The U.S. Consumer Price Index rose faster than expected last month, with the year-over-year pace up to 3.2% versus estimates for 3.1% and January’s 3.1%, the government reported Tuesday morning. The core rate – which strips out food and energy costs – also disappointed to the upside, coming in at 3.8% against expectations of 3.7%. Source
The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for March 12, 2024. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets. Source
“Applicants should have genuine interest in developing a stablecoin issuance business in Hong Kong with a reasonable business plan, and their proposed operations under the sandbox arrangement will be conducted within a limited scope and in a risk-controllable manner,” the HKMA notice said. Source
Ether’s one-month call-put skew, an options market measure of sentiment, has turned negative, hinting at the relative richness of puts, or options used to protect against bearish price trends. The 60-day guage has also flipped in favor of put options, while the 90-day and 180-day metrics remain positive. Source
“Asset management firms asked the SEC for them to have exposure in digital assets, especially bitcoin and spot bitcoin ETFs, but we need to consider carefully whether to allow asset management firms to invest in digital assets directly due to the high risk,” said Pornanong. Source
The Nigerian government had invited the executives to discuss the current dispute with Binance. The duo had landed in Abuja on February 25, Wired reported, citing their families. After the first meeting with government officials, Gambaryan and Anjarwalla were “taken to their hotels, told to pack their things, and moved into a “guesthouse” run by Nigeria’s National Security Agency, according to their families,” the report said. Source
According to data tracked by Paris-based Kaiko, less than 2,000 millionaires, or wallets with $1 million worth of bitcoin, are created daily. That’s significantly lower than the last bull run, which bred over 4,000 millionaire wallets per day and over 2,000 wallets with a $10 million balance per day. Source
COPA, which is backed by industry heavyweights like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Coinbase and Microstrategy, filed to take Wright to court in 2021. During the trial, which began Feb. 5, COPA’s attorneys from the law firm Bird and Bird tried to prove that Wright forged evidence supporting his claim to be Nakamoto and that Wright did not have the knowledge or expertise to create bitcoin. Source
Prior to L2 inception, app founders could simply deploy on the Ethereum mainnet without needing to question the user base since users lived universally in one, singular blockchain world. Now, however, modular blockchains have introduced over time a world of unlimited architecture possibilities leading to chains becoming tailored to niche vertical interests within a single, independent state or app-specific chain. Source
The SEC has spent a considerable time in court on crypto matters, and its record of judgements is – so far – a mixed bag. It lost badly in disputes with Ripple and Grayscale (leading to the approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds), but it’s prevailed in others, including a recent ruling in an insider-trading case tied to a former Coinbase employee. In that case, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington decided the crypto assets in that matter were unregistered securities. Source