Forex Signals Brief January 9: Disinflation in China Shows Consumer Strain

Posted on January 9, 2025January 9, 2025 by Skerdian Meta

Today the main event was the negative Chinese inflation for December, which showed again that the Chinese consumer is in difficulty despite the measures taken by Chinese authorities.

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U.S. Government Gets Greenlight Selling Bitcoin

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

The U.S. government finally received approval in the Northern District of California to liquidate the largest federal seizure in cryptocurrency history after a protracted four-year legal battle over billions of Bitcoin linked to the notorious Silk Road marketplace.

District Judge Richard Seeborg rejected a motion to prevent the forfeiture of 69,370 Bitcoin, allowing the Department of Justice to sell the $6.25 billion held.

Judge Seeborg has a reputation for handling significant cases. Recently, he dismissed claims that Alphabet’s Google disclosed user activity tracking sufficiently. In August, the tech giant may now go on trial.

The decision by itself does not ensure instant liquidation since federal asset forfeiture entails numerous administrative procedures and possible appeal windows,

The Department of Justice has sold some of the confiscated Bitcoin. The federal government transferred nearly $2 billion worth of Bitcoin tied to Silk Roa via Coinbase on December 3, 2024. The government and Coinbase Prime have a custody agreement through the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), a DOJ division.

The Justice Department has faced numerous legal challenges, including appeals to the Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit, before finally examining the Bitcoin stash from Satoshi’s time.

Several claimants, including Battle Born Investments, who had contested ownership rights through bankruptcy proceedings involving a person they thought was the original owner, ended their challenges with this ruling.

A Freedom of Information Act request to identify “Individual X,” the enigmatic person who turned over the Bitcoin to authorities in 2020, was the deciding factor in the final draw.

Ethereum Foundation Dumps 100 ETH Amid Market Correction

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

The Ethereum Foundation has concluded its first Ethereum (ETH) sale of the year amid recent market correction. The nonprofit organization sold 100 ETH for 329,463 DAI yesterday.

Arkham Intelligence’s on-chain data showed the foundation held over $900 million in ETH. The company sold 4,466 ETH in 2024 for $12.61 million at an average price of $2,823 per unit. Notably, these sales frequently took place before notable declines in the market.

Ethereum’s outlook Bearish

Ethereum’s value has dropped sharply in tandem with this most recent sale. The digital asset fell by more than 10% on the day, from $3,640 to as low as $3,250, before marginally rising to $3,347 at the time of writing.

A possible move toward a support zone around $3,061 is suggested by the price breaking down from a rising trendline close to a resistance zone. According to fundamentals, there is growing selling pressure, which supports this pessimistic outlook. The foundation is selling Ethereum to cover its running costs and to finance further research and development in the Ethereum ecosystem.

The foundation does not simply sit back and watch its money grow. It aggressively decides to put money into Ethereum’s ecosystem, placing a wager that this blockchain will endure. Sumiko restated it.

Do Kwon Criminal Trial Starts January 2026

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

Do Kwon, a brazen cryptocurrency entrepreneur and co-founder of the $40 billion failed Terra blockchain, will stand trial before a U.S. judge next year. Kwon’s criminal trial will start on January 26, 2026, according to a decision made Wednesday by federal judge Paul Engelmayer.

He has one week to ask for an earlier trial because he and his lawyer did not fully discuss the possible trial date.

In his Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday, the judge stated that he had never presided over a case in which the arraignment and trial were separated by more than a year.

The judge added, however, that he had never heard a case that required the long pause as much as Kwon’s, pointing to the “daunting” volume of evidence that prosecutors and defense lawyers had to contend with. Kwon was arrested in March 2023 after a six-month manhunt while trying to board a flight with a forged passport, according to authorities, and prosecutors in both nations sought his extradition. Kwon entered a not-guilty plea to nine fraud charges last week.

In a canary-yellow jumpsuit on Wednesday, prosecutor Jared Lenow informed the judge that Kwon had planned “a massive, highly sophisticated fraud.”. “He wasn’t just pushing a coin,” Lenow claimed, but “a utopian system” comprised a payment system, savings bank, and stablecoin that their users allegedly ran.

Prosecutors claim that the “core systems” did not work as promised. According to Lenow, Kwon had to step in and “create the illusion” that an ecosystem that was supposed to be self-regulating was functioning because “behind the scenes, it didn’t work.”.

According to Kwon’s defense lawyer, former federal prosecutor Michael Ferrara, there was a legitimate product and refuted claims that Kwon intended to defraud investors.

The Department of Justice states that Kwon faces a maximum sentence of 130 years in prison if found guilty of all charges.

Forex Signals Brief January 8: US Employment and FOMC Minutes

Posted on January 8, 2025January 7, 2025 by Skerdian Meta

Yesterday we saw a negative reversal in risk sentient after Trump’s comments, helping the USD, while today the US employment and FOMC minutes might send the USD even higher.

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Bitcoin, XRP, Solana, Ethereum Crash Burns 236,512 Traders

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

Bitcoin’s brief sojourn above $100,000 ended when the asset dipped below $96K on Tuesday afternoon.

The pioneer crypto asset failed to continue its run and began to lose value gradually, as was to be expected. The altcoins suffered even more, with XRP, Solana, Ethereum, and Doge all seeing significant price drops.

Bitcoin rose as high as $102,000 on Tuesday but tabled turned amid high demand for the haven currency. The main cryptocurrency has since dropped to $95900 on Binance, losing more than $5,000 in a few hours.

Coinglass data showed that 236,512 traders were liquidated for the day, the total liquidations came in at $693.07 million. The largest single liquidation order happened on Binance – ETHUSDT worth $17.74 million

Ethereum is struggling below the crucial support-turned-resistance level of $3,350 and has dropped 10% daily. SOL and XRP have dropped by comparable percentages to less than $195 and $2.3, respectively.

The strong U.S. economic data had crypto traders rolling back their bullish expectations in 2025. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ JOLTS job openings for November easily exceeded analyst projections for a drop to 7.7 million, as they unexpectedly increased to 8.1 million from 7.8 million the previous month.

Concurrently released, the ISM Services Purchasing Managers Index, a monthly indicator of the degree of economic activity in the services sector, showed a December reading of 54.1, exceeding forecasts of 53.3 and well ahead of November’s 52.1. The Prices Paid subindex came in hot at 64.4 as opposed to the anticipated 57.5 and 58.2 for the previous month,.

Ripple Forms Alliance With Chainlink To Boost RLUSD Adoption

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

Ripple partnered strategically with Chainlink to increase the adoption of its RLUSD stablecoin in decentralized finance.

Chainlink and the blockchain-based payment protocol Ripple have announced a strategic alliance to increase the use and acceptance of Ripple USD (RLUSD), the company’s enterprise-grade stablecoin.

The partnership announced on January 7, will present Chainlink’s decentralized RLUSD price feeds on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. The integration will strengthen the stablecoin’s position in DeFi by offering real-time, tamper-proof market data, guaranteeing dependability, and reducing the risks of price manipulation and outages. RLUSD is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar to enable safe and economical transactions across payments, trading, lending, and other DeFi applications.

Chainlink and Ripple’s integration gives developers access to precise and consistent pricing information, enabling them to create more dependable and resilient decentralized applications (dApps) with the stablecoin.

Colin Cunningham, Chainlink Labs’ Head of Tokenization and Alliances, was upbeat about the partnership, saying the team is thrilled to support the RLUSD launch and that the integration “is a great signal for the market.”.

RLUSD connects conventional financial systems with decentralized technologies, embodying Ripple’s vision for blockchain-based finance. The stablecoin’s integration with Chainlink is anticipated to address common issues in DeFi, such as erratic market data by guaranteeing smooth data flow across its decentralized nodes.

The collaboration with Chainlink puts Ripple in a position to hasten the uptake of RLUSD by enabling developers to incorporate the stablecoin into a range of financial services. Cunningham asserts that Ripple’s role as a leader in the blockchain sector is demonstrated by its resilience in the face of market turbulence and regulatory obstacles.

U.S. Government Confirms 1 Million People Lost To TerraUSD/Luna

Posted on January 8, 2025January 8, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

Prosecutors filed criminal charges against Do Kwon, co-founder of Terraform Labs, stating the collapse of the cryptocurrencies TerraUSD/Luna involved over a million people and organizations.

Acting Attorney Daniel Gitner disclosed the estimate in a filing to the U.S. District Court for New York’s Southern District on January 6. He acknowledged that it is difficult to pinpoint the precise number of people impacted by Kwon’s actions amid Terraform’s systemic influence in the space.

The government estimates that there are more than hundreds of thousands of victims in this case, possibly amounting to over a million.

The document described the steps that were to be taken to educate victims about their rights under the Justice for All Act of 2004. The government has proposed setting up a public website to inform victims of case developments since it was impossible to notify each affected individual.

According to the prosecution, Kwon deceived investors by portraying his company as a decentralized financial ecosystem with cutting-edge technologies such as its stock market, savings bank, payment system, and currency.

He was accused of concealing his team’s control by false claims that the Terra ecosystem functioned independently through user governance and blockchain technology. Kwon’s system was based on “lies” and “manipulative and deceptive” tactics, according to the filing, and when the TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies crashed in May 2022, investor losses topped $40 billion.

Bank of America Uses Ripple’s XRP

Posted on January 7, 2025January 8, 2025 by Olumide Adesina

Bank of America uses XRP for “100 percent of its internal transactions. Sound Planning Group CEO David Stryzewski made the statement on FOX Business.

Stryzewski asserted that Bank of America had filed 83 patents about the blockchain technology underlying Ripple, incorporating XRP into its regular business operations. As a result, he voiced his optimism about XRP, emphasizing that it would be a crucial tool in the financial industry.

He highlighted in the FOX Business segment “XRP is going to be the track that everything runs on in the future.”. Additionally, he supported his optimistic assessment of XRP by pointing out that, despite regulatory obstacles, Ripple is making headway in the payment market.

He pointed to Ripple’s recent stablecoin launch as an action that improves its standing in the payment industry.

Bank of America is a member of RippleNet, the company’s global payments network, and sits on its Governance Committee, according to Ripple’s official website. Leading international financial institutions make up this committee, which collaborates to create and uphold standards for international cross-border transactions.

Companies like Standard Chartered, Santander, and Nium are among the other members. Furthermore, Bank of America submitted a patent application in 2017 for a settlement system that uses a “Ripple” distributed ledger.

the system aimed to enable real-time settlements and promote interbank communication using decentralized ledger technology (DLT), which allows both banks to validate transactions.

Forex Signals Brief January 7: Can A Jump in Eurozone Inflation Help the Euro?

Posted on January 7, 2025January 6, 2025 by Skerdian Meta

Today we have the US services and JOLTS jobs figures, but the highlight will likely be the Eurozone CPI inflation which is expected to jump in December.

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