As of Fri, Dec 25, 08:00 GMT (UTC +08:00)
USDJPY, +0.01%, $110.29
EURUSD, +0.18%, $1.1414
GBPUSD, 0.00%, $1.2718
USDCAD, +0.07%, $1.3601
AUDUSD, -0.07%, $0.7043
NZDUSD, -0.03%, $0.6725
S&P500, -2.71%, 2,351.10
Nasdaq, -2.21%, 6,192.92
Nikkei Futures, -2.09%, 19,332.0
HOLIDAY WRAP
- Investors did not receive any notable economic data on Monday. The stock and bond markets were both closed on Tuesday for Christmas.
- The S&P 500 fell -2.71% on Monday, as follow-through selling and unsettling developments in Washington served to further dampen investor sentiment. Trading action was cut short with the stock market closing early ahead of Christmas Day.
- A nettlesome headline that dampened investor sentiment involved the news that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made an unexpected call to the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks on Sunday. That call was intended to shore up confidence in the U.S. financial system at a time of heightened market volatility, yet it proved unsettling to the market giving its timing, which followed on the heels of a huge loss for stocks last week, the start of a partial government shutdown, and rumors – refuted by Mnuchin, that Trump had discussed firing Fed Chair Powell. Trump for his part tweeted that, “…the only problem our economy has is the Fed.”
The development team behind altcoin Bitcoin Private (BTCP) has confirmed the creation of 2.04 million units of BTCP “that were never intended to exist on the blockchain”. During the import of Bitcoin (BTC) chain data, an additional 2.04 million units of altcoin BTCP, about $3.9 million, were secretly minted. Per the project’s white paper, the total supply of BTCP is equal to around 20.4 million coins, while the secretly premined BTCP brought “the initial supply to 22.6 million.” The BTCP core team says in today’s statement that upon receiving the reports, they “immediately launched an investigation to ascertain whether or not the alleged findings of an additional amount of BTCP coins were true.” The BTCP team writes that they have contacted major crypto exchange HitBTC about the situation.
GMO Internet Exits Bitcoin Miner Production After Recording ‘Extraordinary Loss’ in Q4
Japanese internet giant GMO Internet Group is quitting the Bitcoin mining hardware sector. GMO will further relocate its mining operation “to a region that will allow us to secure cleaner and less expensive power supply.” GMO’s consolidated losses for Q4 totalled 35.5 billion yen ($320 million), while the unconsolidated loss tally will be around 38 billion yen ($334.5 million). The company said that the losses had not impacted its “financial integrity.” Conversely, in November, the company had reported “historical” performance of its cryptocurrency projects in Q3, which included mining hardware sales. Profits had totalled 2.6 billion yen ($22.8 million).
Ex-CIA Official Claims Blockchain Is ‘Biggest Threat’ to Future of US National Security
A former CIA intelligence officer, Andrew Bustamante, claims that blockchain is super powerful stuff that represents a threat to America’s national security. Bustamante did not further on his remarks but he acknowledged one other Redditor’s response, who asked him for clarification in regard to blockchain versus developments in quantum computing — to which Bustamante responded with “fair point!!!” Bustamante’s exclamation spawned a discussion of the possibility that quantum computing will “forever alter” the cryptographic protection that underpins blockchain — thus specifically attributing Bustamante’s “bring it down” to an argument along this vein. One Redditor suggested his remarks could refer to “the persistent possibility of untraceable, anonymous transactions [that] can happen” on blockchains as being one type of national security threat allegedly posed by the technology. Another pointed to the potential for “falsified” data — i.e. hijacking the blockchain for the purposes of disinformation — which would allegedly become all the more pernicious when stored in an immutable blockchain-based system.