1- Market Rundown
Good Morning. The DX is up 30. Bonds are flat. Stocks are down between 30 and 60 bps. Gold is up $1.00. Silver is down 3c. Oil is down 35c. Grains are weak down between 1.3 and 2.3%. Crypto is weak after yesterday's selloff: down 40bps. Tomorrow is CPI

2-CryptoNow?

The last 5 days have seen a marked uptick in Crypto analysis. We don't know what the motivation is yet, and do not think the reports themselves moved BTC lower, but their existence is not a coincidence. Compared to Gold, which has a lot of this type behavior, BTC and ETH can be much fuzzier. Less regulation, new product, nations positioning themselves as lovers or haters…..make markets react  in ways seemingly contradictory.

Morgan Stanley Likes CBDC

Morgan Stanley wrote about CBDC for Payments last week.From Crypto is Out, CBDCs are In:

Consumers aren't widely using crypto for payments as fees are high and merchant acceptance low.

The prospect of crypto being a competitor payment network caused central banks to start work on digital currencies (CBDCs), cross border transactions and faster settlement (e.g. FedNow).

And yet CBDC uses various crypto backbones…..

Goldman Likes ETH.. But Also BTC?

Goldman came out  today (more at bottom) saying they like BTC's transactional growth, commenting the asset is more than a Store of Value now.

Bitcoin ecosystem is seeing renewed growth, signaling departure from pure 'store of value' thesis. Bitcoin blockchain settles historical transactional volume on the back of market interest in Ordinal Inscriptions. Further growth of Bitcoin as a settlement layer is expected with industry push for layer-2s