Mooners and Shakers: Gensler reacts, Bitcoin dips, Chainlink pumps… and NAB is latest crypto roadblock

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Bitcoin dipped a bit below US$30k for a time overnight as the market seems to be weighing up a tossed salad of concerns – macro and crypto micro – still swirling about.

Well, it’s either that or technical analysis patterns really do mean something and a bit of a dip was/is inevitable and written in the stars and charts.

In any case, let’s get onto some bits and pieces of relevance. Such as, unfortunately, the chair of the SEC, Gazza Gensler, who tossed something of a word salad himself overnight.

Gensler was speaking about AI at the US National National Press Club and was queried about the SEC vs Ripple court decision that cleared XRP of being a security. The SEC boss was asked if the ruling affects his stance on crypto broadly and if it injects “urgency into the need for federal legislation to clarify regulatory oversight of this industry”.

Gensler replied with a bunch of words in his shaky, rambling style. Here are some of them: “Look… Our mission… Exactly what I spoke about… Pleased… Importance of protecting investors… Institutional… Fair notice… Disappointed by what they said about retail investors… We are still looking at it and assessing that opinion.”

That pretty much captures the essence, but here it is in full if you want to listen…

Life imitating art. pic.twitter.com/XEn1u7cdzC

— Scott Kimler (@randsco) July 17, 2023

Coinhead’s take: yep, the court ruling on Friday was a sweet battle won for Ripple and XRP and the crypto rebel alliance broadly, but the war will continue as powerful Darth Gensler and Emperor Warren retreat for now to plot their next move.

As for the macro concerns, it’s the old “mild recession” chestnut that seems likely to grip the H2 narrative in the States and Europe and therefore everywhere else.

There was something of a small rally overnight on Wall Street, , with the tech-heavy Nasdaq closing 0.93% to the good.

“Tesla’s share price rallied over 3% last night after announcing that it has built the first Cybertruck at its gigafactory in Texas after two years of delays,” Stockhead‘s markets guru noted.

That mild rallying aside, the consensus in the States seems to be that the S&P 500 will see a 9% earnings results downturn for the second quarter of this year and then “hit their lowest point in Q3 before a revival comes in 2024,” noted market analyst, Chelsea Johnson.

What’s the biggest factor for an H2 market downturn? It could well be China’s economic slowdown, notes Eddy.

NAB – the latest Aussie bank to roadblock crypto

Wait, is this headline as bad as it sounds? Possibly, but also possibly not. We don’t quite know yet, because it’s not been revealed which local crypto exchanges the National Australia Bank is choosing to block.

The news, in a nutshell is this, though. Late yesterday, NAB announced a set of measures to protect customers from fraud as part of its “bank-wide scam strategy”. These measures include blocks on “some cryptocurrency platforms” to help limit exposure to scams.

NAB executive for group investigations and fraud Chris Sheehan noted that the new blocks will affect “high-risk” platforms where “scams are more prevalent”.

“These scammers are part of organised, transnational crime groups. Increasingly, we’re seeing them use cryptocurrency platforms to send stolen funds quickly and often overseas,” said Sheehan.

Binance? Hmm, very possibly.

“Our approach is going to be consistent with the rest of the industry,” Sheehan reportedly commented. In this regard, NAB joins Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank in recent crypto exchange curbing of enthusiasm. Those two big banks have also reportedly set up roadblocks around payments to the exchange.

We did say Bitcoin dipped, didn’t we? And it did, teetering around and just below US$30k earlier. But since we began typing this article it’s recovered to pretty much where it lay this time yesterday.

It won’t surprise at all to see Bitcoin take the odd stumble and crab and recover and simply range for quite some time this year. It might take a confluence of catalytic events to really push a bullish run in the shorter term. Otherwise, it’s waiting things out for ye olde BTC halving event narrative in 2024 and pushing through an official, rubber-stamped “mild recession”.

At least one crypto Twittering analyst we follow seems to think the recession is in the rear-view mirror, though…

BTC is up 100% this year.

Recession came and went. This is sideways consolidation for higher. https://t.co/zb9KOsKULl

— Roman (@Roman_Trading) July 17, 2023

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• GALA (GALA), (market cap: US$685 million) +12%

• Chainlink (LINK), (market cap: US$3.7 billion) +9%

• Sui (SUI), (market cap: US$473 million) +8%

• Aptos (APT), (market cap: US$1.69 billion) +5%

• Injective (INJ), (market cap: US$735 million) +2%

Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) has finally gone live!

It is launching across major chains including Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism, and Polygon.

Price is pumping accordingly. pic.twitter.com/wRhzErorQA

— Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) July 17, 2023

PUMPERS (lower, lower caps)

• Rollbit (RBT), (market cap: US$398 million) +44%

• Jim (JIM), (market cap: US$17 million) +39%

• STEPN (GMT), (market cap: US$313 million) +25%

SLUMPERS

• BitDAO (BIT), (market cap: US$742 million) -6%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: US$1.81 billion) -6%

• Radix (XRD), (market cap: US$613 million) -5%

• Maker (MKR), (market cap: US$843 million) -4%

• Compound (COMP), (market cap: US$521 million) -3%

SLUMPERS (lower, lower caps)

• Pepe 2.0 (PEPE2.0), (market cap: US$18 million) -18%

• Ben (BEN), (market cap: US$24 million) -11%

• Lybra Finance (LBR), (market cap: US$22 million) -11%

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

Regarding the BTC dip overnight (AEST), Dutch crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe is of the opinion that a “sweep of the lows” is underway, before a higher move.

Sweep of the lows indeed taking place.

Best guess, sweeping $29,500 and dropping towards low $29,000.

After that, $32,500 | $34,000 | $38,000 next for #Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/Ir8t6wWW7S

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) July 17, 2023

In non technical analytical terms we equate that to sweeping some dirt from your shoes under the rug, then sitting back to watch Australia beat England in the Ashes.

Nothing to see here, just the Federal Reserve’s earnings chart.

All is well…..

Got #Bitcoin ? pic.twitter.com/gTclIui5kX

— Jesse Myers (Croesus ) (@Croesus_BTC) July 17, 2023

A lot of talk about Judge Torres’ reasoning in the XRP decision. Some say her result is inconsistent with the entire premise or policy behind U.S. securities laws. A few well known and respected lawyers (I respect them as well) have predicted that Judge Torres will be overturned… https://t.co/FPXGSRCVIZ

— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) July 17, 2023