...
Happy Friday One Traders!
We hope you’ve had a great week! If you're not already, connect with us on our community channels Discord and Telegram for more regular updates.
We are very excited to soon be announcing the launch of our next generation trading platform F.A.S.T. This upgrade makes One Trading the fastest crypto-asset trading venue worldwide - Over 1500x faster than our last exchange and over 100x faster than the largest trading venues.
This is based on data provided independently by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Read our blog written in cooperation with AWS to learn about the advanced co-location technology.
Now let’s have a look at what’s been going on in the world over the last week.
Let’s have a look back at 2023…
General Macro News
Beat from the street…(Tech/Business/Finance/Economy)
Elon Musk plans to turn X into a financial super-app , handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, saying: “When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life… If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like sending $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.” Musk wants to beat PayPal with the PayPal playbook he wrote two decades ago.” (The Verge).
Fidelity estimates X's value has plummeted 71% since Musk's $44 billion purchase in late 2022, revealing a steep decline for the social media giant (Fox Business).
Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant is now available on Androids (Engadget).
The NY Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement, claiming it to be the first major U.S. media organization taking legal action against the tech giants (Reuters).
Chinese tech company Baidu (BIDU) has announced its ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence (AI) product, Ernie bot, has surpassed 100 Million users (CNBC).
Walmart has followed Costco in selling Gold bars to retail (Radar via X).
TradFi pulse:
“The U.S. federal government's total public debt has reached $34 trillion for the first time, the U.S. Treasury Department reported on Tuesday as members of Congress gear up for another series of federal funding battles in coming weeks. The Daily Treasury Statement for Friday showed that the total public debt outstanding rose to $34.001 trillion from $33.911 on Thursday. The debt that counts toward the federal debt ceiling rose to $33.89 trillion on Friday from $33.794 trillion on Thursday” (Reuters).
China & Saudi Arabia have ditched the U.S. dollar to sign a 50bn Yuan currency swap for trade. This allows China to start buying oil outside of the US controlled financial system (Fin Watch).
Iran and Russia have also finalized a deal to trade in local currencies, switching from the US Dollar (Fin Watch).
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Iran are officially members of BRICS. They join Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as a formidable economic powerhouse, representing 29% of global GDP and 43% of global oil production. Although tensions exist between member states such as China and India, BRICS is a growing challenge to the G7. President Xi: “I wish to extend a warm welcome to leaders of new BRICS members.” Source: IMF, Reuters, China Daily (X).
Commercial Real Estate will suffer a $480 billion wipeout in the U.S. in the new year warns Capital Economics (Yahoo Finance).
M2 is contracting at the deepest levels since 1960. The M2 money supply is a crucial indicator of economic activity representing the total amount of money in circulation. Including cash, checking and savings deposits, and other types of deposits that are readily convertible to cash. As the M2 money supply expands, it indicates increased liquidity and potential for economic growth. Conversely, a decline in M2 signals tightening liquidity and potential economic slowdown. Currently, M2 is contracting at -3.3%, its first contraction in 60+ years (Game of Trades).
Crypto News
Top Gainers of 2023. Discover the best performing projects of the year (CryptoRank):
In 2023, the crypto market cap soared from $840 billion in Jan to $1.6 trillion by December, rebounding from the Nov 2022 low caused by FTX's bankruptcy fallout (The Block Pro):
The final week of 2023 saw $243m of inflows into digital asset ETPs, bringing 2023 total flows to US$2.2bn (James Butterfill/Coinshares):
Monthly cryptocurrency exchange trading volume hit $1.1 trillion in December 2022. Crypto exchange trading volume hadn’t exceeded $1 trillion on a monthly basis since September 2022. December’s rise in volume was likely spurred by the anticipation of spot bitcoin ETFs gaining approval, according to The Block’s research director (The Block).
South Korea's Financial Regulations Chief is to meet SEC Chairman Gensler this month (CoinDesk).
Hong Kong has proposed mandatory licenses for Stablecoin Issuers (FSTB).
Worldcoin has launched in Singapore after pausing in India (The Block).
New crypto tax reporting obligations took effect on Jan 1 in the U.S. The rules state that if you receive $10k or more in crypto you now have an obligation to report the transaction (including names, addresses, SS numbers, etc.) to the IRS within 15-days under threat of a felony charge (Crypto Trading Reports).
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared the Ethereum roadmap for 2024, outlining the project's continued focus on six main components (CMC).
The Nigerian central bank has lifted the ban on crypto trading (Reuters).
Bitcoin Updates
Bitcoin notably rose over 125% YTD, with a general upswing in most cryptocurrencies since the start of the year (The Block Pro).
It was a new all-time high for Bitcoin miners revenue in December at $320 million (Bitcoin Telegram).
BTC: Bitcoin ended the year on a 4-month green streak (i.e. it had positive monthly returns in September, October, November, and December). That’s the good news. The bad news is… the last few times this happened (in 2015 and 2016), Bitcoin followed it up with a red January (Milk Road).
The Chief Strategy Officer of the Human Right Foundation highlights how Bitcoin has been the best performing asset of the last years: "Truly amazing that the only asset on this list that can be sent between people in minutes anywhere on earth, beyond the control of governments and corporations, no ID or bank required, is the one that has also performed the best." (Alex Gladstein via X).
So far in January, Bitcoin’s price has spiked 8% above $45,800 earlier this week resulting in over $73 million in short liquidations (The Block).
Off the back of a speculative article by Matrixport that the SEC may reject all upcoming ETF applications the market has seen over $1billion in liquidations (Crypto Patel).
While many have been expecting announcements of the long-anticipated Bitcoin Spot ETFs as early as January 2nd, Fox Business journalists are saying the SEC is “swamped with paperwork” so asset managers likely won’t hear back from them until the decision deadline on Jan. 10. (Elanor Terrett via X).
In the short term, people are speculating that ETF approvals will unlock trillions of dollars in institutional money, pushing Bitcoin’s price up. In the long term, people are hoping it will have the same success as Gold ETFs. (TL;DR - Gold went on an 8-year bull run, hit a new all-time high, and briefly became the world’s biggest ETF) (Milk Road):
We will keep a close eye on what happens and report all the latest updates in our newsletter next week.
We have seen a continuation of the positive sentiment this week with a 4.62% move up to 68 from 65 last week.
Trading Highlights of The Year (at time of writing as per CoinGecko)
Top 5 Gainers and Losers (out of the top 100 by market cap only) - as always, this is not financial advice, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
For those who may not be aware, Jim Cramer is famous for making predictions, whereby the opposite happens. Jim gave a bullish statement on Bitcoin earlier this week which was followed by the Bitcoin fall within 24-hours.
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This material is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of the future nor a reliable indicator of the likely performance of any investment. Recipients should consult their own advisors before making these types of decisions. One Trading has no responsibility or liability for any decision made or any other acts or omissions in connection with Recipient’s use of this material.
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