Interest Rates Will Keep Rising

Market situation

Bitcoin price is flat at $22,700. Altcoins rose and fell slightly similar to the previous day.

Bitcoin tends to be withdrawn from the exchange more than deposited in the past week. The amount of deposit and withdrawal on the floor also did not have a big change. This is similar to ETH. Although the price is low and is a good accumulation price, not many investors dare to buy when the price drops sharply.

Bitcoin profit rate kept around 59.7%, not much increase compared to profit rate (50.2%) when BTC price plummeted to 17,000 USD.

US stocks yesterday continued to be a declining session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.23%, the S&P 500 fell 0.67% and the Nasdaq fell 0.16%. Stock futures rose slightly in the Dow FUT and S&P FUT, while Nas FUT fell 0.11%. Oil still holds around 94 USD/barrel. Gold contract fell slightly to 1781 USD/once.

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said the Fed still has a lot of work to do before it gets inflation under control. This means the Fed is likely to increase by 0.5% in September is “reasonable” but a further 0.75% increase “may also be fine.”

Only Chicago Fed President, Charles Evans, opened the door to the possibility of another big rate hike coming. But he hopes that can be avoided and the Fed can reduce inflation without tightening policy.

So far, the US central bank has raised its key interest rate four times, totaling 2.25%. That’s because inflation is at 9.1% annually, the highest since November 1981.

Despite growing financial recession fears, the largest shopping mall owners in the United States say retailers are still moving ahead with plans to open new stores. Simon Property Group reported occupancy rates at malls and stores in the United States of 93.9% as of June 30, up from 91.8% a year earlier. According to data from Coresight Research, retailers announced 4,432 store openings while only 1,954 stores closed.

Some companies continue to have less-than-optimistic second-quarter reports. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said the company will reduce headcount by about 23%. The company also dropped its second-quarter earnings report, showing a decline in monthly active users and assets under management. Robinhood’s second-quarter revenue came in at $318 million, down from $321 million estimated, according to Refinitiv. That revenue figure is still far below the $565 million reported in Q2 2021.

In addition, the New York Department of Financial Services recently announced a $30 million fine against Robinhood for alleged violations related to anti-money laundering, cybersecurity and consumer protection laws.

Uber also reported a second-quarter net loss of $2.6 billion, $1.7 billion of which was due to investments and equity revaluations in Aurora, Grab, and Zomato. However, the company’s revenue came in at $8.07 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $7.39 billion.

A few companies still had a better second quarter. Airbnb reported a 58% increase in revenue year-over-year to $2.1 billion that helped fuel the company’s second most profitable quarter to date. The company also announced a $2 billion stock buyback program.

Starbucks says U.S. consumers are not reducing or reducing their spending on coffee despite inflation. They reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue with revenue coming in at $8.15 billion versus $8.11 billion expected. At the same time, earnings per share were 84 cents versus 75 cents expected.

Similarly, AMD reported results for the quarter ended June that beat profit and revenue estimates. However, the chipmaker gave a forecast for the current quarter that was below Wall Street’s expectations.

In general, financial markets still show unclear information and signs about financial recession or not. Companies still have signs of staff reduction, second-quarter results are not good, but there are also businesses with results that exceed expectations.

Congressman Nancy Pelosi Goes To Taiwan And Is Afraid Of Politics

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan at the beginning of the week made both countries and the world worried. According to one economist, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan increases US-China tensions and risks pushing the countries further apart.

After this news, China responded with a series of military activities around the island, including the use of long-range live ammunition in the Taiwan Strait separating the island from mainland China. China’s defense ministry said the drills began on Wednesday, involving the navy, air force and other military forces.

Many fear that there may be bad developments related to politics. If there are problems between China and Taiwan, it will have a great impact on the economy between the two countries as well as the world. Because Taiwan is supplying 63% of global chips (according to a March report by CNBC).

There have been updates given that Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is to promote human rights and make good political relations with Taiwan. It is reported that this visit is also related to the cooperation with the world’s largest electronic chip company TSMC. This cooperation is to discuss TSMC’s plan to build many headquarters in the United States after President Biden signed the Chips and Science Act providing $ 280 billion, of which 52 billion is set aside for chip companies.

Solana has a big problem

Yesterday, the Solana network was hacked with millions of dollars in the platform. Solana users discovered that their wallets had been drained of SOL, USDC, and other tokens on the platform. Mining is attributed to software in certain wallets, including Slope and Phantom. Hardware wallets are not affected.

The official Solana account on Twitter has closed the number of about 8,000 hacked wallets and at least 5 million USD in damage. Even wallets with more than six months of inactivity are affected. Currently, users holding SOL can transfer tokens to cold wallets or transfer to exchanges they trust to ensure more safety.

Another hack has also occurred recently on the Nomad cross-chain messaging protocol. Nomad is a token bridge that allows users to send and receive tokens between Avalanche (AVAX), Ethereum (ETH), Evmos (EVMOS), Moonbeam (GLMR) and the Milkomeda C1 blockchains. In this case, the hacker abused a “chaotic” security exploit to steal nearly $200 million in digital assets.

Other information:

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