Big week for crypto markets: SBF, CPI, FOMC — Here's what's happening

Hello everyone. Welcome and thank you for hanging out with us today on the Market Report with cointelegraph. My name is Joe hall and we are joined again by our resident experts, Marcel Peckman and Sam Borgi. Now, Sam is a business editor for Cointelegraph who brings over a decade of experience in economic analysis, financial market writing and all those good things. Marcel Pechmann applies his 17 years of experience trading derivatives options and futures to the crypto derivatives markets. Gentlemen, a lot has changed in a week, hasn't it? How are we doing today? How are you both in your respective countries? Should we go with Marcel first?

Well, we lost the World Cup, Brazil is out from the games, but besides that, I can say that I'm positive, happy because sbf, Sam Bankman Fred went to jail. The FTX guy, well, at least he's under custody of bohemian authorities or whatever, but he will eventually be extradited to the US So I think it's something for us to celebrate. The bad guys are going to jail. So positive week.

Okay, Good. The good and the bad there. Sam, how are you doing? Are you surviving the Canadian winter?

I am. And happy CPI day to everyone. You know, this is how we measure progress now with everybody watching watches cpi, right. Everybody waits for that mid month CPI print in the US because that's going to let us know what Daddy's going to do. And Daddy being the Federal Reserve. So yeah, it's, I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic about the whole SPF thing. I know that while the mainstream media was out scratching his back and making him look good, I was calling him a fraud. And I've been calling him a fraud for weeks now. And that's what he is. So hopefully some justice can be served for all those FDX creditors, those, those people who have funds locked up on that platform while this guy was issuing billion dollar loans to himself through the company. So that's positive, but we'll see how it goes and what comes out of it.

Absolutely. Okay. I mean, yeah, we'll dig into what Big Daddy is going to do a little bit later as well as of course SBS treatment. But before we get into that, we've got all this good stuff planned for you. So of course, as you know, Market Reports is the show where we bring you the information you cannot find anywhere else on the Internet. So today, Sam, Marcel and I will discuss what's been making the headlines in the crypto space as well as the wider business and financial markets and of course, some disappointing World cup results. Marcel, Brazil, his team My team, England, we're both out, but we're going to be supporting Morocco, I guess from now on. I mean, we'll discuss that as well. But most importantly, we're here for you guys, the cointelegraph viewers, to try to help you navigate through these trying and sometimes wild times. We're looking forward to connecting with you, to chatting with you, and of course, if you have any question, no matter how bizarre, please pop it in the chat and we'll do our best to get back to you in the show. We're also giving away a $50 Cointelegraph swag store voucher. I think it might have rolled over from last week, so it might even be $100 voucher. So that means you can get plenty of Christmas swag. Just in time for the 25th of December. Now, here's a quick breakdown of today's show. We're going to kick off with the weekly highlight video, followed by meantime, arguably the best segment. Following that, we've got market news updates, a quick crypto tip from yours truly, Marcel's Trading Insights, and then a recap of what Markets Pro could do for you and your trading journey, followed by the giveaway of that 50 or $100 gift voucher. We'll, we'll decide that very shortly. And as always, remember, There is a 25, 20% off markets pro code in the description. So just check in the description after clicking the like and subscribe button and you can see the Markets Pro voucher there. Cool. Now we've got the housekeeping out the way. Let's kick it off with the weekly roundup video. So video team, please take it away. Really does feel like it's been a very busy week. So much has happened and, you know, just in the crypto space. Happy CPI day. As Sam says, it is a great day to be alive and a great day to trade. Shall we dive straight into the meme review or do you guys have any comments on a few of those headlines that popped up there? Anything that surprised you or, you know, thought, oh, God, that did happen this week.

I think there was something about the DeFi TVL, the deposits going down from 200 billion to $40 billion or whatever. But I think that's not what the investors should focus here. I think, for instance, if MakerDao, the Dai stablecoin survives the biggest crash crypto crash maybe ever, because we never went down to a previous peak of $20,000 and we went to $15,000. If MakerDAO survives, I think it's a vote of confidence. It says, wow, the system is working. I think there's some interesting thoughts about Defi. Not everything is negative.

Interesting. I like that. Yeah, it's good to maintain an open outlook for these sorts of things. As I said, a lot of these are tests, but they could eventually prove successful or fruitful. Sam, any comments or should we dive into the memes?

Let's dive right into it. How about that? I have plenty of comments later.

Okay, get my goggles on. Let's dive in. This is Ralph Bankman. Fried. He is indeed. And. Which is good, right? That shit's going down in Armyland. Don't worry, son. We have big. This is a time. This is an Evergreen meme, isn't it? It comes down every once in a while, right?

Yeah, classic.

I actually saw this one shared on the Coin Telegraph Media team. It's a full video of him, like Slow Mo going crazy as Portugal get knocked out of the World Cup. And it's. Yeah, it's one of those videos that's really uncomfortable to watch. And yeah, pretty much sums up when another crypto exchange goes down, which they continue doing so. So please, guys, take your coins off exchanges. It's another reminder right through the. Through the virtue of meme, We are all underwater. They picked up 25, didn't they? They drew 25. Oh, dear. Some good ones in there.

Everybody was paid by SBF except me. What's wrong with me? Dude, you should have paid me a million dollars per month. So I would say we are the best exchange in the world. Come on, come on, help me out.

I know, right? He was too busy buying the block CEOs houses in yachts and things. As for the New York Times. Wasn't it the New York Times that broke the news this morning, despite the fact that previously they were worshipping Sam Bankman, Fried and ftx. So that was quite nice that finally they realized we should probably report the real news.

The guy's on jail now. Now it's too late to try to do some press, I don't know, whatever, massage or some positive remarks. It's not worked. It's not going to help.

Okay, yeah, yeah, no, we'll get onto that with them. I think it's. Our second story today is regarding his expedition to the US and his, you know, he's in handcuffs supposedly in the Bahamas. I feel like I will see it. I'll believe it when I see it. I'm just going to check the chat quickly, see if anyone's been messaging lots of people discussing whether or not the bottom is in. It's probably a nice segue into our first story. Sam mentioned it in the intro. Today we are on CPI day when the Consumer Price Index is released by. I'm not sure which government body does it, but if we can flip to the screen share, I can show the article that we're going to discuss this morning or this afternoon, wherever you are, respectively. So Bitcoin sees CPI volatility. It always does as lower inflation sends the bitcoin price to 18k. We got a nice little Bart style pump today, didn't we? The key things to note from this as I mean you can see on this trading view daily candle. So each day here represents 24 hours of trading. A green one means positive, a red one means negative. And here we have a spike on the 13th of December. Oh, sorry, my, my Siri is talking to me, which is never good. On the, on the 13th of December you can see this great big green candle spiking up which was based off the, the CPI print. Sam, is this normal? Is this purely because the CPI was slightly lower than it was supposed to be? Does this also mean that the bottom is in? There's so many questions I could ask you here, Sam, what's your take?

Yeah, well I mentioned earlier kind of jokingly about Happy CPI Day and I mentioned that because, you know, as Marcel has talked about earlier in the year, Bitcoin and the traditional finance market have become increasingly correlated. I mean that correlation has, has weakened over the past, you know, few months. But we've seen a strong correlation between traditional finance and Bitcoin which means that suddenly crypto investors and bitcoin holders are interested in what the Federal Reserve does and they're interested in traditional economic indicators because this has enormous implications into the Federal Reserve's fight against inflation. So the whole idea is that the Fed has been ramping up interest rate hikes and reducing the pace of its monthly bond buying program to keep or to bring inflation under control. And that really wasn't working for a while. But now it seems like the headline cpi, which is the Consumer Price Index measures a basket of goods and services. It rose at the weakest rate in about a year. So we had a 7.1% annual or year over year rate in the CPI in November, which was below forecast calling for 7.3% and it was lower than the October print of 7.7% percent. We also saw a dip in the Consumer Price Index, the core indicator. And the core CPI basically strips away what they consider to be volatile goods like Food and energy that went down to 6% and year over year from 6.3%. So all this to say it looks like the Fed is on course to raise interest rates tomorrow by half a percentage point, which is lower than the previous pace of 0.75%. Investors are taking this to look at to mean we're heading toward a soft pivot by the Fed. They're not completely eliminating rate hikes, but they're reducing the size of them. And that supposedly is supposed to be good for risk markets. However, we've seen in previous history that anytime the Fed pivots, it's usually not good for risk assets for several reasons. But overall, investors seem to be optimistic today that weakening inflation is going to be good for the markets and perhaps put the Fed on pause Mode heading into 2023. So we'll see whether those expectations pan out.

Okay. Okay. And as for the question that we've received in the chat there, Sam, it's an excellent overview analysis and presumably lots of traders will be waiting with bated breath for the announcement tomorrow of what the Fed decides to do. But does it mean that the bottom is in? Does this positive inflation number. I can't believe that 7% is positive. Is that, does that mean that the bottom is in?

I think, I mean, Bitcoin's held up fairly well all things considered. But I have been expecting one final flush out to end the cycle. You know, where that ends up. I think we probably could go below the 15k mark that we saw last month. But you know, that's just an academic discussion, guys, if you're in the, in the chats, it doesn't matter if Bitcoin hits 15 or 14. These are very optimal levels, in my opinion, to be accumulating. If you believe in Bitcoin's long term value proposition. Timing the bottom is notoriously difficult and in fact impossible for most of us. So assess whether Bitcoin's fundamentals have changed. The answer is no, only that's changed in the price due to the speculation. So I'm not too fussed either way about where the bottom ends up at this point.

Okay, okay. And Marcel, to what extent is there a consensus that the markets will recover as soon as the Fed reverses or as Sam suggests, this soft pivot.

Well, Joe, I kind of agree with what Sam said here. I wasn't expecting a market to rally based on slightly lower inflation, but it's still 6, 7% depending on how you measure. But what I think is markets wanted to rally. They needed an excuse. The CPI Print was the one they picked, could have been another one. But what traders and investors need to learn, and myself, is that you shouldn't fight the flow if the market is trying to go up. If the risk markets are going up, even on neutral news, it means that market is expecting to rally. Unemployment will go up or down, it doesn't matter. As soon as the Federal Reserve pivots saying well okay, I'm going to rise 50 basis points and for the next couple of months the maximum raise will be 25 basis points. So giving an indication that yes, that was 75 basis top, now 50 basis rate, now 25 maximum. So I think markets desperately went on rally but they want to time it so everybody does it together and they're going to do it when the Fed pivots. And as Sam brilliantly said, it doesn't mean that's the ideal market conditions, it doesn't mean that the rally would sustain itself. But don't fight the flow. The market's trying to go up. Either stay neutral or stay long. Don't try to short those pumps.

Okay, wise advice there. Don't fight the flow. As I say that, the trend is your friend, right? Anything else to share on this piece regarding cpi? I mean personally I still think it's a joke that we are celebrating this 7% increase in inflation. If you're not getting a 7% salary increase then you are poorer and yet we are still celebrating this. So it doesn't really seem to me like human flourishment or progress. It's just that maybe it shows how bad the situation is right now and how much we need to do to get to where we want to be. Any other sort of trading tips here or maybe just general advice about how to manage with a colder winter? Yeah, go ahead Marcel.

I have a question about UK Joe. I heard today that average mortgage in UK are going to rise this year, the next year 33% to £1,000 average per month. First of all is that true? And second, can anyone afford £1,000 mortgage plus energy costs plus food plus everything else?

I mean it's a great question and it's one of the reasons I decided to leave the UK because mortgages, houses, which all just getting completely out of whack with the average salary. I can tell you anecdotally that the friends I have that have bought houses this year were bankers, fintech, service workers or very very senior professionals, say senior medical professionals. Other than that everyone is struggling to buy a house, struggling to afford rent, all the usual things that you know the millennial generation on the whole, complain about through no fault of their own. The current discussion in the mainstream media and in politics at the moment is the choice between heating or eating, which is just horrible discussion to have in the first place. And there's more and more viral content of people ringing into talk shows and saying, hello, I'm alone, I'm at home, I don't know what to do because I can't afford to turn the heating on. What do I do? And these are the sort of harrowing conversations that are happening. So I don't know if exactly these figures are going up to £1,000amonth mortgage, but it doesn't surprise me. And the way the UK is going, it's becoming this increasingly backwards, forgotten backwater in the north of Europe. In 30 years time, the only thing that will be working in the UK will be tourism, finance and maybe a bit of tech. And people will go there to take pictures of the Queen and Buckingham palace and whatever, and then they'll go back to Europe where they can actually afford to heat their homes. So it doesn't look good for the UK unless there's some drastic change in leadership. And, you know, to those that are still left there, good luck. You know, it's very, very tricky place to get by at the moment.

Joe, just a heads up, the Queen died about three months ago.

Yeah, sorry. Oh my God. I'm still living in the past. Is the King. Yeah, and I'm still, I still find it strange when they sing the national anthem and go, God save our gracious king. So, yeah, sorry about that, guys. That was a complete faux pas anyway. Probably a good idea to move on there. Thank you very much for the question, Marcel. And yet to the guys in the chat, I think we've sort of answered your question regarding whether or not there's a the bottom is in and whether or not we will see a pivot tomorrow. So let's move on to the second article. This is the juicy one for today, all about our favorite pantomime villain in the cryptocurrency industry or, you know, cryptocurrency markets. Sam Bankman Fried finally arrested. As Sam says, this guy is a fraud and he's finally a fraud. You can also buy this article as an NFT if you so wish, as that's part of Cointelegraph's new drive to sell articles, or at least the COVID works. These articles, you can collect it. This one in particular is probably in quite high demand because, I mean, doesn't Sam Bankman Fried look great in the orange jumpsuit from Guantanamo Bay. Right. The article in and of itself says that the Royal Bahamas police have arrested SPF or Sang Bankman Fried at the request of the United States government based on a sealed indictment. What does that mean? We're going to explain that to you now but the key thing is that the New York Times reported on December 12 yesterday evening that the charges against Bankman Fried include wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and money laundering. Basically the guy is a scammer. The United States will request the extradition probably of Bankman Fried with Pinder stating that the Bahamas will promptly process any extradition request. So it looks like there's some collaboration there between the Bahama, the Bahamian authorities and the United States. In the intro we celebrated this news but what does it mean for people that have lost money in the FTX fiasco? I mean can we draw any parallels between Mount Gox Celsius, what else went down this year? Vold. I'm trying to remember which other centralized exchanges have gone down. You know, have any of these guys been reunited with their money? And so does that mean that maybe FTX customers will be reunited with their money? Is there room for hope here? Sam, what do you think?

The only thing that I'm fairly certain of is that this is going to take a long time to play out. If you're an FTX creditor it's going to take a long time for the dust to settle. So what does this mean in terms of you getting your money back? How much you're going to get back? I have no idea. At this point all we know is that FTX's books are a complete disaster. And I'm actually just, I just read a tweet that said FTX basically used just, just a standard accounting software to, to, to you know, keep track of, of all their finances which I think it was QuickBooks they're using. This is at least what I'm reading on, on Twitter. What I mean, I mean QuickBooks is a great tool for small businesses. Do not get me Wrong, I've used QuickBooks before but when you're running a multi billion dollar exchange and this is what you're using. I think the evidence against Sam is pretty damning and it looks like he's been co mingling funds from the very beginning. And you know I used to, we used to look at Al Maida research with like a sense of prestige. The companies these guys back and everything like that. It turns out that they were nothing But a fraud. And I hope to God this guy is brought to justice for what he did and the lives that he destroyed. And probably the, the fact that he manipulated the bitcoin market as well. I mean they had what, less than 1 bitcoin on their reserves? How much paper bitco today did they operate with? And what role do they have in undermining the bull market? Separate subject entirely, but unfortunately have it might be a while before you get any of it back.

Gosh, I mean what does it mean there to be commingling funds? This is a, a prompt we often use in, in the industry. What does that mean specifically? Sam? Sorry, I was firing that back at you.

If Sam's offline, I can go. Are you on Sam?

Oh.

I think I'm lost guys. My connection isn't doing too well.

I'll explain.

Yeah, thanks mate.

Yeah, yeah, Joe. So commanding funds, it's a crime first of all. But it's putting together money from clients deposits and Alamedas, the other company also owned by FTX or for Sam for using on margin trades, market making, etc. Or even providing loans to SBF and other FTX employees. So he was diverting funds which supposed to be held under depositors names the clients and using that for other other things. Doesn't matter what he was using it to. Buying venture capital companies trading on margin, it's a crime. You should not be using clients deposits for that.

Okay, so like say if you were to run a shop, you know, I sell coffees or whatever, is it fair to say that it's like I'm putting my own money in the till and then I'm also taking customers monies and putting them in the till and then I'm using them all to you know, pay my employees or pay the rent or whatever it is. Or is it even worse than that? Like how bad is it to commingle funds as they say?

It's worse because when you have, we're talking about two companies, separate companies, the Alameda Research, which was the market making and trading firm, proprietary desk and etc and ftx. If Alameda did not exist, if FTX was a single company and the exchange had some form of trading using their own money, it would be less of an issue. Yes, it's still a crime. It shouldn't have been doing that. But when you transfer funds from FTX to another company, you're basically stealing. It's loud and clear. If you have a department on FTX which by some mistake or whatever lost $5 billion, you could have Some form of explanation for that. Oh, we weren't expecting to lose the money. We weren't expecting to touch depositors money. But once you do the loan, once you transfer to another company, which shouldn't have a direct relation with X, you're basically stealing. There's no other words to describe it. It's different from owner of a coffee shop or whatever using the money that should be paying for salaries and he's, I don't know, paying for hookers or giving for friends or whatever. It's a different thing.

Or paying for positive coverage in Coffee Shop Weekly magazine, courtesy of the Block, for example, just to continue with this silly analogy, but I just wanted to break it down for people so they understand that when you see this word combing dangling, it's basically stealing. You know, you're taking money that isn't yours to do funny business with it. Okay, Sam, we've got you back. Good to see you back here. Marcelo. Just to continue on, what does it mean about this $5 billion hole that disappeared when FTX went up in flames? Will customers of FTX be reunited with their money?

Good question, Good question. So I saw the, the new CEO of ftx, the guy who was hired to try to unwrap this mess, he was on the US Senate today and he said, well, it's really hard to keep track of where the money went, but it seems that most of that, at least $5 billion, we know that a billion and a half, they lost some trading, but some $5 billion were paid to venture capital investments. So FTX and Alameda or whatever, the group bought stake on other companies, startups mostly, all over the world over the past two years. And it's very unlikely that this money is going to be recovered because first you have to prove to the judge that the money was effectively mismanaged. It was not FTX monies in the first place to be given away. And second, if the company has already, you cannot unwind the trades or whatever that it has done because the company did not have a direct relationship to ftx. So it's too many hops to try to getting back this money. And if you're going to be selling the stake on a startup that it's really small and maybe unlicensed, etc. I don't know if it's worth anything, but as Sam said, it's going to take at least five years so we get to know how many cents on the dollar FTX depositors are going to get paid. Yes, it's great that the Penguin from the Batman movie is going to jail. But that doesn't mean that the FTX creditors and clients are going to get their money within the next two years. I don't think it's going to happen.

Did you just compare Sam Bankman fried to the Penguin in the background the Batman movie?

Yeah, it's the same guy that needs.

To be a meme. If it's not a meme already, it's probably, you know, already created somewhere on the Internet. Okay, great. Right then I think we can talk Sam Bankman free to death, but ultimately the guy is in handcuffs. So there's some reprieve for those affected by FTX's implosion and scam. Now let's move on to another larger than life figure within the crypto space. Cz. We have an expression in the UK which is Marmite. Do you guys have Marmite in your respective countries? You've heard of it? Or Vegemite? No? Okay. It's like a yeast extract spread. It's quite disgusting. I'm actually allergic to it. But people say you either love it or you hate it. And I feel like CZ is kind of like Cryptomamite in that a lot of people absolutely love him and think he's great for the space and a lot of people, you know, think he's very bad for the space and hate him. For me personally, I'm of course allergic to him as I'm allergic to Marmite. But that is my segue onto the next article regarding and if I could share my screen. Whether or not are we sharing screen? We are. Binance exchange Daily bitcoin withdrawals topped $500 million, which is kind of staggering in of itself. Can you imagine a regular bank withdrawing that kind of money, you know, in a small country somewhere? Anyway, CZ or Chowpeng Zhao, his real name, he said that this FUD helps us grow. So clearly he's taking the critiques as another chink in his armor. So he's also called the FUD Thoroughly Annoying because lots of people are saying that Binance could be the next exchange to go up in flames. For cz, it's just another day at work and it's thoroughly annoying for people. There's another part of this article I wanted to highlight which I've just missed. But yeah, it was Here we go. FUD helps us grow even though they are thoroughly annoying. He wrote in a tweet. Storm today, guys, never a dull day in crypto land. No. Binance is the world's biggest exchange and has processed Half a billion dollars just today. It's just staggering when you think about how far the crypto industry has become. Could Binance be the next exchange to go up in flames? Or is this just more flood and more FUD and more mudslinging? Marcel, let's go to you first. What do you reckon?

Well, first, Joe, answering your question, I don't think Binance is going under over the next six months. It doesn't seem like they have shown some form of proof of reserves. They have over 50, 60 billion dollars worth of deposits. We still don't know how much clients they own plants, maybe 60, maybe 70, we don't know. But CZ is wrong when he's saying it's FUD. FUD. It's some news that is not based on real facts. It's just suppositions, let's say. But Binance halted usdc, USD coin, the stablecoin withdrawals for over four hours. And CZ came on Twitter saying, well, it's some form of bank problem because the banks are not open right now. So we have to sell the Paxus and the Binance US dollars to buy the US dollar DC coins so we can give the clients with. Come on, dude. First of all, a billion dollar that's been withdrawn total, not only Bitcoin, over the past 24 hours, that's less than 2% of the $60 billion of total funds that Binance manages. It's less than 2%. Yes, it's a lot of money, but it shouldn't be a lot of money for the biggest crypto exchange in the world. I'm not saying that he's under or he doesn't have money, but I think that chain should have other ways to convert stable coins to give it to clients in less than four hours. So I think when there's smoke, usually there's fire. I don't think CZ is a hero. And I think that withdrawing from Binance, even if it's trouble, even if going to pay some fees for that, you should do it. I mean, you're not going to gain anything by being a hero and saying, yeah, I told you balance was safe, my money is still there. You're not going to win an award or trophy for that, so don't do it.

Yeah, no, it's a really good point. And with regards to whether or not they have enough in their cold wallets to satisfy the demand withdrawals off the exchange, it only takes, what, half an hour maximum to send money from the cold wallet to the exchanges to satisfy that demand. So turning off withdrawals for four hours does seem to be a little bit of a red flag, doesn't it? You know, it does raise eyebrows and it does cause people to question whether or not Binance is having solvency issues or reserves issues. Sam, have you been observing this situation evolve? It's gone from Binance is next to oh, no, it's just fud. It's just another day of work. And you know, these narratives in crypto can flip flop so quickly. Where do you stand on it?

Well, I don't really have much faith in cz, so I'm not on the side of the argument that CZ is an industry savior by any means. As Marcel mentioned, usually where there's smoke, there's fire. I mean, I don't want to FUD the exchange. We know Binance is the largest in the world by volume, but a lot of this stuff that's been happening really hasn't been making any sense. CZ's constant tweet rampage, his tweet storms over the past month or two kind of reminds me a bit of, of sbf. Again, I'm not equating the two. I'm just saying things have been really weird. Didn't he recently publish a Twitter user's customer support log? Basically, there was an issue with a particular project and I think that CZ went ahead and published or. Or Binance went ahead and published the customer service log, which I thought was really strange. And now you have the large movement of funds that we, that you, that you just talked about. So for me, it's, it's a bit of. I'm getting a little bit uneasy about the whole situation and I'm just gonna say I'm glad I don't have any, any funds on, on Binance. They, they were banned from my jurisdiction a while ago and I'm not in favor of, you know, that kind of overreach. But where there's smoke, there's fire. That's all I can say without fudding the situation unnecessarily.

Yeah, that's a good observation. His approach to Twitter and his emotional sort of the way in which he presents himself on Twitter has become a bit more combative recently. You know, it's gone from ignore the mainstream media. He also recently unfollowed Cointelegraph, which I don't know how to dunno what to make of that. Maybe there's something going on behind the scenes there as well, but he seems to be going more and more out on a limb to make the point that everything's okay, but when someone keeps telling you, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, at some point you say, hang on a minute. Are you lying to me? You know, what's going on here? So, again, yeah.

When they unloaded the FTT token, it's like, bro, you're coming on Twitter to announce that. I mean, this is a business. Like, why do you have to come on Twitter to announce it? I mean, I'm sure somebody would have. Would have audited and they would have found out that, oh, Binance unloaded their ftt. Okay, but why come on Twitter just to announce it? Like, doesn't make any sense to me or makes little sense to me. And that kind of got the ball rolling on the whole FTX debacle. Right. That kind of exposed what it was at that point.

Yeah, it was the first domino to fall. And maybe it was that display of strength that. That he's still tapping into to show, like, you know, we're all okay. FUD means nothing to us. Binance is still solvent and still going. There's lots of theories you can pull out here, but, yeah, I think you're right. The key thing is that the behavior has changed and a lot of things aren't really stacking up the way they used to in the industry. Marcel, anything you'd like to add on this? Do you subscribe to this idea that, okay, maybe things aren't quite right at Binance? You seem to be more positive.

I'm positive for the short term. I think there's too much FUD lying around. But if you think it's true, we have regulators which are gonna definitely gonna block stable coins and exchanges for North American clients, and maybe Europe for European clients. So I think that 2023, it's not gonna be good as we could expect because of regulation.

Okay. Okay. I mean, I'm just seeing in the chat that Petro Jackson, sorry if I haven't said that correctly, is saying, great conversation. Expose these devils. We are just trying to shed light on the issues affecting the crypto market at the moment. I don't know about exposing any devils just yet, although maybe sbf, it's fair to say he was the devil. Anyway, these are, of course, opinions that I'm sharing too. Don't forget to click the like and subscribe button. And please send us your comments and questions because you might win a $50 gift voucher to the Cointelegraph swag store. Righty ho. Moving on to the next segment of today's show. It's going to be a quick crypto tip where I'm going to explain to you something super useful affecting your trading strategy nowadays. For this week, it's a golden cross pattern and how it works. So I'd like to bring that up and discuss it today. Here we go. Quick crypto tip. Now, a golden cross is one of the most popular bullish signals for cryptocurrency traders. But it doesn't mean you should immediately enter the market, as none of these trading signals mean. By the way, if you're into trading, just take it, take it easy, take it slow. Now, traditionally, golden cross watchers focus on two specific moving averages. The 50 day which becomes the short term MA, which is of course a longer term moving average. A golden cross, not to be confused with the golden arches of McDonald's forms, when the short term ma crosses above the long term ma. In other words, the pattern shows that buying interest in a particular market has risen over the past 50 days compared to the previous 200 days. Golden crosses typically precede significant price rallies. So we're talking about pumps across traditional and crypto markets. And sometimes it's a reason why traders perceive them as a strong buy signal. So if you see these golden crosses, it could mean that the market is about to rally or pump. There have, however, been cases where golden crosses have been followed by fake breakouts, sometimes called a bart. We know when it pumps up and then drops down again quickly. So take it easy and consider that these golden cross patterns are just another tool in your toolkit when it comes to trading. And you should always consult lots of different things before making a decision. So ultimately, traders should be cautious with crossover signals, as blindly following them or influencers or anyone in the crypto market could result in losses. If you want to learn more about golden crosses, please follow the link to the article in the description of today's video. And while you're scrolling down there, click like click subscribe and maybe even click on the notifications bell. Wonderful. And let's move on to the next segment. Thank you very much for considering the golden cross today. This week we're over to in house crypto derivatives specialist Marcel. Marcel, what have you got in store for us this week? What's the crazy insight?

Okay, Joe, if there's a single metric, one should follow to understand if traders are skeptical of price pumps, I would definitely recommend the futures premium, also known as the basis rate. I'm not saying that derivatives metrics can be used to predict price outcomes, but whenever Bitcoin rallies During bear markets, there's a natural tendency of skepticism. So firstly, what the hell, why the hell do bitcoin futures prices decouple from regular spot prices at Coinbase, Bitfinex and Kraken? Well, if you have to wait until the contract is settled by the end of the month or end of the quarter, it is natural that the seller is going to request more money to compensate for the time and for the risk. Plus, the seller and the buyer, they both need to deposit some collateral, so there's money that's tied up, locked up in there, so they demand more money. And naturally the contract price trades above the spot price. So that's how the fixed month contracts works. It doesn't matter if it's crypto or traditional finance, they usually trade at a premium, usually between 4% to 6 to 8% to compensate for the risk and for the money that's locked up in there. So, Danilo, can you share my screen please? We're going to look at the Bitcoin futures premium data on major derivatives exchanges. I think it's OKX in Deribit using Live ITAs so you can check that. The indicator before of the FTX crash, the indicator peaked at 3% early on November and then it went down negative, which has been since November 9th. You can see here we're sub 0%, we're down negative 5%. Now we're negative 1 or negative half percent. But it means that there's no demand for leverage buying using futures. It's known as backwardation when the futures premium is negative and it indicates extreme fear. It could be fear that the Bitcoin price is going to crash, or it could be fear that the exchanges are going to crash. They're not solvent. So over a month has gone by. Thank you, Danilo. Over a month has gone by since FTX collapsed, and yet the futures premium in Bitcoin has been unable to break above 0%. More importantly, today's pump, more than 5% on Bitcoin price, was not enough to move those traders from the extreme fear to a neutral to positive mood. So what is the data, the futures premium data, telling us? Well, pro traders, professional traders, are not exactly excited about today's pump. But there's a problem here. We don't know if the root cause is the lack of appetite from market makers and investors or if it's the reduced trust on exchanges. Nobody want to buy using leverage because they think that the exchange might go bankrupt. My guess, 50 50. There's been an enormous exodus of Bitcoin withdrawals from exchanges, but the investor appetite for crypto is just not there. Even if there was no exchange risk, there's no demand for leverage buying. So I expect the high correlation with the S&P 500 so the traditional stock market to remain high until this changes, until confidence was restored in the system and there's higher demand for leveraged buying. But it's not going to happen over the next couple of months.

Awesome, awesome stuff. Thank you so much, Marcel. Sometimes makes me wonder who comes up with these terminologies, you know, backwardations. It definitely seems like, you know, the crypto and trading world creating all sorts of interesting things with the English language. I've just seen, I was scrolling around on Twitter there while you're doing the explanation and I've seen that the largest 24 hour flow of Bitcoin ever just occurred from binance where there was 40000 or to please Pacific 39,633. 637. Bitcoin has just left Binance exchange, which is kind of crazy when you think about it, but clearly it means that people are taking custody of their coins. Definitely a good thing. Before we move on to the next segment which is regarding markets Pro, I know that Marcel, you have to dash. Would you like to give us your closing statements now so we don't have to rush it later? You know, any advice or words of wisdom for those? Yeah, sure.

So thanks Joe. So my advice would be if, if, if the risk is not out there for you, if you don't think it's worth to run the risk of Kraken or cme, of Binance or wherever. Take, take your coins out of exchange, put it in your cold wallets. If you think that the CPI is going to be too volatile, don't trade it. Send the coins to your cold wallet. It could be an app on the wallet, on the phone. It doesn't need to be an expensive hard wallet. Just don't download apps that you don't know where they're coming from and you're safe there. So you don't need to be long or short on the market. You don't need to bet every week. You don't need to decide what the Fed is going to do or how the CPI is going to do. You can take a rest, you can take a break, you can go outside, you can enjoy the sun, you can visit your friends and family. It's much better. When in doubt, don't trade. That's my advice.

Awesome. And I think it's really interesting seeing hardware Wallets realize that there's a real need to give cheaper options and more reliable options to people around the world. I don't know if you've seen that Blockstream have just released a hardware wallet which costs only $50, which, you know, when a ledger, Trezor and cold cards are all over $100 per person, that kind of prices out, you know, 2 billion people around the world. So it's cool to see that people are realizing we all need to have access to cold storage or at least we need people that have access to it, whether it's community solutions or whatever. So it's, it's cool to see. And thank you so much, Marcel. Don't worry if you drop out in the next sort of segment. I'm going to be talking about some Coin Market Pro trading tips. So yeah, let's, let's fire up the, the next segment. Thank you so much Marcel and we'll catch you next week. Look at that wonderful intro segment. So at Markets Pro we're a data intelligence platform which is designed to enhance investors decision making. That's you guys with industry grade analytics and this week AI or the code is fet. So if you're fed up with making bad trades, maybe you should consider subscribing to cointelegraph Markets Pro as this week we called out someone with a newsquake. The token in question, as you probably can guess right now, is FET FET Token. And as the price of this gainer climbed to new highs, the newsquake alerted Markets Pro subscribers that Binance US was offering staking rewards of over 7%. So this news propelled the token's price up even higher, as you can see on the graph, as it hockey sticked up and soon jumped to $0.1, its weekly peak of $0.13, which is an increase of 30%. So you could have longed that and got yourself a nice little profit or you could have sat it out and taken Marcel's advice. Because you know what? If in doubt, don't trade. But that's what cointelegraph Markets Pro is there to do. It's there to support you on your trading journey. The other token that featured in cointelegraph Markets Pro this week was Aleph. So I don't know about you, but I love bitcoin. But some of you guys might Aleph cryptocurrencies and trading them. And this week the frequent top performer Aleph once again saw a strong Vortex score. As you may already know, Vortex is our way of grading things at Coin Telegraphs, Coin, Telegraph, Markets Pro. And on December 4, a rare high score of 95 lit up when the asset was trading at 0.072 cents. That means that there could be some volatile action on the horizon with this Vortex score. And green is good, which means the price is probably going to go up. A few days later it was correct. The price had jumped to 0.077 cents, which is a 7% increase. So again, if you had your trading hat on, you could have longed it and made yourself a nice little profit. So yeah, as I say, Markets Pro is there to help you with these useful trading tools such as Vortex Scores or with newsquakes. So make sure you subscribe and if you are interested in subscribing, then take advantage of the 20% off description in the link below. On your way down there, click the like and subscribe button and ping us your questions in the chat. For example, today we've had some really interesting things about Binance, about people in FTX and about whether or not we have devils in the industry. I've got Sam here with me now to bring this show to a close. Sam, it's been a wild, wild week. Honestly, just looking back on it, I've been like, wow, so much has happened. What can we expect in the coming week? You mentioned tomorrow at the Fed pivot. Is that the big news to watch out for in the next seven days.

Or.

I think you might be on mute. And you are there.

You go back, I'm back. Good. I said a lot of cuss words there, so I'm glad I was on mute, know, yeah, tomorrow, tomorrow is the, is, is the big day. It's the Fed Day Fed party. So congrats everyone on the Fed party tomorrow, last one of the year. They're likely to raise rates by a quarter point or by a half point, I should say. And they'll be releasing their quarterly summary of economic projections, that's all tomorrow. Given the increased correlation between Bitcoin and equities over the past year, that obviously has major implications on all risk assets. So that's something that we're all going to be monitoring. Whether we like it or not, that's going to have major implications. And moving forward, I'm just looking forward to seeing how the market plays out. What? See, another shakeout has never been this bad, which leads me to believe that perhaps we're approaching the bottom for the cycle, although it might need one more flush to get there. But you know, had the FTX fiasco not happened, I think would have Already bottomed by now, in my opinion. But that threw a big wrench into the whole system. So for me, I'm not so concerned because my strategy is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as I can. That's my strategy. It's not Cointelegraph strategy per se. It might not be your strategy, but for me, I want to accumulate as much as possible. So for me, that's all I'm doing and what I'm focusing on with respect to digital assets in general.

Very good. No, that is also my strategy, as you might have guessed. Accumulate as much as I can while the prices are low and, you know, ride it when the prices are a bit higher. But again, yes, as you. As you rightly pointed out, this is not Cointelegraph strategy and this is just us having a nice chat and discussing what we think matters in the markets. It's not financial advice. It must be a very busy week for you then, Sam, what with the Fed party tomorrow. Did you get an invite this year?

No, I think I'm on the. I'm on the ban list. You know, I'm pretty much banned from attending any of the Fed parties. And you know what? That's fine by me. I don't want to attend.

Okay. Much better parties to be had this Christmas. Okay, fantastic. Well, to everyone watching, thank you so much for tuning in today. Our winner of the $50 swag token is Petro Jackson, also the same name as the director at Cointelegraph. So you're in luck there, Mr. Petro Jackson. Please could you reach out to the Cointelegraph team on social media, DM us on Twitter, or drop us an email and we will kit you out with some $50 of swag ready for your Christmas parties, perhaps even a Fed party if you're quick enough. That's it from us, guys. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll continue to be here week on, week out to discuss all the important news in the bitcoin and crypto markets. As ever, stay humble, stack sats, and. Yeah, see you next week. Thank you very much, Sam.

Thank you.

Sa.