Earlier in the week I wrote a post about sunsets. If you read it, you know I was quick to point out that sunrises can be equally as beautiful. I mentioned yesterday that I had a lot of finance stuff to cover this week so I was spread it across two days.
Little did I know that even more stuff would happen in just the last 24 hours. It definitely feels like the sun is rising on a new era of crypto right now. As I said, I have a lot of finance related stuff to throw at you today, so I am just going to get right to it.
It is time again for another Finance Friday/Friday Finance. This is a series I started where I talk about random bits of financial stuff that I have seen, gathered, or experienced during the week. I hope as a reader you find it informational, entertaining, or both. I also hope it can generate some good discussion and edify the community.
As I said, some of the biggest news dropped in just the past 24 hours and the SPOT ETH ETF is just the piece of news I am talking about. Apparently, this turned out to be a "sell the news" sort of event as we saw prices drop across the board shortly after it was announced. While BTC was over $70,000 again and ETH was pushing $3900+, we now see them back down to $67K and $3700 respectively.
Make no mistake, this is just a temporary correction. I expect we might see a quick rebound and then maybe another small drop when the ETF actually launches? Even I question myself because it is hard to know what is going to happen. This is all new territory.
I mentioned yesterday that the FIT 21 bill had passed with an impressive bi-partisan effort. I really didn't expect that. @bitcoinflood wrote a good post about it here. Yesterday, I watched CSPAN intently as they debated and voted on the other crypto bill. The one that would ban the Federal Reserve from implementing, exploring, or basically even thinking about creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
It was actually a bit funny watching old politicians with zero clue tripping over their words trying to say CBDC fluidly in a sentence. Oddly enough, the bill actually passed and I think a lot of people in the crypto space hail both bills passing as a win.
I was excited at first, but I am a little more reserved now. While I think this could be good short term, after doing a bit of Googling, I quickly realized that typically only about 5% of the bills that are passed actually become a law. There are still two big hurdles that these bills need to pass.
If you guessed that those two hurdles are Joe Biden and a Democrat controlled Congress then you are correct. I actually identify as a democrat most the time, but their archaic position on crypto currency is just ridiculous. Don't worry though, @tarazkp, I'm not going to be one of those people who votes a certain way simply because of one issue!
You might also remember back on the 21st, I talked about the fact that the Retik token was launching to the public after what they consider a successful presale. The launch price was supposed to be $.15 per token. Within seconds it shot up to an all time high of over $3 before falling back down to the $2.50 range. People were still buying though. It has finally settled around $1, but I have a feeling it will go down even more after May 27th when people can start claiming the first 5% of their presale tokens and they dump them on the market.
That's assuming the claim even happens or works. I'm still feeling a little sus about this whole project. It's either going to be a huge success, or it's one of the most coordinated and well planned rugs I have ever seen. They could have easily taken the 32 million from the presale and ran. The fact that they were able to generate so much hype and take even more profit from the public launch is impressive.
I was adamant that if I couldn't buy more tokens at $.15 I wasn't interested. That's still my stance. At this point I am just going to wait and see if I can get my first 5% tokens. If I can, I will likely sell them to at least recover my initial investment, then I will wait and see what happens. If they allow staking, I will do that. If they rug, they rug. We will see! I'll keep you updated after the 27th.
I did throw some money at a "new" token called Osaka Protocol. You better not let me down @blanchy!
You might wonder why Taylor Swift is included in my Friday Finance post. Well, in case you didn't know, besides being a prolific artist, she is also a fairly shrewd business person. That's not really why I included her though.
Earlier this week we saw the Department of Justice bring antitrust charges against Ticketmaster. As an avid concert goer, I can tell you that Ticketmaster and Live Nation are horrible. They bend you over every chance they get and leave you feeling absolutely violated.
None of this was more apparent than recently when the Taylor Swift tickets went on sale at insane prices. So insane in fact that people in the US are actually traveling to Europe to see her show because it's actually cheaper than trying to get tickets in the US.
Let me repeat that
Pretty crazy right?!
It will be interesting to see how all of that pans out with the DoJ. @mrsbozz and I still attend shows, but we have cut back quite a bit in recent years due to the ever increasing price of tickets.
That's all I've got this week. I hope you have an awesome weekend. If you are in the US and you are celebrating Memorial Day, remember our fallen heroes and grill up something tasty!
