Coinhead in the morning…
Rob “If this hammock is rockin’…” Badman is enjoying his Christmas break, so he’ll be with me for the next few days. Be patient trying to get out of your Christmas turkey coma and making the flip side of what’s going on in the world of cryptocurrencies.
Looking at this morning’s breaking news from the Majors, things look relatively stable, but a bit cavernous. BTC and ETH are down nearly 1.0% this morning as trading volumes across exchanges have increased after the mid-Christmas slowdown.
It seemed as though most of the crypto community had actually taken a break to spend time with family…or the total bandwidth of the billions of new game consoles unboxed and plugged in on Christmas morning. Attrition crawls the entire internet.
Let’s dive into some mouthwatering headlines for the morning. After that, I’ll show you some details and maybe a pretty chart.
Japan. I’m doing something crazy again…
The last few weeks have been pretty bizarre in Japan’s financial industry. The Bank of Japan recently switched to allowing the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds to rise to 0.50% from its long-preferred cap of 0.25%.
That made people rumble and the yen surged against the US dollar, up 4.0% in a day. This may not sound like much, but it’s ridiculous for real money on hand.
However, Japanese regulators are not ignoring the crypto space.
- Directly linked to fiat currency (i.e. yen, US dollar, or whatever you can use in supermarkets).
- Issued by licensed banks, registered remittance companies, and trust companies.
- It guarantees the holder the right to redeem at face value (because it is culturally very important in Japan not to lose face).
Are stablecoins used properly (such as as a store of value) or improperly (for money laundering)? However, the move is a step in the right direction to bring Japanese exchanges in line with most other major markets.
Octopus approached Pentapas after shedding many of its staff
The NEAR Protocol blockchain Octopus Network is going full grinch this Christmas, taking advantage of the happiest time of the year to cut costs by sending 12 of its 30 core employees to the bread line. Announced restructuring.
The 40% job cuts are in parallel with a 20% cut in the wages of surviving employees. This is a strong sign that your time on Octopus will be as tough as a slab of BBQ tentacles that hasn’t been softened enough.
(See, there’s a gag that cooking octopus meat to be tender takes a lot of effort and usually requires a long and thorough beating of a dead cephalopod carcass. #TheMoreYouKnow #CookingWithCrypto) .
However, Octopus CEO Louis Liu remains positive and upbeat, saying: Most Web3 startups will not survive. I wouldn’t recommend the public to launch his Web3 startup next year unless he gets backing from a large institutional investor. ”
Wait…that’s not optimistic in the slightest. And I have no idea what he means by “ordinary people.” Perhaps only Batman, Superman, and a few people with Asperger’s will be active in Liu’s version of his Web3 future.
Still, while laying off employees around Christmas time is clearly a very classy act, it nicely sums up what the proper sting of 2022 was for many small businesses.
… is Argo about to go argo-nought?
If Louis Liu’s Pentapus of Positivity isn’t all jacking you up to the milker with a good feel for how the market is handling things, Damacles’ There is an announcement that it hangs like a sword.
Hopefully, Argo has been in a very serious situation for some time, with liquidity issues compounding making a more difficult restructuring than Bogan’s flock on the Gold Coast. block.
It remains unclear if Argo is about to close shop or if it had a Christmas miracle and managed to secure a sizeable backer to keep it going, but the announcement is expected before it hits the market. , find out what method the Argonauts are taking.
Top 10 Summary
According to CoinGecko, the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization stands at US$840 billion, down 0.5% from this point yesterday.

daily pumper
- Terra Luna Classic (LUNC), (Market cap: USD 1.02bn) +7.2%
- Quants (QNT), (mc: USD 1.66 billion) +4.1%
- OKB (OKB), (mc: US$6.03 billion) +3.6%
- Ethereum PoW (ETHW), (mc: US$334 million) +3.6%
- Urb (AAVE), (mc: US$816 million) +2.8%
Daily Slumpers
- ton coin (TON), (Market cap: USD 3.18bn) -6.8%
- flux share (FXS), (Market cap: USD 329 million) -4.5%
- eCash (XEC), (mc: $449 million) -4.4%
- Hedera (HBAR), (mc: USD 1.06 billion) -4.0%
- zcash (ZEC), (MC: $509M) -3.7%
(Accurate stats at time of publication based on data from CoinGecko.com.)