First Mover: Bitcoin Investors the Sane Ones as Federal Reserve Cheers Inflation, Price Nears $11K

ALSO: BZx recovers from exploit, Tether moves $1B off Tron

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Sept. 15, 2020 Sponsored by  By the CoinDesk Markets Team Edited by Bradley Keoun If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.  TODAY: Bitcoin (BTC) +1.7% $10,859 | Ether (ETH) unch $377 (@11:12 am UTC) Price Point: Bitcoin surged over the past two days, breaking out of a range where it had been stuck for two weeks.  Market Moves: As Federal Reserve pursues topsy-turvy policy of pushing for inflation, Pantera's Dan Morehead's inverted gold-price chart looks sane.   Bitcoin Watch: CoinDesk's Omkar Godbole eyes $11,000 as new resistance level, writing that indicators look bullish following range breakouts. What's Hot: BZx recovers from exploit, Tether moves $1B off Tron, Bitmain's Wu regains control, Thailand sells $1.6B of blockchain bonds. PRICE POINT Bitcoin was higher in early trading, after surging 3.3% Monday to break out of the past two weeks' range between $10,000 and $10,500. As of 11 a.m. coordinated universal time (7 a.m. in New York), bitcoin was changing hands around $10,800, and analysts were eyeing the $11,000 mark for signs of a fresh breakout. "At this point, we will ascertain if this rally has legs, or if it is just expanding our range," Diginex's trading head Matt Blom told clients in an email. In traditional markets, U.S. futures advanced and the dollar weakened versus the euro; gold strengthened. MARKET MOVES One of the interesting things about cryptocurrency investors is that they really do look at the world very differently from many of their counterparts in traditional finance.  The thinking goes something like this: The efforts of governments and central banks to repair the economy are doomed to fail, and likely to make the situation worse. There is no point in moving to a defensive investment strategy, because prices for digital assets are going to the moon. Every time the stock market goes up, it just validates the reality that the dollar is being debased by trillions of dollars of central-bank money printing.  The latest turn-logic-on-its-head zinger came Monday from Dan Morehead, a former Wall Street trader and hedge-fund executive who now heads the cryptocurrency-focused investment firm Pantera Capital in the San Francisco area.  In a monthly letter, Morehead was discussing how central banks typically succeed when they pointedly attempt to increase inflation, as the Federal Reserve is now pursuing as an official policy. He cited Venezuela and Zimbabwe as two prior success stories, as it were.    Morehead then pivoted to the argument that asset prices "are not rising because stock fundamentals have improved," but because "a huge wave of money is being printed." "Gold is at a 5,000-year high," Morehead wrote. "Or, said another way, paper money is at an all-time low."  Gold prices in dollars an ounce, inverted scale. (TradingView) It's that counterintuitive, "put another way" perspective that can sometimes seem refreshing, partly because the crypto investor keeps getting proven right. Audiences on both Wall Street and broader society are now becoming more receptive to the idea that the traditional financial system and economy are both unsustainable and unfair. The Federal Reserve's top monetary-officials meet this week to discuss their next steps for healing the economy, which at this point appears to consist of doing nothing for the next several years until inflation rises above the central bank's historic 2% target and stays above that level for a while. As reported by First Mover Monday, it's possible the Fed's next move would come if the stock market takes a fresh dive, prompting the central bank to step in and pump more money into the economy to keep markets functioning smoothly. Jeff Dorman, another former Wall Street veteran who's now chief investment officer of the cryptocurrency-focused investment Arca Funds in Los Angeles, wrote Monday in his weekly column that Congress, which has been gridlocked over a new coronavirus-related stimulus package, might also be prone to a similar do-nothing-until-you-have-to dynamic.           He has written in the past that "it would likely take an equity temper tantrum before Congress acts," and he wrote this week that "Methinks Congress will be acting soon." "Moral hazard never left, but it's definitely back," according to Dorman.  What tips the scales toward the crypto investors being the sane ones, and not the other way around, is that market signals are currently validating the crypto investment thesis. Bill Gross, the legendary former Pimco bond-fund manager, is encouraging investors to get defensive because "there is little money to be made almost anywhere in the world," CNBC reported Monday.  Tell that to Morehead of Pantera, whose Digital Asset Fund has returned 168% so far this year, according to the letter.   Morehead says bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are winning because they have a relatively fixed supply, similar to gold, and "improved usage/fundamentals," similar to tech stocks like Amazon and Netflix.  Just compare the following chart of year-to-date asset-class performance from Pantera: To this one from Goldman Sachs (off by a few days so the percentages are a touch different):   One includes crypto, and goes up to 244%; the other doesn't include crypto, and it goes up to 29%. So far this year, based on the track record so far anyway, it turns out that the smart money was in crypto.  SPONSORED BY BITSTAMP Since 2011, Bitstamp has earned the trust of over four million traders and top financial institutions looking for a safe, reliable cryptocurrency platform. Bitstamp gives you the premium tools, security and support to achieve your goals: Nasdaq trading technology: Cutting-edge Nasdaq matching engine delivers unmatched trading speed and efficiency in all market conditions. Advanced Tradeview: Our powerful trading interface offers advanced order types, live charting and an array of analytical tools. Available on web and mobile. Industry-leading APIs: Our FIX, HTTP and WebSocket APIs are consistently rated as the fastest and most stable by institutional and professional crypto traders. Institutional-grade asset security: BitGo custody with 98% of customer assets in cold storage, protected by BitGo’s insurance coverage. Personal service with a human touch: When you contact Bitstamp you always speak with a human, not a bot. Visit Bitstamp.net or Download the Bitstamp app to start trading today! Learn More BITCOIN WATCH Bitcoin daily chart (source: TradingView.com) ​​​​​​ Bitcoin looks north, having breached a 10-day-long sideways trend with a move above $10,500 on Monday.  Bullish developments on key technical indicators back the range breakout. For instance, the 14-day relative strength index has violated a descending trendline, signaling an end of the price pullback from the August high of $12,476.  Further, the MACD histogram, an indicator used to gauge trend strength and trend changes, has crossed above zero, indicating a bullish reversal.  As such, resistance levels at $11,000 and $11,200 could soon come into play. That said, the cryptocurrency remains vulnerable to a potential sell-off in equity markets, according to analysts.  "Previous sell-offs have been exacerbated by risk-off momentum in stocks, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq index," Matthew Dibb, co-founder and COO of Stack Fund, told CoinDesk in a WhatsApp chat. "We remain cautiously bullish this week." Read More: Analyst ‘Cautiously Bullish’ on Bitcoin but Says Equity Sell-Off Still a Threat   – Omkar Godbole   TOKEN WATCH BZx (BZRX): DeFi lending project recovers $8M of cryptocurrency from attacker who exploited code bug.  Aave (LEND), Yearn.Finance (YFI), Compound (COMP), Synthetix (SNX), MakerDAO (MKR), REN (REN), Kyber Network (KNC), Loopring (LRC), Balancer (BAL), Augur (REP): New 10-token DeFi Pulse Index provides way for traders to "get exposure to DeFi without having to go and buy every token individually."   Tether (USDT), Tron (TRX), Ethereum (ETH): Tether moves 1B of its dollar-linked USDT stablecoins to Ethereum blockchain from Tron.    How to Value Bitcoin: On-Chain Transactions In this 30-minute webinar of our four-part How to Value Bitcoin series, we look at on-chain transactions, a concept that sounds familiar but involves novelties and complexities that are critical to understanding how bitcoin works. On Sept. 15 at 10:30 a.m. ET, Glassnode CTO Rafael Schulze-Kraft and CoinDesk Research will walk through the structure of a Bitcoin transaction and how transaction data determines velocity, transaction count and value transferred. Register to join How to Value Bitcoin: On-Chain Transactions. WHAT'S HOT Bitcoin mining-computer-maker Bitmain enters new chapter of fight between co-founders as Jihan Wu gains upper hand (CoinDesk) As Swiss firms SEBA, Sygnum and Bitcoin Suisse explore development of a digital franc, "interoperability" becomes new buzzword (CoinDesk) Thailand uses blockchain-enabled platform to sell $1.6B of government savings bonds (CoinDesk) Peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange Paxful exits Venezuela, citing "increasingly strict" regulations (CoinDesk) Bitcoin blockchain consumes as much electricity as the Czech Republic, more than Switzerland, Kuwait or Algeria (Decrypt) Japanese cryptocurrency exchange sues Binance, alleging it helped to launder some of funds stolen in $60M hack in 2018 (CoinDesk)   ANALOGS The latest on the economy and traditional finance Volume of single-stock options trading tops volume of regular shares for first time (WSJ) Taxi medallion lender forgives $70M of debt that soured as lockdowns shut down New York City (WSJ)  Economists warn of US ‘wasteland’ without stimulus deal with bipartisan support (Financial Times) Proposal to put government ministers on Bank of Indonesia board after $27B bond-buying binge could portend new era of erosion in central-bank independence (Nikkei Asian Review) Indian shares rise after inflation data; small, mid-caps extend gains (Reuters) CoinDesk Live: Internet 2030 CoinDesk’s “Internet 2030” series will examine the future of the medium and what role blockchain and crypto will play in it with content and conversations on the future of the decentralized web.  The series, which features CoinDesk Live conversations on Sept. 15-16, coincides with the planned launch of the long-anticipated Filecoin mainnet, the native token for the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol. We’ll hear from Juan Benet and the Filecoin team about why peer-to-peer web storage infrastructure is critical to a free and decentralized future, and explore the array of use cases available. Watch Day 1: Interplanetary: Filecoin Goes Live on Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. ET on YouTube, LinkedIn or Twitter. Read more here. TWEET OF THE DAY CoinDesk 20 Update: OXT In, BAT Out The CoinDesk 20 has made its first change since launching in July: Orchid (OXT), issued by Orchid Labs Inc., developer of virtual private network (VPN) software designed to be decentralized and open source, has replaced the basic attention token (BAT) issued by Brave Software Inc., developer of the Brave browser.  First rolled out two months ago, the CoinDesk 20 is a list of the digital assets that matter most to the market. We filter by consistent, verifiable volume, listing the 20 assets that have the most volume on trusted exchanges for two consecutive quarters. Explore the CoinDesk 20 and our methodology here. Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments. ATTENTION: Scammers have been sending fraudulent emails with links to sites disguised to look like coindesk.com. If you are in doubt about a link, type https://www.coindesk.com directly into your browser; do not copy and paste. 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