Chain News Daily Today TheBitTimes.com

1. U.S. Government Authorized to Liquidate $6.5 Billion in Silk Road Bitcoin link The U.S. government has received approval to liquidate 69,000 Bitcoins (valued at $6.5 billion) seized from the “Silk Road” darknet market, a government official confirmed to DB News on Thursday. This development comes less than two weeks after a new administration took office, despite their earlier promise not to sell the Bitcoin. On December 30, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) could sell the 69,370 Bitcoins, citing the cryptocurrency’s price volatility as a reason for granting the sale authorization. When asked about the next steps, a DOJ spokesperson stated, “The government will proceed with actions in accordance with the court’s decision.” 2. U.S. December ADP Employment Report: 122,000 vs. Expected 140,000 link In December, the U.S. ADP employment change registered 122,000, falling short of the expected 140,000 and the prior value of 146,000. Initial jobless claims for the ...

The crypto market plunged 4% amid concerns that strong US economic data might slow the pace of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cuts in the US. The Institute for Supply Management’s December PMI jumped to 54.1 from November’s 52.1, and November’s JOLTS report showed more job openings than had been expected. Investors are now adjusting their outlook for rate cuts, seeing less than a 50% chance for such moves before June. Cryptos fell across the board with AI memes and meme coins among the worst hit segments after plunging 13% and 4%, respectively, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin tumbled 1.6% to trade at $93,578 at 7.31 a.m. EST. US stocks were also hit, with big names such as Nvidia and Tesla plunging 6.2% and 3%, respectively. US stocks tumbled after upbeat economic data raised concerns that an inflation rebound could slow down the Federal Reserve's pace of monetary policy easing https://t.co/UbdwV849f2 pic.twitter.com/iRbTfDLRWf — Reuters Bus...

An Uptober bull run seems to have started early, driven by a surge across AI cryptos, meme coins, and major tokens like Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH) after the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates by 50 basis points on Sept. 18. AI cryptos soared more than 8% in the last 24 hours, while the meme coin sector surged 7%, according to CoinGecko. At the same time, layer-1 tokens SOL and ETH climbed 8% and 5%, respectively, signaling growing momentum across the crypto market. Altogether, the crypto market cap climbed 2.7% to $2.21 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. Easing Monetary Policy Gives Uptober Bull Run An Early Start The surge in prices across the crypto market follows the Federal Reserve Bank’s first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday. In 2022, interest rates were bumped up to a 23-year high as a result of surging inflation triggered by supply chain bottlenecks caused by the Covid pandemic and Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Investors subs...

Evolve Bank and Trust has agreed to a cease-and-desist order with the Federal Reserve after it “found that Evolve engaged in unsafe and unsound banking practices” surrounding some of its fintech partnerships. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve found that Evolve did not have “controls sufficient to comply with anti-money laundering laws.”  Evolve has been thr US t into the Banking ind US try spotlight recently as many fintech US ers have had their accounts frozen due to the failure of Synapse Financial Technologies, the middleman that connected Evolve to these vario US fintechs.  The problem has grown in complexity as the ledgers of Synapse and Evolve, and even some of the fintechs like Yotta, disagree on how much money is meant to be in certain accounts . Evolve has been an important bank for the crypto ecosystem, serving as the card issuer for BlockFi’s credit cards and providing checking accounts and debit cards for FTX customers. The recent examine...

Bitcoin spot exchange trading volumes have disintegrated since March, while BTC price action has gone barely anywhere, research shows. Bitcoin (BTC) exchange s have seen trading volume collapse as traders deal with constant macroeconomic uncertainty. According to new research from on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant published on Sept. 25, daily BTC volumes are at lows rarely seen since 2018. Fed keeps Bitcoin investors wary of “possible recession” Bitcoin price action has stayed in a familiar range for several months, and as time goes by, interest in transacting appears to be fading. CryptoQuant data, which tracks activity on both spot and derivatives exchange s, highlights the extent to which volume s have decreased since BTC/USD entered its current range in March. The past week saw between 8,000 and 15,000 daily spot exchange transactions — a fraction of the standard March daily tally, which exceeded 600,000. For contributing analyst Caue Oliveira, a principal force behind th...

Join us as we discuss the current U.S. debt ceiling crisis and what it means for Bitcoin and the crypto market. In this week’s episode of Market Talks, Cointelegraph welcomes Mike McGlone, senior macro strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, which delivers in-depth analysis and data sets on industries and companies, government, credit, litigation and economic factors. In today’s discussion with McGlone, we discuss the concerns around the current debt ceiling battle currently taking place in America’s law-making houses. Will the United States default for the first time in its history, or will lawmakers reach an agreement before time runs out? Whatever happens with the debt ceiling, is it a lose-lose situation for Bitcoin, crypto and other risk assets? Especially since the Federal Reserve might pause rate hikes and with inflation tapering off. We ask McGlone to explain why that is. We get McGlone’s views on de-dollarization as some countries reduce their reliance on the U.S. dollar and se...