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Bitcoin’s next move, Elon Musk’s promotion, the toilet paper NFT: Hodler’s Digest, March 14–20

Coming every Saturday, Hodlers Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more a week on Cointelegraph in…

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Coming every Saturday, Hodlers Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Bullishness for Bitcoin continues despite its struggle to reclaim $60,000

Bitcoin dazzled us all last Saturday with a dramatic surge to new all-time highs at $61,683.86. But the market spent little time in record territory, with a sharp pullback taking prices to lows of $53,555.03 by Tuesday. Although BTC has recovered to some extent, it is now facing strong resistance at the $60,000 level.

CrossTower head of trading Chad Steinglass said some resistance is to be expected, and once these levels are surpassed, they become support. He added: It will take a bit of chipping away to break through $60,000 with any kind of authority.

But its worth taking a moment to reflect on Bitcoins progress. As Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michal van de Poppe notes, BTC has accelerated from $11,000 to $60,000 in just six months. He believes $60,000 is the final key resistance level before the next impulse wave toward $68,000 can happen.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, eToro CEO Yoni Assia explained that a confluence of circumstances is contributing to the current bull run, including the economic situation in the U.S. sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. Kraken growth lead Dan Held added that BTC is currently experiencing a supercycle that could propel it all the way to $1 million and described it as a one in 100-year moment.

 

 

Morgan Stanley introduces Bitcoin investing for millionaire clients

The institutional banking powerhouse Morgan Stanley caused a stir this week when reports suggested it is going to give clients access to Bitcoin investing a big nod of approval.

CNBC reported that the U.S. bank is launching access to three crypto funds but only under specific conditions. Its only open to clients who carry accredited investor status and hold more than $2 million in capital at Morgan Stanley and even then, theyll only be able to allocate 2.5% of their overall wealth to these funds.

Theres been a flurry of reaction to Bitcoin from other financial institutions this week, with Deutsche Bank saying BTCs $1-trillion market cap has made the cryptocurrency too important to ignore.

According to JPMorgan Chase, retail traders are flocking to buy BTC from mainstream fintech firms. Its data suggests that consumers have purchased more than 187,000 BTC from the likes of PayPal and Square this quarter, outpacing institutions, which have snapped up 173,000 BTC over the same period.

As youd expect, not everyone is impressed. Bank of America analyst Francisco Blanch slammed Bitcoin as exceptionally volatile, impractical and environmentally disastrous. He was especially unimpressed by how BTC can only handle 1,400 transactions per hour, while Visa can handle 236 million.

 

Coinbase registers 114.9 million shares ahead of direct Nasdaq listing

Coinbase has registered 114,850,769 shares of Class A common stock ahead of its direct listing on the Nasdaq. An updated S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suggests a volume-weighted average price per share of $343.58.

Other platforms that also offer crypto trading have also been making moves this week. On Tuesday, eToro announced that it is planning to merge with a blank check firm and go public with a valuation of $10.4 billion.

Kraken is yet to confirm whether it will follow in Coinbases footsteps, but in a statement to Cointelegraph, it ruled out using eToros approach, which involves being acquired by a company already listed on a stock exchange. We are too big to go that route, a representative told us.

Robinhood another company that has been exploring an IPO has also revealed that it is planning to expand its crypto trading service as fast as possible. But in a fireside chat on YouTube, CEO Vlad Tenev admitted it may take a few months for the company to recover from the GameStop trading saga.

 

 

Buyer of Beeples $69-million NFT on Christies discloses identity

Cointelegraph has started a brand-new series called Nifty News that offers a neat round-up of the biggest developments in NFTs. Here are a few of our favorite developments from the space this week.

MetaKovan, the mysterious bidder who acquired Beeples Everydays: The First 5000 Days piece for a cool $69.3 million, has been unmasked as Vignesh Sundaresan. Prior to founding Metapurse, he created the crypto exchange Coins-e and co-founded the crypto ATM project BitAccess.

Elsewhere, the blockchain-based sports platform Chiliz has enjoyed an extraordinary surge of late, with its altcoin surging by 1,650% in the space of two weeks a performance that puts Bitcoin and Ether to shame.

Even though one of the main selling points of NFTs lies in how they are non-divisible, projects that aim to fractionalize these tokens have been gaining steam. Owning just a portion of a piece of digital art is becoming more appealing to collectors, and it could allow NFT holders to realize some liquidity from their assets without selling the entire piece.

And last but not least, toilet paper is back in the news. The bog roll brand Charmin has created five types of nonfungible token paper accompanied by a physical display for lucky owners. An auction has been taking place on Rarible, with all proceeds going to charity.

 

 

Technoking and master of coin Elon Musk and Tesla CFO adopt new titles

Forget Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been promoted. According to a new SEC filing, the billionaire should now be referred to as Technoking of Tesla.

His chief financial officer, Zach Kirkhorn, has also been given a promotion to Master of Coin. Both men are going to retain their respective positions.

Musk has reason to celebrate, with figures suggesting that Tesla has been sitting on close to $19 million in unrealized profit per day since announcing its $1.5-billion Bitcoin purchase. This almost eclipses the $721 million in profit it made from selling 500,000 cars in 2020.

The billionaire also waded into the trendy world of nonfungible tokens this week when he announced he was planning to sell a musical NFT, with lyrics based on the hype surrounding the technology Its verified, its guaranteed. Very catchy.

Despite bids exceeding $1.1 million on the Valuables platform, Musk later took his ball home, tweeting: Actually, doesnt feel quite right selling this. Will pass.

What a shame.

 

Winners and Losers

 

 

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $59,206.87, Ether at $1,845.28 and XRP at $0.49. The total market cap is at $1,830,431,252,324.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Harmony, BitTorrent and Siacoin. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Chiliz, SwissBorg and Voyager Token.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraphs market analysis.

 

 

Most Memorable Quotations

NFT art is so hard to explain because it doesnt make sense.

John Carvalho, former Bitrefill chief communications officer

 

Bitcoin has also become correlated to risk assets, it is not tied to inflation, and remains exceptionally volatile, making it impractical as a store of wealth or payments mechanism.

Francisco Blanch, Bank of America analyst

 

Sometimes a better bathroom experience goes beyond the seat, thats why were rolling out the first-ever NFT art by a toilet paper brand.

Charmin

 

If Kraken would decide to go public, it would do so through a direct listing and not through a SPAC as we are too big to go that route.

Kraken

 

Collectors who are buying NFTs with their cryptocurrency gains could face large tax bills this year for deals that most probably thought were tax free.

Robert Frank, CNBC

 

Now, with the Reddit-fueled meme stock craze cooling and novelties such as digital artwork setting records, retail traders some now armed with $1,400 stimulus checks are taking control.

Ed Moya, Oanda Corp senior market analyst

 

Bitcoin is the preferred investment choice among check recipients.

Mizuho Securities

 

Effective as of March 15, 2021, the titles of Elon Musk and Zach Kirkhorn have changed to Technoking of Tesla and Master of Coin, respectively.

Tesla

 

Prediction of the Week

$288,000 by December? Bitcoin will not stop at $100,000, says stock-to-flow creator

PlanB has doubled down on his stock-to-flow Bitcoin price model once again, arguing that Bitcoin has plenty of room to grow in its current bull run and will not stop at $100,000.

Many investors have been curious about where the 2021 bull run may end. Depending on the price indicator used, the peak could be uncomfortably near or still far off. But for followers of stock-to-flow, the answer remains firmly the latter: Compared with previous bull cycles, 2021 is just getting started.

PlanB says December is a realistic deadline for BTC to hit $288,000 and says Bitcoins price is following his model like clockwork. He added that this forecast is just an average, meaning the peak of this cycle could be double those figures or even more.

We are only 3.5 months into the Bitcoin bull market, he wrote.

 

FUD of the Week

 

Phishing attack uses PancakeSwap and Cream domains to steal money

Two decentralized finance projects were targeted by a DNS spoofing attack on Monday.

Cream Finance and PancakeSwap, both deployed on Binance Smart Chain, were affected by the phishing incident.

In Creams case, a fake window loaded where users were asked to input their private key. There are almost no occasions when a user should input their seed phrase into a browser app, especially not when interacting with DeFi.

Both websites appear to be registered through GoDaddy. One possible explanation is that the teams accounts on the provider were hijacked, allowing the attacker to officially change the DNS routing point for the domains.

Each project stressed that funds were safe as long as users didnt type in their private keys, and both managed to later regain control of their websites.

 

Arthur Hayes seeks voluntary surrender in Hawaii court with $10 million bail

Lawyers negotiating on behalf of Arthur Hayes, who is one of the four BitMEX executives accused of violating the Bank Secrecy Act, have finalized the terms of his proposed voluntary surrender to a Hawaii court on April 6.

The proposed bail conditions, which are subject to the courts approval, stipulate that Hayes, who has lived in Singapore since January 2020, would potentially be released on a $10-million personal recognizance bond, secured by $1 million in cash and co-signed by his mother.

Further proposed conditions include Hayes retention of a passport for travel between Singapore and the U.S. and his execution of a waiver of extradition in a form that would be mutually agreed upon by the government and Hayes defense.

 

Judge denies XRP Army a seat at the table in SEC v. Ripple case

A judge has denied a motion filed over the weekend on behalf of more than 6,000 XRP holders, who were attempting to insert themselves as third-party defendants in the SECs case against Ripple.

The motion to intervene argued that the interests of tokenholders in this case, the XRP Army were not being adequately represented in the lawsuit against Ripple and its executives.

Lawyer John Deaton had claimed that XRP holders had suffered $15 billion in losses following the SECs announcement of its lawsuit against Ripple, which caused the altcoin to crash.

U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres denied the motion without prejudice, meaning that lawyers representing XRP investors may be able to refile in the future.

 

Best Cointelegraph Features

 

Not just for gamers and fanboys: Why investors should take NFTs seriously

Some people are making a mint out of NFTs, and almost everyone can try their luck and experience the emerging niche.

Unpopular opinion? The problem with blockchain gaming is blockchain

Predicting the direction of Bitcoins price is not gonna cut it with the worlds 2.7 billion gamers.

Stocks of Bitcoin: JPMorgan offers BTC exposure, an ETF in sheeps clothing

JPMorgan bunched proxy crypto stocks to give skeptical investors exposure to the crypto economy.

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Government

Supreme Court Rules Public Officials May Block Their Constituents On Social Media

Supreme Court Rules Public Officials May Block Their Constituents On Social Media

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis…

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Supreme Court Rules Public Officials May Block Their Constituents On Social Media

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Public officials may block people on social media in certain situations, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on March 15.

People leave the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Feb. 21, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

At the same time, the court held that public officials who post about topics pertaining to their work on their personal social media accounts are acting on behalf of the government. But such officials can be found liable for violating the First Amendment only when they have been properly authorized by the government to communicate on its behalf.

The case is important because nowadays public officials routinely reach out to voters through social media on the same pages where they discuss personal matters unrelated to government business.

When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the nation’s highest court.

The case is separate from but brings to mind a lawsuit that several individuals previously filed against former President Donald Trump after he blocked them from accessing his social media account on Twitter, which was later renamed X. The Supreme Court dismissed that case, Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute, in April 2021 as moot because President Trump had already left office.

At the time of the ruling, the then-Twitter had banned President Trump. When Elon Musk took over the company he reversed that policy.

The new decision in Lindke v. Freed was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Respondent James Freed, the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan, used a public Facebook account to communicate with his constituents. Petitioner Kevin Lindke, a resident of Port Huron, criticized the municipality’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including accusations of hypocrisy by local officials.

Mr. Freed blocked Mr. Lindke and others and removed their comments, according to Mr. Lindke’s petition.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled for Mr. Freed, finding that he was acting only in a personal capacity and that his activities did not constitute governmental action.

Mr. Freed’s attorney, Victoria Ferres, said during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Oct. 31, 2023, that her client didn’t give up his rights when using social media.

This country’s 21 million government employees should have the right to talk publicly about their jobs on personal social media accounts like their private-sector counterparts.”

The position advocated by the other side would unfairly punish government officials, and “will result in uncertainty and self-censorship for this country’s government employees despite this Court repeatedly finding that government employees do not lose their rights merely by virtue of public employment,” she said.

In Lindke v. Freed, the Supreme Court found that a public official who prevents a person from comments on the official’s social media pages engages in governmental action under Section 1983 only if the official had “actual authority” to speak on the government’s behalf on a specific matter and if the official claimed to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social media posts.

Section 1983 refers to Title 42, U.S. Code, Section 1983, which allows people to sue government actors for deprivation of civil rights.

Justice Barrett wrote that according to the so-called state action doctrine, the test for “actual authority” must be “rooted in written law or longstanding custom to speak for the State.”

“That authority must extend to speech of the sort that caused the alleged rights deprivation. If the plaintiff cannot make this threshold showing of authority, he cannot establish state action.”

“For social-media activity to constitute state action, an official must not only have state authority—he must also purport to use it,” the justice continued.

State officials have a choice about the capacity in which they choose to speak.

Citing previous precedent, Justice Barrett wrote that generally a public employee claiming to speak on behalf of the government acts with state authority when he speaks “in his official capacity or” when he uses his speech to carry out “his responsibilities pursuant to state law.”

“If the public employee does not use his speech in furtherance of his official responsibilities, he is speaking in his own voice.”

The Supreme Court remanded the case to the 6th Circuit with instructions to vacate its judgment and ordered it to conduct “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

Also on March 15, the Supreme Court ruled on O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, a related case. The court’s sparse, unanimous opinion was unsigned.

Petitioners Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff and T.J. Zane were two elected members of the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees in California who used their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts to communicate with the public.

Respondents Christopher Garnier and Kimberly Garnier, parents of local students, “spammed Petitioners’ posts and tweets with repetitive comments and replies” so the school board members blocked the respondents from the accounts, according to the petition filed by Ms. O’Connor-Ratcliff and Mr. Zane.

But the Garniers said they were acting in good faith.

“The Garniers left comments exposing financial mismanagement by the former superintendent as well as incidents of racism,” the couple said in a brief.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit found in favor of the Garniers, holding that elected officials using social media accounts were participating in a public forum.

The Supreme Court ruled in a three-page opinion that because the 9th Circuit deviated from the standard the high court articulated in Lindke v. Freed, the 9th Circuit’s decision must be vacated.

The case was remanded to the 9th Circuit “for further proceedings consistent with our opinion” in the Lindke case, the Supreme Court stated.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/17/2024 - 22:10

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International

Home buyers must now navigate higher mortgage rates and prices

Rates under 4% came and went during the Covid pandemic, but home prices soared. Here’s what buyers and sellers face as the housing season ramps up.

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Springtime is spreading across the country. You can see it as daffodil, camellia, tulip and other blossoms start to emerge. 

You can also see it in the increasing number of for sale signs popping up in front of homes, along with the painting, gardening and general sprucing up as buyers get ready to sell. 

Which leads to two questions: 

  • How is the real estate market this spring? 
  • Where are mortgage rates? 

What buyers and sellers face

The housing market is bedeviled with supply shortages, high prices and slow sales.

Mortgage rates are still high and may limit what a buyer can offer and a seller can expect.  

Related: Analyst warns that a TikTok ban could lead to major trouble for Apple, Big Tech

And there's a factor not expected that may affect the sales process. Fixed commission rates on home sales are going away in July.

Reports this week and in a week will make the situation clearer for buyers and sellers. 

The reports are:

  • Housing starts from the U.S. Commerce Department due Tuesday. The consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted rate of about 1.4 million homes. These would include apartments, both rentals and condominiums. 
  • Existing home sales, due Thursday from the National Association of Realtors. The consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted sales rate of about 4 million homes. In 2023, some 4.1 million homes were sold, the worst sales rate since 1995. 
  • New-home sales and prices, due Monday from the Commerce Department. Analysts are expecting a sales rate of 661,000 homes (including condos), up 1.5% from a year ago.

Here is what buyers and sellers need to know about the situation. 

Mortgage rates will stay above 5% 

That's what most analysts believe. Right now, the rate on a 30-year mortgage is between 6.7% and 7%. 

Rates peaked at 8% in October after the Federal Reserve signaled it was done raising interest rates.

The Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey of March 14 was at 6.74%. 

Freddie Mac buys mortgages from lenders and sells securities to investors. The effect is to replenish lenders' cash levels to make more loans. 

A hotter-than-expected Producer Price Index released that day has pushed quotes to 7% or higher, according to data from Mortgage News Daily, which tracks mortgage markets.

Home buyers must navigate higher mortgage rates and prices this spring.

TheStreet

On a median-priced home (price: $380,000) and a 20% down payment, that means a principal and interest rate payment of $2,022. The payment  does not include taxes and insurance.

Last fall when the 30-year rate hit 8%, the payment would have been $2,230. 

In 2021, the average rate was 2.96%, which translated into a payment of $1,275. 

Short of a depression, that's a rate that won't happen in most of our lifetimes. 

Most economists believe current rates will fall to around 6.3% by the end of the year, maybe lower, depending on how many times the Federal Reserve cuts rates this year. 

If 6%, the payment on our median-priced home is $1,823.

But under 5%, absent a nasty recession, fuhgettaboutit.

Supply will be tight, keeping prices up

Two factors are affecting the supply of homes for sale in just about every market.

First: Homeowners who had been able to land a mortgage at 2.96% are very reluctant to sell because they would then have to find a home they could afford with, probably, a higher-cost mortgage.

More economic news:

Second, the combination of high prices and high mortgage rates are freezing out thousands of potential buyers, especially those looking for homes in lower price ranges.

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal noted that online brokerage Redfin said only about 20% of homes for sale in February were affordable for the typical household.

And here mortgage rates can play one last nasty trick. If rates fall, that means a buyer can afford to pay more. Sellers and their real-estate agents know this too, and may ask for a higher price. 

Covid's last laugh: An inflation surge

Mortgage rates jumped to 8% or higher because since 2022 the Federal Reserve has been fighting to knock inflation down to 2% a year. Raising interest rates was the ammunition to battle rising prices.

In June 2022, the consumer price index was 9.1% higher than a year earlier. 

The causes of the worst inflation since the 1970s were: 

  • Covid-19 pandemic, which caused the global economy to shut down in 2020. When Covid ebbed and people got back to living their lives, getting global supply chains back to normal operation proved difficult. 
  • Oil prices jumped to record levels because of the recovery from the pandemic recovery and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

What the changes in commissions means

The long-standing practice of paying real-estate agents will be retired this summer, after the National Association of Realtors settled a long and bitter legal fight.

No longer will the seller necessarily pay 6% of the sale price to split between buyer and seller agents.

Both sellers and buyers will have to negotiate separately the services agents have charged for 100 years or more. These include pre-screening properties, writing sales contracts, and the like. The change will continue a trend of adding costs and complications to the process of buying or selling a home.

Already, interest rates are a complication. In addition, homeowners insurance has become very pricey, especially in communities vulnerable to hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. Florida homeowners have seen premiums jump more than 102% in the last three years. A policy now costs three times more than the national average.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

 

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Uncategorized

Default: San Francisco Four Seasons Hotel Investors $3 Million Late On Loan As Foreclosure Looms

Default: San Francisco Four Seasons Hotel Investors $3 Million Late On Loan As Foreclosure Looms

Westbrook Partners, which acquired the San…

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Default: San Francisco Four Seasons Hotel Investors $3 Million Late On Loan As Foreclosure Looms

Westbrook Partners, which acquired the San Francisco Four Seasons luxury hotel building, has been served a notice of default, as the developer has failed to make its monthly loan payment since December, and is currently behind by more than $3 million, the San Francisco Business Times reports.

Westbrook, which acquired the property at 345 California Center in 2019, has 90 days to bring their account current with its lender or face foreclosure.

Related

As SF Gate notes, downtown San Francisco hotel investors have had a terrible few years - with interest rates higher than their pre-pandemic levels, and local tourism continuing to suffer thanks to the city's legendary mismanagement that has resulted in overlapping drug, crime, and homelessness crises (which SF Gate characterizes as "a negative media narrative).

Last summer, the owner of San Francisco’s Hilton Union Square and Parc 55 hotels abandoned its loan in the first major default. Industry insiders speculate that loan defaults like this may become more common given the difficult period for investors.

At a visitor impact summit in August, a senior director of hospitality analytics for the CoStar Group reported that there are 22 active commercial mortgage-backed securities loans for hotels in San Francisco maturing in the next two years. Of these hotel loans, 17 are on CoStar’s “watchlist,” as they are at a higher risk of default, the analyst said. -SF Gate

The 155-room Four Seasons San Francisco at Embarcadero currenly occupies the top 11 floors of the iconic skyscrper. After slow renovations, the hotel officially reopened in the summer of 2021.

"Regarding the landscape of the hotel community in San Francisco, the short term is a challenging situation due to high interest rates, fewer guests compared to pre-pandemic and the relatively high costs attached with doing business here," Alex Bastian, President and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, told SFGATE.

Heightened Risks

In January, the owner of the Hilton Financial District at 750 Kearny St. - Portsmouth Square's affiliate Justice Operating Company - defaulted on the property, which had a $97 million loan on the 544-room hotel taken out in 2013. The company says it proposed a loan modification agreement which was under review by the servicer, LNR Partners.

Meanwhile last year Park Hotels & Resorts gave up ownership of two properties, Parc 55 and Hilton Union Square - which were transferred to a receiver that assumed management.

In the third quarter of 2023, the most recent data available, the Hilton Financial District reported $11.1 million in revenue, down from $12.3 million from the third quarter of 2022. The hotel had a net operating loss of $1.56 million in the most recent third quarter.

Occupancy fell to 88% with an average daily rate of $218 in the third quarter compared with 94% and $230 in the same period of 2022. -SF Chronicle

According to the Chronicle, San Francisco's 2024 convention calendar is lighter than it was last year - in part due to key events leaving the city for cheaper, less crime-ridden places like Las Vegas

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/17/2024 - 18:05

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