The British pound collapse and its impact on cryptocurrency

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Hello, friends, and thanks for hanging out with us here on the Market Report today on Cointelegraph. I'm your host Benton and we are joined again by our resident experts, Marcel Peckman and TODAY special guest Joe Hall. Marcel Peckman applies his 17 years of experience trading derivatives options and futures to the crypto derivatives market. Joe hall is a research and interview journalist at Cointelegraph who brings with him five plus years of Bloomberg experience covering 5 financial markets around the world. Fellas, we're back at 20K. What is going on this week? We feeling good, Marcel, what's up this week?

I think more important than being 3% or 5% up in the week is seeing major global currencies such as the euro and the British pound losing value 15% against the US dollar and even seeing some of the traditional consumer companies saying that they won't be able to meet the target revenue because of yada, yada. So investors are starting to realize that, yes, a crisis is coming our way. Energy prices are up 400% in the past year. So something is happening here. So I think the normal, the normies that didn't want to see what was happening are now starting to feel the impacts and the effects. So I think that's the most important thing than bitcoin or ethereum being up 5%.

Very good. And Joe, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure to have you here. How are you this week?

I'm great, thanks. I got the call back, so I'm pretty pleased with myself. Pretty chuffed. It's great to be with you guys on the market report again. Just to echo what Marcel was saying there about normies realizing this is happening, a few of my friends that are sort of casual bitcoin investors, let's say, you know, they have a couple of hundred quid saved in bitcoin. One of them text me yesterday and said, wow, bitcoin spiked against the pound. And I was like, no, no, mate, it's the other way around. The pound has crashed and bitcoins, you know, spike because of that. And you see it with all the currencies at the moment that, you know, it looks like bitcoin's doing well, really, really well. But in reality, you're like, wait, is it bitcoin doing well or is it, you know, other currencies crashing into it?

So know you.

Yeah, it's, it's a weird, wild time at the moment, isn't it?

And you're starting to see folks talk about treasury bond yields and keeping their assets in cash. It is a weird time right now with a lot of uncertainty. So we're here to unpackage all of that for you today. We're going to be diving into some of the latest greatest around what's behind this 5% rally in Bitcoin. We're going to be talking about trading strategies from Marcel today and diving into some of the biggest headlines. So if you're tuning in, tell us where you are tuning in from around the globe. We're happy to have you here on the market report. If you haven't liked and subscribed, go ahead and do so now. Turn on that notification button so you know when we go live. Every Tuesday at 12:00pm but first things first, we got to get into our weekly roundup for this week. We're going to bring you some of the biggest headlines around the Twitter sphere. So, Danila, let's go ahead and jump into our weekly roundup video for this week. We saw Charles Hodgson there get into a little beef that we're gonna get into here a little bit later with some of the Ethereum developers. So lots of big headlines to cover. But first we gotta talk memes. That's the most important part of the show. If we don't get into the memes first, we gotta get that out of the way. So let's go ahead and jump into some means. First, what do we got this week? Transferring crypto to a hardware wallet for the first time. We've all been there.

Sweating bullets or 10th time, to be honest. Sometimes it catches your eye. Oh, God. Did I do it correctly?

Always send those test transactions, folks. Never be sending the full amount. There you go. Good practice right there. J. Powell stepped down. Jay Powell from Kraken. Jesse Powell, for those who aren't familiar, last week one of the headlines, stepping down from Kraken as CEO, not the federal. Seen a few of that, too. Brett Harrison from FTX US Breaking news today stepped down as well. My husband is rich in bitcoins, but he dies, I won't understand how to spend them. Gotta keep those products in a safe spot. Our options could change everything.

Oh, God. The trader mindset, Lois.

Yeah, I'm gonna make it all back on one trade. Yeah, you're gonna make it all back to McDonald's. Dude, that. That's what's gonna happen if you try to do it all in one trade.

Burger flippers are back in style. Man, I don't know what you're talking about. Quick shout out to everyone who's tuning in today. We got yasin, we got ekin. Nadelli, we got nonso here. Catherine Rose, welcome back. Gary, what's up? Thanks for tuning in today. Wherever you are around the globe, feel free to drop those questions in for our experts. Marcel and Joe are here to answer your questions. So all of your questions we're going to be looking in chat today. We want to make sure we get those answered. So we're also giving away a one month subscription of Markets Pro. If you've been having trouble navigating these markets, Markets Pro is going to be a tool for you. So drop your Twitter handle in that chat today. We're going to be giving a one month subscription away for that today at the end of the show. So make sure you go ahead and do that. Now let's get into some market news here. We've talked about Bitcoin, the 5% gain that we've seen overnight. Why the sudden surge here and is this any kind of significant movement? We saw the mega green candle here happen overnight. But I'm going to go ahead and pull up this article written by William Suberg here. Marcel, why the sudden surge? What is behind this, this rally here?

Okay, Benton, So whenever there is no news behind a price pump or dump, I tend to do the opposite. What was pressuring Bitcoin below $19,000? And the most logical answer seems to be regulatory pressure and miners going belly up. So the real question is, are any of those issues do they damage the foundations of bitcoin? So do they impact censorships or the fixing issue scheduling? So the 900 coins that are issued per day, no, they don't. Because even if 30% of the miners or 40% of the miners go offline, as we saw when China banned bitcoin mining, I think back in 2021 or so, yes, the hash rate goes down, the network gets less power behind it. So one can say that less secure. But it adjusts every 14 days. So for the users, even if you're holding or if you're using exchange, it doesn't matter. It's not going to change. Bitcoin is not going to get less secure because there are less miners because there's going to be an adjustment in 14 days or so. And for censorship resistance, you got to think that even if someone steals those miners or buy those miners at the chip, they still have to pay for the energy to suppress the mining. And the energy is not cheap. So even if you get old S19 miners from a bankrupt company, you're not going to be able to perform a 51% attack for free. Or a low cost because the energy involved is huge. So once the investors realized that those were basically fud, the regulation can hamper stablecoins or whatever can damage exchange, but not the bitcoin network itself. It's going to be continue issuing blocks every 10 minutes and transactions can be done without censorship. So once the FUD goes away, the price goes back to 19, $20,000. So I think that's what's happening here. The FUD faded away.

It's good insights there. And I see Temtem in chat here saying it was a fake pump because DXY didn't dump when BTC pumped. On the other hand, SPX was dipping to new lows. Joe, what's your take here? Are we going to break through 20k now?

It looks like we're barting as we speak. We seem to be taking the, we took the elevator up and now we seem to have, you know, gone along the roof terrace and then we're taking the elevator back down again by the looks things. And it, it also seems to be quite a low volume pump. There was, you know, as Marcel said, there's no news that seems to be forcing this rise in prices. So what's causing it? Okay, is it shorts getting wrecked? Is it some buyer that we don't know about that's come on the scene and bought, you know, a thousand bitcoin up overnight? There doesn't seem to be anything in the woodworks yet. So it could be the textbook bark Bart even playing out, which is the classic, you know, feed the whale strategy. So when you see this sort of thing playing out, it's because someone is trying to get hold of your coins and trying to, someone is trying to unseat you from the position you're in. So what do we do to the whales? Don't feed them. Don't feed the whales. Starve them. So yeah, I mean I wouldn't be surprised if we're back down at 19ish by tomorrow and the next day. Because while it's true there is some FUD clearing up, the global sort of macro backdrop isn't fantastic right now. So there could be a little bit more pain on the horizon.

Great insights there. And I want to pull a quote real quick from this article. It says, well, modest bitcoin September gains total about 0.7% of the time. Writing with BTC/USD trading pair at 2000 or 20,200. The month ends up in green. It would be the first non loss making September since 2016. So there's actually a A great graphic that we have here. So if you're looking at this price chart shows you the monthly gains or losses. So if you look back 2021 all the way to 2017, we have seen losses in September. Last time was 2016 here with 6%, 6% gain. So the month isn't over. There's a whole another week here. You know, I. And I guess the, the question then becomes, is, is the macro environment still vulnerable? And I think Joe had kind of alluded to that, saying there is way too much uncertainty in the macro scale. And this kind of leads us into our next question. Here is the volatility we've seen with the British pound. What is going on with this? Is, is bitcoin going to become a new reserve potentially for, for the uk? Joe, I know you are in that area of the world. What is your take here and what is the significance of bitcoin now that we've seen the British pound kind of crashing?

God, wouldn't that be amazing? I would. I don't know what I do. If, you know, bitcoin became legal tender here. I mean, not that bitcoin needs to be announced as legal tender anyway. At the end of the day, it's still a grassroots movement and if you decide to opt out by using bitcoin, then effectively you are making your own legal tender or your own money. So, you know, that's always the way that it's nicer that it carries out that way. But obviously what we saw with El Salvador was a president saying, you know what, we're going to make bitcoin legal tender here in the next six months. And they just went and did it. So, yeah, in a weird parallel world, maybe that is playing out right now for the United Kingdom because they've realized that the pound is effectively a shitcoin and it's going to zero against bitcoin and against a whole other number of currencies. Why is that happening? Well, the short of it is that the budget last week was awful. So the new government with this truss, who's our new prime minister, she announced this budget with Kwasi Kwateng, who's the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. And markets didn't like it. Quite simply, markets decided to dump all their pounds and fly to safety, which these days is to most people it's the dollar. But to those few that are probably tuning in right now, they realize that there was safety is bitcoin. So, yeah, I would absolutely love that environment, Benson, where we end up with pound. I'm able to Spend my bitcoin at the local shop, for example, and I'm right now in Belfast. So in Northern Ireland, which is still part of the United Kingdom, which still uses the pound, whereas 30 miles south of here in, well, Ireland and then Dublin, they use the euro. So there's this sort of weird currency remittance issue that goes on here. But soon we'll get to the situation where one pound equals one euro, euro equals one dollar, won't we? So, you know, that could also happen in the near future. All these currencies seem to really be struggling against the dollar. I'll leave it there for the time being.

And Marcel, is this the time for bitcoin to shine in the uk? What is your opinion on this kind of topic here with the British pound crashing?

Well, Bentham, so firstly it's not just the British pound or the euro. Most currencies from developed countries developed 15% or more against the dollar in 2022. So every currency faces the same destiny. Emerging currency did not collapse this year because they had already done over the past two years. But basically every currency is losing against dollar and people forget that. Fiat money as we know it's an experiment that started only 50 years ago because until 1971 those were not really banknotes, those were convertible to gold or to some other thing. They had a fixed conversion ratio. So the free float currency as we know, backed by Nothing, started only 50 years ago versus the Bitcoin which has roughly 13 years. So it's not that much of a difference. And even I was surprised to find out that UK's FX reserves, so money holding foreign currencies, including the dollar, it's less than $100 billion, which is not enough to sustain three months of imports. So if there's no new dollars entering uk, they won't be paid for. They won't be able to pay for oil, gas and whatever they import in three months time. So it made me understand how scarce the dollar is. If you're not the Federal Reserve, if you're not the issuer, you need a steady inflow of dollars to pay for imports. So that's why those other currencies are collapsing. So if it's good for bitcoin, not in this first initial phase, as long as investors seek shelter in the US dollar, as Joe said.

But that then brings up the question, I guess is, is how important is the British pound in the global currency landscape? I know you alluded to that it's not just the British pound, but in the landscape of all developed countries and Developing countries, currencies, what is its significance? And I'll start this out with, with Joe.

Yeah, sure. I mean it's also quite poetic because the UK is one of the oldest, I think it is the oldest fiat currency to have been created because the pound came off its gold standard to fund World War I. If my 16 year old history classes served me well. So then it was also an experiment and then obviously the dollar took up, or the petrodollar as it then became known from the 70s onwards was and is now the currency of choice for any developed nation around the world. I mean, to what extent could this situation pan out for the better? I actually can't see a good way out for the UK right now, which is quite strange. I don't know how the UK government could get their finances in order. And if, you know, if, as Marcel says, there's only three months of an emergency fund effectively for the UK to service the economy from then what happens in the fourth month? Do we try to print more of the pounds to convert that to dollars? You know, how does this pan out? This could be the end of a, a currency. I think when these things play out, they play out so quickly that they take everyone by surprise. So I mean could we see a.

G7 countries, they have other assets, they have gold in vault, but not US dollar. So they will have to start selling assets including treasury bonds or whatever gold. They have other assets, but they just don't have US dollars parked in cash to pay for the imports. So they need a steady inflow. That, that's what I'm saying.

Sorry.

Well, speaking of selling assets, we've heard the Chinese government and Japanese government selling dollars to buy back their own currencies. Is this creating some sort of deflationary mechanism for the dollar? Is this significant in the global stage? I'll let Marcel kind of jump in here first.

Okay, so first let's wrap up about the British pound. It seems an important global currency as UK is one of the top five countries per GDP, but it represents less than 3% of the fiat volume traded in bitcoin. So it's, I don't know, 84 or 86% traded in US dollar. Then you have the South Korean Wan that have the Japanese yen, you have the Chinese currency, then the, the great British pound and the euro with less than 3%. So it's not relevant for bitcoin. And according to a chain analysis study, the cryptocurrency users in UK are not among the top 15 countries. I think it ranks number 18. Or number 19. So it's not an important country for crypto adoption right now. Moving on to how much gbp, how much pounds are in circulation in the world. So if you only count the banknotes and the deposit at central banks, there's $1.1 trillion of GBP out there. And you compare to the global fiat money of $28 trillion. So it's not really relevant. Curiously, it's close to the crypto market cap, which stands at 950 billion versus $1.1 trillion of pounds, banknotes and deposits on central banks. So I don't think it's important. Even if it crashes, it's not so directly relevant to Bitcoin.

Very good. And so when it comes to the, the government, you're starting to see, you know, developed countries, China and Japan do this with the dollars to buy back their own currencies. What, what implications does it have for the dollar? Joe, why don't you, you jump in here.

Yeah, it could have that potential to make the dollar more deflationary, but either way it shows that the dollar has this extra utility. Everybody wants the dollar, whether they want it as a means of trade or trade balance, or they want it as a means of a store of value. Say you're in a developing country, you might not look at, you might not consider Bitcoin your store of value because it's still too volatile and therefore you'd rather have exposure to stablecoins which effectively represent the dollar. Anyway, so, so yeah, I think that the more these currency wars or these currency slow deaths, let's say, play out, the more you realize, oh my gosh, the US Dollar played an absolute blinder when it realized that it could de peg from gold, become the petrodollar, and become this sort of global currency that you can walk in the deserts of Morocco or in the mountains of Tibet and people know what $100 bill is worth. Whereas I can't do that with the British pound. I'm sure I can't do that with the, the Brazilian real, you know this, it's still the world's currency of choice. And the. Yeah, it's got a good few more years in it, hasn't it, in terms of its life, its life, its lifetime.

But, but there, there's a problem here is that, okay, we have Japan and some other countries that desperately needs dollars to build reserves and to pay for imports, but on the other end, we have Russia and China and some other countries there are selling that, having even Japan have been selling those treasuries and they're wanting to get out of the US dollar not as a reserve system, but as a global trading system. They want to buy oil directly in their currency. So they want to buy oil paying in rubbles or paying euros or whatever. And that's going to be the collapse of the dollar itself. As Joe said, even if you don't like the dollar as a country or a person, even if you don't like dollar as a store of value, if you're going to do imports and exports, you're going to have to price it in dollars. You're going to have to pay it for the bank in dollars. That's the standard monetary system of transmission. So when the dollar, when some huge countries such as Russia and China stop doing international trades in US dollars, then it's going to quickly start losing value because right now those guys are forced to buy whether or not they like it.

I want to pull up a quick highlight from this article that reads that global bonds are collapsing in their fiat currencies, which are collapsing against the dollar, which is fast losing purchasing power and so safe. And Amos, the author of Bitcoin Standard, says it will be months and years before the average fiat user realizes just how much they're getting ruined financially. The new normal is poverty. Let's, let's unpackage this. Let's take a second to actually process what he's saying here. Joe, what is your take on Safavian's thoughts here?

Yeah, I mean he's the author of the Bitcoin Standard, an Austrian guy with really sometimes wild views about things. I think he's very right about Bitcoin. And here he's talking about the death of fiat currencies in relation to his latest book, the Fiat Standard, which talks about all the ways in which fiat money has ruined our lives. And he covers everything from seed oils, cooking oils basically, to his latest thing that he was discussing on Twitter over the past two days was whether or not cast iron pans are a scam. So I often take his opinions with a pinch of salt, excuse the pun, just because he likes to come out with really sort of brash, heavy hitting statements. For example, poverty is the new normal. I mean, that's a terrifying statement, isn't it? I don't think poverty is going to be the new normal per se, because as Marcel alluded to earlier, there are still assets in the world. A house is still going to be worth one house, you know, because people still need somewhere to live. There will be some weird mechanism that plays out in order to save the currencies around the world. But yeah, Seyfedunamus is a, he's one of the most toxic maximalists out there, if I can say it like that. You should read his work. By all means, definitely do. Like the bitcoin standard is, you know, for many people it's the bible for bitcoin books. But the fiat standard for me pushed the boat out a bit too far because yeah, he has expert opinions on things which he seems to not have much research or have done, you know, dubious amounts of research into. So yeah, just pinch of salt is what I'm saying. I don't think, I don't think poverty is going to be the new normal just yet. Or at least I hope not.

Marcel, is there any cause for concern with, with people holding dollars right now or being involved with the fiat ecosystem? Is there any risk that you're seeing with being involved with that for the time being until we're able to kind of get out of the storm, so to speak?

No, Ben, I don't see any risk for those investors that are exiting fiat or weaker currencies to buy the US dollar. It makes sense. If you're afraid of investing in stocks or cryptocurrencies or bonds or whatever and you're stuck with a lame fiat, just Change it to US$. Makes sense for this first moment. The problem is energy prices because energy is not something you can print. So if the country does not have reserves to import gas or to import oil or whatever and it's not self sufficient, then the industries and the consumption will have to go down. So this is what's going to cause the crisis. It's not about the inflation, it's not about the devaluing currency devaluation. It's because the price of energy went up because of a series of mistakes government made, series of bets that went wrong and they're still shutting down nuclear engines, nuclear power plants right now. So they're continuing to make mistakes and the population is going to suffer. It's not they're going to be poverty necessarily, but the energy costs will not be reduced going down over the next two or three years. There's no magic way to fix it.

So while we're kind of talking about.

The amount you have free to consume every month is going to go down drastically.

I guess. While we're on this topic of climate, I see BJ in chat there says any thoughts on EWTN in the Climate and Energy Implications on Crypto Assets in the US published recently. Is this something that you all were able to read because I did not.

Ewt.

EWT what? Energy web.

I'm not sure.

Is it, is it with wind maybe or.

I don't know, maybe that's a, a question for another. Another show. All right, let's keep this moving along because we do have a couple other articles that we need to dive into today, one of which was the Charles Hodgkinson beef with Evan Van Ness. So Hodgson called the Ethereum merge a flawed POS implementation, claiming custodial staking would create issues for the network in the long run. Well, what happened here? Looks like we had a little exchange of words. Vitalik. Charles was getting into it. Guys, is this just another tribal beef between, you know, two former co founders of Ethereum? Joe, why don't, why don't you jump in here? I'm curious to hear your take.

Oh, Charles, he's, he's good fun to observe as he goes about his life in the post Ethereum world. I think he must still be a little bit hurt about how the Ethereum foundation sort of semi kicked him out from the founding of Ethereum eight years ago now. So I think he might be a bit resentful of the fact that Vitalik successfully implemented proof of stake or Vitalik and Ethereum and all the devs together. So I think that him calling out proof of stake on Ethereum and saying it's unfair or it's not properly implemented is also a way of saying buy my bags, that is buy my cardano. Buy my ada. My proof of stake is better than your proof of stake. I don't know how much credence I give to these little jousts you see on Twitter because sometimes my cynical hat with a cynical hat on, I'm like, are they just engagement farming? Because they know that when a Vitalik is attacked by a Hoskinson, you know, this is two big cats going against each other in the wild. And I think that's the first time anyone has ever compared Vitalik buterin to a big cat.

Marcel, is this where we're at right now with crypto though, is that nobody else has anything better to talk about, so you're just seeing two of the head honchos kind of go head to head about who's whose proof of stake is better.

I think when you get to the, out of the technical debates in crypto, whether it's about beef, how to fry pans, if eggs are healthy or not, or if the COVID vaccine works or not, you get crypto experts or financial experts to give advice, as Joseph said, about subjects they haven't studied for the past five to 10 years. So you should simply disregard those opinions. And even if Charles Hodgson is talking about Ethereum and he definitely understands how it works, he has no idea about the plan that Vitalik is trying to implement for the future because he hasn't been actively working on Ethereum development for the past five years. So he's not the right person to go to ask for comments. And he's also the CEO, founder or whatever of a competitor. So obviously he's gonna bad mouth Vitalik's job. So he's not the right person to ask for an opinion.

Yeah, I, I think it's kind of silly and I, I side with Joe here because I do think there is always something behind the scenes going on whether we, we see a public facing or not. I would like to think it's like two people arguing about whose lightsaber is cooler. Like it's just like let's get everybody a lightsaber and then everyone can. Okay, then you can argue about it. But like let's get the mass adoption zoom out for a second. Let's get the technology adopted first before we start having these arguments. But that was our biggest headlines for this week for the market news. I see the the chat is absolutely electric today, so we appreciate everyone that's chiming in. Don't forget to drop your Twitter handle in there. One month free of markets Pro. I'm going to tell you a little bit later in the show why you want to drop your Twitter handle in there because we're going to show you two tokens that you should have been watching on the platform. But first things first, we got to get into our crypto tips for this week. All right. Do you have trouble choosing that long term coin? Well, I got some tips for you folks. When buying that long term investors must remember the majority of altcoins will not exist in just a few years. Go back, look at the charts from five years ago, seven years ago and see what the top 10 coins were compared to now. So it's similar to the dot com bubble of the early 2000s. Most altcoins are expected eventually fade away and become worthless. A long term coin will have a higher adoption rate in commerce and stores. Ripple has already begun moving into stores and banks, which is a good sign. Investors planning on investing large sums of money for long term must ensure that coin choice will last. But seriously, real risk is a coin becoming obsolete in the future, rendering your entire long term investment worthless. So keep that in mind, we use Ripper Heel as an example, not necessarily endorsing that, but look for those utilities, look for those big institutions getting integrated in with these projects. If you look back@that.com era, web2era, you saw the AOLs, you saw the yahoos come out and lead the pack at first. Then what happened? Well, Google came in and made some advancements and nobody could catch up. Amazon came in, nobody could catch up. So keep that in mind. There's a lot of extrapolations you can make from the web 2 era into the web 3 era and making your long term coin investments. All right, well, I know Marcel's got some trading insights for us this week. He's going to talk about some of the news and information that you want to take notes get. It's time to get out your pen and pad, folks. It's note taking time for Marcel's trading insights this week. Marcel, you take it away.

Okay, Ben. So guys, let's be honest here. The Ethereum merge was a flop. It was expected to bring some attention or maybe new investors flow to cryptocurrencies. And it didn't. And what was the problem? The problem was, and it always is timing. So the total crypto market capitalization had lost 2/3 of its value on the previous 10 months. Moreover, let's face it, the decentralized applications, the demand for that vanished from the earth for multiple reasons. And once we understand the reasons behind the depths, failure or the bad timing, the bad moment, we will be able to understand when we're gonna expect a new pump. So firstly, the gaming sector imploded. First it was Axie Infinity. The game had over 2 million monthly active users and it suffered a hack on the tune of $600 million back in March. So Sky Mavis, the developer had to reduce the payout to avoid a flu blow up. And users saw their NFTs in the game and the token value of the game quickly lose value. So they exited the game. A couple of months later we had the movement game stepn dropping 70% in 30 days. And right after that it was banned from mainland China. So the gaming sector demand just vanished. Reason number two, the DeFi yields, they were greatly reduced. So beside the implosion of the Terra Luna ecosystem, the fall of centralized entities that were previously boosting the returns on stablecoin deposits and defi applications, they caused a sharp downturn on yields. So stablecoin deposits, for example, they used to pay up to 20% per year and now the yields are below 4%. So the user, the users simply exited the system. Reason number three, metaverse and NFT markets, they basically flopped. The OpenSea transaction volume is down 98% from the peak. That doesn't mean that there will never be a bull run in NFT and NFT marketplaces. But it means that those projects that depended on selling land and digital assets to continue developing and paying out marketing expenses, they no longer have this option. So proof in point, Decentraland and DecentBox, the two largest metaverse projects, are down 80, 87 or 88 from the peak. So the truth is the merge was doomed fail because it happened at a period where Ethereum average fees plunged from $20 or $30 to the current $2. So there was no magic that could be done to savage this rack because the demand for the decentralized applications was just not there. So forget about lower fees or lower coin insurance inflation because no one seems to care for that right now. So consequently, unless there's some real demand for decentralized applications and services, we will not see another bull run. So forget about the story of coin issuance and fees. What's going to drive the price up is users activity demand for decentralized application.

Excellent points. And Joe, I, I know you have some, some also some things to be talking about here, but I, I want to emphasize that one point you made about Metaverse NFTs. It's so early in the development of all of this stuff that it is so hard to attract that, that core audience and they continue to build the mainstream bridges over there. So great, great analysis there Marcel. I'll let, I'll hand this over to, to Joe though, because I think you have a couple things that you'd like to touch on as well.

Yeah, for sure. Thanks Marcel. Yeah, that was, I was actually taking notes there, to be quite honest with you. Noted that Ethereum merge was a flop and unless there's no real demand, there is no bull run. So don't forget kids, for me. Yeah, I actually wanted to just elaborate a little bit more on the currency collapse that's playing out and highlight some people that had already weirdly they predicted this. I mean, who knew this was coming? Who knew that printing trillion or billions of dollars of money all around the world with different currencies would lead to the situation we're in now. The first one was Matt Odell on Twitter shared a tweet and I'll just read it for you now, which is all about the milkshake experiment, which is quite an interesting idea and basically it's that as The US dollar is weakening, but at the same time all other fiat currencies around the world are weakening more. And because the dollar is the bedrock of the global economy, meaning USD is used to buy anything worldwide, it will kill all the other currencies before it itself implodes. And the comparison here is that it's like a milkshake, because when you mix all the other currencies together, the dollar is the only thing left standing. And I guess everyone wants a sip of that milkshake at the end of it. But it's really weird just to see this theory, which was once a theory play out in real life as the euro went quite, quite early, as it. It re. It reached pound, euro, sorry, dollar, euro parity. And then the pound, my currency from my home country also followed and is almost at pound dollar parity. And the second one was to bring up the tweet from Jack Dorsey in I think it was early 2021. You know, Jack Dorsey is a really interesting figure, right? He, he from being the CEO of Twitter to now going full time into creating bitcoin companies. He's also, you know, studies a lot about money and monetary systems. And he tweeted on October 23, 2021, so what is almost a year ago now, he basically said, hyperinflation is happening. Ah, thank you for showing the screen. It's going to change everything. It's happening. So there we go. There's a tweet up on the screen. Hyperinflation is going to change everything. It's happening. And he was ridiculed back then. I don't know if we remember, but a lot of people were saying, oh, it's never going to happen. This isn't Weimar Republic, Germany or Venezuela, or you name the country that's experienced hyperinflation recently, whether it's Lebanon or Turkey or whatever. And you look at the dollar now, which has double digit inflation. The, the pound has double digit inflation. If you told me this two years ago, I would not have believed you. Maybe a year ago I was starting to think about it seriously. And here we are in September of 2022 and it looks like hyperinflation is within touching distance. And it's quite scary and surreal to see it all play out. So it was just to elaborate a little bit more on the currencies that we were talking about earlier and say that, yeah, some of the bitcoiners out there, they realized it might be happening. So maybe we should listen to the bitcoiners a bit more.

Wait, how did like how do we know we're in like a hyperinflation, like state, I guess. What, what are some main like indicators that you're looking for?

I have a couple. One is that things that shouldn't be stores of value become stores of value. And I, I, when I was studying university, I got really fascinated with Venezuela situation and it was things like a hair dryer and a microwave. Well, the classic is like secondhand vehicles. They are sold for substantially more than what you bought them for originally. And we saw this in America last year because the secondhand car market went through the roof. And you know, you could get your. The classic. Yeah. Was it the Toyota Corolla? You're laughing, Ben, did you experience this first half?

Because I know it's true. Because it's true.

So there you go. There's your one sign of hyperinflation. And yeah, it can be really obscure. Things, you know, you're selling, you want to get a new hairdryer or something and you sell it for twice the price you bought it for a year ago. Because, you know, hyperinflation isn't just about the fact that the currency is going up. It's also indicative of the fact that the currency is also going belly. Sorry, the economy is also going belly up because you're struggling to get those imports. You know, this is what Marcel alluded to earlier. I'm trying to think of it. Have you got any others, Marcel? I mean, obviously Brazil is more hyperinflationary than other countries around the world. Are there some sort of obscure or everyday examples there?

Well, I think that I saw an example today. I think it was forgot the country, it was not Brazil. But the sugar or the basic supplies on supermarkets are subsidized there. So there were people fighting for sugar at supermarket, which is not really expensive there. But the problem, the issue is that you pay, I don't know, a dollar for the sugar packed and you can resell it because it's subsidized and you can resell it on the street five minutes later for $3. So people were scrambling trying to buy the sugar. And even for me was what the hell was those guys trying to arbitrage? Sugar, what the fuck? But then you understand that earning $2, if you do it, 10 packs, and if you do it, I don't know, five times a week, it's a month salary. And if you live in a third world country, it's a lot of money. So I think those little things are more important than the price of the houses or the stock market going up because the poor guy, the average guy, doesn't care about the stock market, doesn't care about the housing prices, he cares about the day to day living costs. So that's what I think. It's more essential.

We've had another example come to head and it was about a sign which said, please don't fly tip money. Which means, you know, please don't throw away money because, you know, when pennies and coins, you know, like 1 pence or a 2 pence or a 5 pence, 10 pence pieces, when they effectively become worthless and they're sitting around your house, you just go, well, I'll just throw it in the bin because it's worthless. And there was a sign on a. It's like a fake website that does like sort of jokey news that's almost true. And it was saying like, you know, please stop throwing away all your 10, 10 pennies into the lake. You know, it's polluting the lake. And I had to like do a double take and be like, wait, is that real? I'm not actually sure here. And you know, double checked. But it's the sort of thing that I'm like, oh God, we're getting close to that stage where, you know, 10 pence used to buy you like a small chocolate bar or, you know, sweets or even like a tiny carton of milk. Now it gets you nothing. Like the 10 pence is literally basically worthless.

It's a shitcoins. Everything's turning into a shitcoin. Literally a shitcoin.

No.

So I know you have. Is there another article, I think, talking about some mainstream headlines here? Oh, yes. Anything else that you want to touch on, Joe?

Yeah, I'd love to fire up the headline of the New York Times article piece that was released just an hour ago. It's just part of a quick sort of financial update. And it basically talks about. You'll never guess who's just arrived. It's the head of video at Cointelegraph. It's Jackson. I'll have to get him to come around onto the camera. Surprise appearance, but yeah, basically talking about how currencies around the world are tumbling except bitcoin. So they brought up the fact that bitcoin spiked six and a half percent overnight and has gone up over the past seven days. But while that's interesting in of itself, this is also on the New York Times. So the New York Times only really talks about bitcoin when it's dying or when it's completely spiking Right. This is like classic mainstream media territory is what I used to do at Bloomberg as well. We to some extent celebrate it when it's high and then we lambast it and we kick it down when it's low. And here the New York Times is talking about bitcoin in a uncertain period where the dollar is sort of this flight to safety, and yet they're also talking about bitcoin in the same breath. It's bizarre. So maybe we're also seeing a sort of weird turning point with mainstream media journalists who are also realizing, oh, maybe there's something to this bitcoin thing and I should do a bit more research. So, yeah, interesting times. Should I get Jackson to come around?

Excellent. Let's get Jackson on the show. Jackson, get on here.

Jackson, come get on the show, man.

We're live. We're live. Say hello to our world. What's up? There he is, the head of video. What's up? Special guest appearances. Good deal. All right, well, we appreciate Marcel, Joe, thank you guys for talking us through some of those insights. Big stuff coming up for us. We got to jump into our Markets Pro segment this week, so let's go ahead and talk about some of the two coins that you should have watching that lit up the Richter scales from the news quake alerts and from the vortex score this week. So let's go ahead and jump into our Markets Pro segment for this week. All right, well, we saw newsquake happen this week for xrp. Newsquakes are those automated alerts that instantly notify users when market moving events happen. In addition to traders increasing optimism about the outcome of the Ripple lawsuit, Ripple also announced this week that it would expand its partnership I remit. Around the same time, it announced a partnership with BitPay, which also allows merchants to accept XRP as payment. News Quakes alerted Markets Pro subscribers to all of this news as it dropped on September 21. At the time, XRP was trading at right around 40 cents. Traders who bought this price point could have benefited from a 35 increase when XRP's price later peaked at 54 cents. The next day, another news quake alerted traders of Ripple's partnership with Armin Van Buren's label. And traders who waited until this price point could have seen a 22.7% price increase. So big news surrounding Ripple this week. Lots of big news quakes from the Markets Pro platform. Again, you gotta have the Markets Pro platform. That's why we're giving away one month subscription today for all those folks. Not all the folks but for a select winner inside of the chat, who drops their Twitter handle in there. Moving on, let's get into the Vortex Score. Vortex score this week, last week, I guess I should say lit up for dig. Feel like we've talked about dig a couple times here on the show. And the Vortex Score and the dig just love each other for whatever reason. And the Vortex Score is a comparison between the current market and social conditions of those in the past. Score of 80 or above considered confidently bullish, conversely, indicates historically bearish conditions. A crypto winter drags on and a few coins are performing according to historically bullish patterns. However, Digg is one of the few assets for which Vortex Score algorithm continues to note potential trading opportunities based on historical trends. High Vortex scores briefly flashed for the asset on September 20th when it was trading at $3,331. And then a few days later, it jumped up to about $4,000 with a big increase of 20% gains. That is huge. So, again, that's why you got to use the market sport platform for the Vortex scores and the newsquake. So drop that Twitter handle in the chat. We're gonna be picking that winner here shortly. All right, let's get into some closing thoughts today, guys. What are you going to leave our audience with here? What kind of words of wisdom? What kind of light at the end of the tunnel? Can you leave folks here with? Joe, why don't you kick us off first?

Sure. I mean, I've just, I just checked the charts there when you were talking about markets pro, and we've barted really hard. We're now, you know, sub, sub 19k. So I guess one of the things is, if you're a trader, don't forget to take profits on the way up. In real life, hug your kids if you got kids. If not, hug your, hug your pets. It's dark and stormy out there. And just remember, it's never, never too late to do the right thing in life. So, yeah, I'll leave you with some words of advice there rather than some sort of monetary or fiscal advice. And of course, buy Bitcoin. You know, what else are you going to do with your money? If you've got anything left over at the end of the end of the month, buy some bitcoin. And that's me.

Very good.

All right.

And Marcel, what you got for us this week?

Okay, Benton, so my general tip for this week would be, guys, stop searching for the plants, the little things, and start looking at the forest, because we're losing sense to what's happening out there with the world, with our friends, with our family, with the countries, with war and etc. So I'm not saying that you should log in at CNN to watch the news, but you should go outside, talk to friends and to talk to the community and maybe you're gonna get a different feeling from what's on TV and maybe you're gonna have a different ideas about life and what to do because sometimes you just lose too much time watching at charts and that's not what likely, that's not what's gonna make you a brilliant idea and make you extremely wealthy and going outside and talking, talking to people and having ideas and putting budding concepts in practice, even if it's a WhatsApp group and you find friends, wow, why don't we build this kind of business? Why don't we build this lighting network experiment or wherever. It's when you converse, when you talk with other people that those great ideas emerge. So I'll do more of that.

Getting philosophical on us this week, Marcel. Love it. Bear Market's not going anywhere folks. You're not going to be missing much. So even in these little 5% rallies we see quick drawdown. The fake outs are here. That's going to do it for this week. I want to go ahead and give away our Markets Pro subscription. So I see Tajira Ojada and that is at tjs M A L L S. Congratulations. You are now a one month subscription winner for Markets Pro. So congrats to Jijira. Thank you everyone for tuning in from around the globe. We love having you here on the show. We can't wait to bring you hopefully what will be more green next week so that we can talk about what is next for the macro markets and hopefully we will start to make moves towards what will one day be a bull market that we will all remember. If you haven't liked, subscribe, go ahead and do so now. We appreciate everyone for tuning in from around the globe. This has been the Market report on Cointelegraph. Until next time.

Sa.