tl;dr

I might not like it, but cryptos are becoming a political dividing line. To the surprise of some, and delight to the rest of us, the EU reinforces its mantle as the global leader in fighting for liberty and freedom.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Open interest and perpetual futures funding rates continue to climb in response to a report by Fox News that the “SEC is holding ‘rare’ conference call today with ALL spot Bitcoin ETF applicants” followed by reports in response to this meeting that all applicants have been told to remove references to “in-kind redemptions” replace them with “Cash creates only”. If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s a technical issue that means that the ETFs will be less efficient in tracking BTC and increase transaction costs for investors. Well done the SEC.

In the round this is good news and confirms that spot BTC ETFs are very close now. But that approval will not be today.

Make no mistake, this funding rate is way out of whack. The natural volatility of cryptos raises a strong possibility that a small sell-off will lead to a cascade of liquidations. A sub-40k price would not be a surprise in the next few days. If you are long BTC on a leveraged basis, be more careful than usual.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary — Warrens’ anti-crypto army

It is unfortunate that in the US support for, and antagonism towards, cryptos is split along party pollical lines, as graphically demonstrated below when looking at the key members and supporters of Warren’s anti-crypto army:

This illiberal bias amongst much of the Democratic Party is very sad to behold. It is a dereliction of its original aims and purposes.

On the upside, US citizens have a ballot box choice as to whether to support liberalism or not if that is an issue of concern to you. Here in the UK — with the notable exceptions of Natalie Elphicke and Lisa Cameron — most of our lawmakers show at best antipathy towards cryptos, or at worst downright disdain of cryptos. I guess this is because our MPs reflect a public mood that survey after survey suggests that most people were not only happy with…