Note: This issue of internal reference has a total of about 2,300 words, and the main contents include: macro intelligence, micro-strategy has increased its position in L0 airdrop controversy, BTC difficulty reduction, ETH ETF, white hat theft, etc.
/1. Thursday, a false climax. The unexpected number of US initial jobless claims briefly ignited the market's dream of monetary easing. However, the strong dollar soon shattered this dream. BTC once rushed to 66.5k during the day, but immediately fell back to the 64-65k range.
Another not-so-good news is that USDT failed to continue and expand its positive premium. After a brief turn from negative to positive, it fell back to 7.29 today, the same as USD/CNH 7.29.
The US dollar index continued to be strong, approaching 105.5. Gold also rose slightly to $2350+.
Traders are digesting a series of economic data from the United States and reassessing the outlook for monetary policy. The number of initial jobless claims in the United States for the week ending June 15 was 238,000, compared with expectations of 235,000 and the previous value of 242,000. The number of initial jobless claims was slightly higher than expected and still close to a ten-month high.
In addition, housing starts and building permits fell to about four-year lows, and the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index unexpectedly fell. Currently, the probability of the Fed cutting interest rates in September is about 66%, the probability of cutting interest rates in November is 78%, and the probability of cutting interest rates in December is 95%.
Data on Tuesday showed U.S. retail sales barely rose, pointing to cooling consumer sentiment. That, combined with recent labor market and price data showing easing pressures, prompted the Federal Reserve to seek further confirmation of cooling inflation before a possible rate cut at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee on Tuesday called the latest reading on consumer price inflation "very good" and expressed optimism that inflation will cool further this year.
Federal Reserve Chairman Kashkari said it might take one or two years for the inflation rate to fall back to 2%. Inflation cannot return to 2% at present, and the interest rate outlook depends on the economic path.
/2. MicroStrategy has increased its holdings again.
MicroStrategy reportedly purchased 11,931 BTC between April 27 and June 19 at an average price of $65,883, worth approximately $786 million.
As of June 20, 2024, MicroStrategy holds 226,331 BTC, with an average holding price of US$36,798 per BTC, with a total value of approximately US$8.33 billion.
This guy is such a big eater.
In addition, Jiaolian said at a private board meeting just held in June that the BTC hoarded by MicroStrategy is not permanently locked. Although it promised that it would not sell, it also said that it would lend BTC to hedge funds to make profits. What can hedge funds do with BTC? Of course, it is to short sell :)
There is another piece of news. MicroStrategy has just completed the issuance of $800 million convertible notes with a face rate of 2.25% and a conversion premium of 35%.
The initial purchasers exercised in full on June 17, 2024, and the additional purchases were completed on June 18, 2024.
It has raised a large amount of money to increase its BTC holdings or to cover the debt of the previous BTC holdings.
In short, MicroStrategy is now a routine: borrow and borrow US dollars, buy and buy BTC. It is betting that in a few years, the US dollar will definitely fall a lot relative to BTC. In this way, the US dollar debt will shrink, while the BTC assets will expand. As one increases, the other decreases, and its asset-liability gap will become larger and larger.
/3.LayerZero (a popular second-layer) recently introduced "mandatory donation" to receive airdrops, which is indeed a bit too much.
The LayerZero Foundation announced a new claiming mechanism called Proof-of-Donation, which will result in approximately $18.5 million being donated to the Protocol Guild.
Specifically, to claim ZRO, users must donate USDC at a price of $0.10 per ZRO.
USDT or native ETH. This small donation goes directly to the Protocol Guild. The LayerZero Foundation will match all donations, capped at $10 million.
Yearn core developer banteg tweeted angrily, saying that mandatory donations are more like a glorified ICO.
You are right, this is a disguised form of showing off.
The developer also called for an end to wholesale funding for the Protocol Guild, as it has been so successful in attracting funding.
/4.BTC mining difficulty was adjusted at block height 848,736, with the difficulty reduced by 0.05% to 83.68T.
Battle reports may deceive, but battle lines will not.
This wave of cleansing has indeed created considerable pressure on the miners after the halving, and it seems that some inefficient miners have been eliminated.
According to Cointelegraph, the number of BTC held by BTC miners has fallen to its lowest level in 14 years. As of June 19, miners' reserves fell to 1.9 million BTC, compared with 1.95 million BTC at the beginning of the year.
The pressure brought by the halving affects miners' profit margins, and miners will gradually reduce their holdings of BTC, making them more likely to sell their reserves.
Usually, before a bull market, miners need to be pressured to sell off their new and old chips at low prices as much as possible. This way, when the market rises in the future, miners will not take too much advantage of the secondary market, thus achieving macro-level fairness.
/5.QCP Capital analysts said that despite the
There is uncertainty surrounding the acceptance of ETH spot ETFs, but if 10-20% of BTC ETF flows can be captured, it could push ETH above $4,000.
Well, after capturing such a large amount of traffic, it only broke through 4,000? It’s still less than the high before 2021.
Does the capital market really have little hope for ETH?
/6. Cointelegraph reported that an anonymous person claiming to be a "security researcher" discovered a serious security vulnerability on the Kraken platform and alerted Kraken on June 9. However, this guy used two related accounts to exploit the vulnerability and withdraw digital assets worth more than $3 million!
This is no longer a white hat hacker, this is outright theft or extortion.
There are also reports that the anonymous hacker is a researcher from the security auditing agency CertiK, but CertiK denied it.
Now it feels a bit like Rashomon.
The difference between a white hat and a black hat is often just a matter of thought.
