Crypto Market Overview October 20th | Dex-Trade
Aaron Iovine Crossed to the "Dark Side" to JPMorgan
The former chief executive of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius (CEL), Aaron Iovine, didn’t give up and was promoted to executive director of digital asset regulation policy at US investment banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. Iovine previously served as head of policy and regulation at Celsius for eight months, from which he left in September as soon as the company filed for bankruptcy. A JPMorgan spokesman confirmed that he was indeed hired by JPMorgan, but neither his direct duties in the company nor the rate are known at the moment. Notably, Iovine’s boss will now be Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan, who recently told the US Congress that cryptocurrencies are “decentralized Ponzi schemes.” That is, Dimon is an open and fierce crypto-skeptic. True, his “toxic” view still prevents him from realizing the value of blockchain technology and being interested in decentralized finance (DeFi). Celsius, meanwhile, has already paid more than $3 million in legal fees to a number of law firms as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. This includes approximately $2.6 million paid to law firm Kirkland and Ellis for work completed during the two weeks July 13-31, and another $750,000 to law firm Akin Gump, the nature of which has yet to be disclosed.
No One Will Mine Bitcoin at $12,000: a Pinch of Pessimism from Frank Holmes
According to the CEO of the US Global Investors investment company, Frank Holmes, if the price of Bitcoin falls below $12,000, the vast community of miners around the world will simply stop doing their job, as further mining of the flagship crypto blocks will simply become unprofitable. Holmes spoke about this in an interview with the financial publication Benzinga yesterday, October 19. However, he also stated that Bitcoin has the potential to outperform gold in terms of growth and even stability, but for this it will need the “help of millennials” who must challenge the precious metal’s status as a store of value that has maintained a monopoly for hundreds of years. However, despite the regular attempts by the bulls to take the lead and push up the crypto-gold rate above $20,000, the miner community seems to remain indifferent to these events and continues to actively mine new blocks. In particular, this is evidenced by the fact that the Bitcoin mining hashrate reached a new historical maximum in early October. Will such enthusiasm continue if Bitcoin crashes to $12,000? This is a difficult question. However, given the active promotion of the bill to ban PoW crypto in the European Union, the profitability of its production may well become negative.
Sam Bankman-Fried and his Regulatory “Fantasies”
FTX CEO and Founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has taken the regulatory framework for crypto regulation seriously and presented to the general public the ideal framework for the regulatory process, in his opinion, which he would like to see work on in the near future. While Bankman-Fried wants a free market for traders, he still believes there should be limits. For example, there should be some sort of blacklist: traders can do whatever they want as long as they don't break the rules and are added to the list. According to Sam Bankman-Fried, there should be a database with a long list of addresses associated with illegal activities in the past. However, he argues that peer-to-peer transactions should be seamless, unless the address belongs to a trader under sanctions. The concept of a crypto-businessman is built on the opposite of whitelists, the protocol of work with which involves the addition of participants in operations with digital assets upon request. In his opinion, the use of white lists implements a scenario in which some small traders will be forced out of the market. Although, the document published by Bankman-Fried does not say anything about the fact that the database containing the blacklist will also be available to everyone, and the KYC procedure has not even been implemented everywhere yet, which can lead to serious confusion with global blocking of dishonest traders.
