I'm not sure that means that crypto is back, though.
If the above were a chart of an index of large-cap tokens — or maybe even just Ethereum — it might be a solid indication that we're all the way back.
But Bitcoin is not an index of crypto (in some ways, it's an anti-index) and it's rallying mostly on the prospect of boomers going gaga for a spot ETF, which wouldn't do much for anything other than Bitcoin (and Coinbase as the custodian).
BTC isn't the only thing that's rallied (SOL, LINK, and MKR are the other big ones) and it could well be that renewed excitement in Bitcoin will have a halo effect for the rest of crypto. But it's too early to say.
The real measure of a new bull market won't be the prices of familiar tokens going up — it will be new tokens attracting new money — that hasn't happened in a while.
There is, for example, an "IDO" (initial DEX offering) happening today in Cypher, a new decentralized exchange on Solana — it's sold all of 15 million tokens at 1 cent each.
It's still nice to see (IDOs are a genuine crypto innovation), but it won't be a bull market until we have one of those every day, selling 10x as many tokens at 10x the price.
A chart technical breakout in bitcoin on the prospect of boomer inflows might be the first sign that it could happen, but we're not there just yet.
Q: Is the ETF the only reason Bitcoin is going up?
Not the only reason, no.
It seems like institutional acceptance is growing, independent of the ETF — Larry Fink's comment that bitcoin is benefiting from a "flight to quality" felt like a significant change in TradFi sentiment.
Bitcoin has been going up while stocks have been going down, which revives the original selling point of being an uncorrelated asset.
Most recently, it's gone up while bonds have gone down — surprising as it's usually Treasuries that get a safe-haven bid from dicey geopolitics.
Some fees are being paid (not a lot, but some) and there appears to be more developer activity, which offers hope that the fee model will suffice to pay for security long-term.
A larger portion of mining is being done with renewable energy, giving it a better story to tell on emissions — and miners themselves are looking more sustainable as businesses.
Finally, Lindynes is up: The chart above is proof Bitcoin has officially survived another bear market, which makes it more likely it will survive subsequent ones, too.
Also, all of this has occurred in a period where real rates are unusually high — you'd normally expect that to be kryptonite for zero-yielding Bitcoin.
So, whatever you think of Bitcoin, you should be thinking a bit more of it than you did as recently as a few months ago.
Q: Is Sam going to talk his way out of it?
That appears to be Bankman-Fried's final hope, but he didn't get a chance today as the judge dismissed the jury before he took the stand.
They didn't miss much: So far, he seems to be invoking the "advice of counsel" defense — which is to say, he's attempting to throw his lawyer, Dan Friedberg, under the bus:
"Dan Friedberg gave me papers to sign and I did."
That was his response to a question about incorporating North Dimension, but it could also serve as a fair summary of his last-ditch defense strategy.
It's worth a try as lawyers are pretty unpopular — but crypto is more unpopular and SBF was the face of crypto for non-crypto people, which everyone on the jury is.
Q: Do I need to watch Ruin?
Only if today is the first time you've ever heard of SBF.
Ruin on Bloomberg TV has got about ten minutes of information packed into two hours of overly stylized, herky-jerky, MTV-style, would-be docudrama.
(Most of the interviews happen in moving cars like an episode of James Cordon's Carpool Karaoke.)
There are a few good lines, though: One VC is quoted saying that explaining to SBF why he wouldn't invest in FTX was "like trying to explain business ethics 101 to a baby."
Most appropriately, SBF is quoted saying that his lawyers "don't understand the broader context of the world," which seems like the epigraph he should write for himself.
Q: Will the WSJ retract its Hamas financing story?
They should.
The Wall Street Journal cited Elliptic as a source for their story claiming Hamas had raised over $100 million in crypto, but Elliptic itself looked at the same data and reached the exact opposite conclusion: "There is no evidence to support the assertion that Hamas has received significant volumes of crypto donations."
Pretty embarrassing, really, but the author of the WSJ piece is defending his reporting on Twitter, so it does not sound as if there's a retraction coming (not that it matters, no one reads the retractions anyway).
But if any of your crypto-skeptic, Journal-reading family asks about it at Thanksgiving, you can refer them here and here.
Crypto remains the worst money to steal — until we get fully anonymous, zero-knowledge proof-blockchains.
I'm not sure what happens then.
(Maybe I'll check the astrology charts.)
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