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What Moved Global Markets
– Saudi Aramco met investors in Dubai on Sunday to market its initial public offering (IPO), after trying to secure demand from Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund for the deal, worth up to $25.6 billion. The Saudi Arabian stock market snapped a five-day rising streak on Sunday with lenders taking a breather after riding high on a lending boom related to Saudi Aramco’s public listing.
– Trade war: Relations between the world’s two largest economies have nose-dived amid a bitter trade war – which they are trying to resolve – and arguments over human rights, Hong Kong and U.S. support for Chinese-claimed Taiwan. The Chinese government’s top diplomat said on Saturday in a stinging attack at a G20 meeting in Japan, that the US “has already become the world’s biggest destabilizing factor.”
– US elections: Billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, jumped into the U.S. presidential race on Sunday. He joined the Democrats.
– Wall Street’s equity strategists see just a 5% gain for stocks in 2020, as U.S. economic growth slows, the pace of stock buybacks cools and volatility rises as voters prepare to head to the polls in the 2020 presidential election.
Crypto Prices (from CoinMarketCap)
Bitcoin: Down 6.96% to $6,830.74
Total trading volume (24h): $42.21+ billion USD
Ethereum: Down 8.05% to $140.02
Total trading volume (24h): $8.52+ billion USD
3 biggest movers 24 hours
Biggest Mover 1: DOS Network is up 58.94% to $0.011655
Biggest Mover 2: BUMO is up 51.09% to $0.005742
Biggest Loser: Ormeus Ecosystem is down 62.86% to $0.001966
What moved Crypto Markets (i.e. digital assets)
– First jumping to a green zone after president’s first accelerating blockchain remarks, Bitcoin then slumped to a six-month low on Friday (from $7,700 to below $6,800—an almost 12% drop): China’s central bank launched a fresh crackdown on cryptocurrencies, warning of the risks entailed in issuing or trading them. The People’s Bank of China’s Shanghai headquarters also said it would tackle growing cases of illegality involving virtual currencies. It also followed Xi Jinping’s narrative and cautioned investors not to confuse crypto with blockchain technology.
– Bitcoin was down more than 2,3% by late-night Sunday, trading at $7,159.
– Fidelity Digital Assets (FDAS), the young cryptocurrency trading business of a financial-services powerhouse, expects to sign its first exchange by the end of the year, according to its president Tom Jessop.
– Binance asked 76 institutional investors who used its platform about their trading habits: among the most surprising results was that 92% of participants chose to keep their crypto on exchanges.
Crypto ‘buzz’ Trending in Social Media
Bringing back CRYPTO BUZZ: Check out an amazingly interesting fight between The Block and CZ. The media outlet reported that Binance’s office in Shanghai had been raided by police, on which CZ replied that his company didn’t have any office in Shanghai whatsoever. CZ promised to sue The Block, The Block tried to set the record straight, CZ urged them to apologize.
Other Specialties
Fintech: JPMorgan Chase has filed a patent and is testing a private blockchain system for tracking the automobile inventory it finances for car dealers.
Healthtech: Great story on TechCrunch: spending for consumer digital healthcare companies is set to explode in the next few years; the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is currently reviewing the requirements for data sharing with the Department of Health and Human Services, and their initiatives will unlock a wave of data access never before seen in the U.S. healthcare system.
Al: The MIT Technology Review reports that a scientist claims he knows for sure where Shakespeare ends and his long-suspected collaborator begins. Petr Plecháč used machine learning to train an algorithm on the works of William Shakespeare and another writer named John Fletcher. Literary scholars began speculating on the possibility of shared authorship in 1850, and Plecháč believes he has confirmed that scholar’s theory.
Smart cities: Stockholm wins top award at the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), Stockholm received the top honour for GrowSmarter, its smart city strategy that brings together its public and private sectors to integrate 12 smart city solutions across energy, infrastructure and transportation, with the intention of replicating the solutions across Europe.
NexChangeNOW Pick of the Day
Binance’s Weibo account has been suspended. It isn’t clear why this happened but The Block speculates that Binance’s move to add fiat on-ramps on WeChat and Alipay may be behind it. www.nexchangenow.com/news/fintech/71599/binances-weibo-account-has-been-suspended/