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Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, could be released on Friday, two days ahead of his scheduled release date of Sept. 29th (Sunday), according to an interpretation of the law. The U.S. Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Prisons rule states that "The Bureau of Prisons may release an inmate whose release date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, on the last preceding weekday unless it is necessary to detain the inmate for another jurisdiction seeking custody under a detainer, or for any other reason which might indicate that the inmate should not be released until the inmate's scheduled release date." The decision may depend on the discretionary authority given to Wardens. The Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for clarification and comment sent outside of office hours from CoinDesk. CZ was sentenced to four months in prison in April after pleading guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to set up an adequate know-your-customer (KYC) program at Binance. If released on Friday, CZ would have spent 116 days in prison. He spent three months at a low-security prison, Lompoc II, on California’s central coast before being moved to a halfway house in San Pedro, California in late August. "We are delighted that CZ will be home with his family. While he is not managing or operating Binance, we are excited to see what he does next," a Binance spokesperson said. "Since last year, Binance has continued to thrive under the leadership of our current team, surpassing 230 million users globally." |
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Impressive gains since the U.S. Federal Reserve's mid-September rate cut and subsequent China stimulus plans have pushed bitcoin (BTC) out of its downtrend, according to a new research report. "FOMO is Back: Are You Holding Enough Bitcoin and Altcoins to Ride the New Wave," is the title of 10X Research's Markus Thielen's latest analysis. "With bitcoin breaking above $65,000, we anticipate a swift move toward $70,000, followed by new all-time highs in the near term." Thielen took note of a sharp increase in stablecoin minting following the Fed's July meeting, at which it left rates unchanged but indicated a September easing was likely. Nearly $10 billion in stablecoin minting ensued in the subsequent weeks, said Thielen, flooding the crypto markets with liquidity and sharply surpassing spot ETF flows. Of particular interest, said Thielen, Circle's USDC accounted for 40% of recent stablecoin inflows, a far higher share versus Tether's USDT than is typical. It's important, he said, as while USDT minting on TRON is typically associated with capital preservation, USDC minting could indicate a rise in DeFi activity. |
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Bitcoin Tracking With China |
Bitcoin (BTC) prices seem to have tracked the growth in the Chinese central bank's balance sheet over the past eight years, maintaining a notable positive 30-day correlation. The People's Bank of China (PBOC), holds roughly $6.22 trillion worth of U.S. dollars on its balance sheet. At press time, the 30-day correlation coefficient between bitcoin's price and the PBOC's balance sheet size was 0.66, according to data source TradingView. Its always been positive except 2016 and from late 2022 to 2023. On the other hand, as of writing, bitcoin had a -0.88 correlation over 30 days with the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, the lowest on record since 2016. A strong correlation means a co-efficient of 0.6-0.9, and 0.8-1 is considered a very strong correlation. Correlations are a statistical measure of how two variables are related and can be used in financial markets to predict or track asset prices. The positive correlation is noteworthy as early this week, the PBOC said it was considering injecting up to 1 trillion yuan ($142 billion) of capital into its biggest state banks to increase their capacity to support the struggling economy. The central bank also cut the reserve requirement ratio for mainland banks by 50 basis points (bps) while lowering the seven-day reverse repo rate – the interest rate at which a central bank borrows funds from commercial banks – by 20 bps to 1.5%. BTC has gained nearly 3% this week and is up over 10% for the month, according to CoinDesk data. Asian stocks led by China have also surged in the wake of PBOC's stimulus bazooka. The CSI 300 Index of large-cap shares soared 4.5% on Friday, bringing this week’s gain to 16% in the biggest run since 2008. |
Crypto Donates $40M to Brown's Ohio Foe |
The colossal campaign spending from the cryptocurrency industry is showing up in dominant fashion in Ohio's U.S. Senate race, where its political action committees have devoted $40 million to support Republican Bernie Moreno's opposition of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the crypto-skeptical chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. In the largest single outlay of campaign spending from the digital assets sector, the latest Federal Election Commission filings show Fairshake PAC and its affiliates – specifically Defend American Jobs – have far outdistanced the initial $12 million the group announced at the start of its Ohio engagement. The spending, which has been devoted to pro-Moreno advertising, is the most any group has so far committed to this battleground. Since Fairshake weighed in last month, the sentiment of Ohio voters has shown a major leap for blockchain businessman Moreno. At the start of August, he was at 39.6% support in one industry poll of likely voters obtained by CoinDesk, compared with 48.3% for Brown. The latest polling by ActiVote shows Moreno potentially pulling ahead with 51% to Brown's 49%, though that poll carried an almost 5% margin of error. A broader average of polling also suggests steady gains for Moreno, with a 2.3 percentage point increase since Fairshake leapt into Ohio, according to the running tally of polls maintained by FiveThirtyEight.com, a political analysis site. Some crypto insiders have expressed private discomfort with Fairshake's decision to try to dethrone Brown, who currently has control of a significant segment of the Senate's crypto agenda. If Brown wins, and the Senate remains under a Democratic majority, he'll retain that authority, and this open warfare could hurt the industry's legislative drive. The decision had already cost the goodwill of one of Fairshake's significant donors and has resulted in ill will among high-profile Democrats. |
The Takeaway: CBDC Interoperability Threat |
By Temujin Louie, CEO of Wanchain: Many of the world’s central banks are years into developing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Per the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), 94% of the world’s central banks are actively working on CBDCs, while 19 of the G20 nations were in advanced stages of CBDC development prior to this month. However, recent government decisions suggest changing sentiment around CBDCs. On September 23, Canada announced it was shifting its focus away from a retail CBDC to a focus on “broader payments.” This announcement closely follows Australia’s pivot to a wholesale CBDC over a retail currency. Decisions regarding CBDC development impact more than an individual country’s citizens and financial system. They have serious implications for a problem facing the broader Web3 ecosystem – a lack of interoperability. CBDCs are more than just government-controlled digital money. They are a complex ecosystem that must account for different participants, use cases, tech stacks, data formats, and governance models. Not to mention, they must also be compatible with foreign CBDCs and legacy systems. Rolling out a functional CBDC is a tall order. However, it is not without parallel. The world’s central banks are well aware of the formidable task ahead of them and have rightly been considering interoperability from the start. If anything, creating an interoperable CBDC ecosystem is even more daunting than Web3 interoperability. International cross-border payments, just one use case for CBDCs, are a complex and fragmented web of pre-existing, independent domestic payment systems and currency exchange challenges. As such, central banks face enormous constraints when designing CBDCs. The pressure is on to be interoperable with legacy, contemporary, and, ideally, future financial systems. Beyond the obvious technical challenges, CBDCs must also comply with multiple legal and regulatory frameworks. Sound familiar? Read the rest |
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