Daily Digest 2/3
Insight on the top stories of the day. “Neither this post nor any other on cryptofal.com should be taken as financial advice. It is not.”
Jobless claims: Another 238,000 American filed new claims last week
Covid may still be running through the country but it is starting to slow down over the last couple of weeks and the demand for workers is starting to show that. The Labor Department showed that for the first time since October jobless claims had fallen for back-to-back weeks. For the week that ended on Jan 29th there were 238,000 claims as opposed to 245,000 they were expecting. The prior week showed 261,000 jobless claims.
“We expect claims to keep falling — though they’ll likely be unchanged next week, thanks to a seasonal quirk — with new cycle lows likely in mid-March, about six weeks later than we would have expected in the absence of Omicron,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics. On the four weeks moving average; however, jobless claims did still rise but the beginning of January and end of December was when a lot of places had to shut down again and people were fearful of getting sick. That being said we are still way down from the highs we saw at the peak of the pandemic.
While it is good that Americans are starting to go back to work again; however, until they are hired some are finding themselves in a bit of a tough situation. About 3.8 million unemployed people are now unable to claim unemployment because they have already used all of their state or federal pandemic jobless insurance. This leaves people in a tough situation because there are so many people now that will be competing for the same jobs which will leave some in an even worse position going forward.
All that being said the unemployment rate is expected to stay around 4% for now and that is thankfully the lowest we have seen since the start of the pandemic. Times have been tough over the last couple of years for a lot of the world and hopefully, these short-term numbers continue to trend in the right direction. The sooner everyone is healthy and back to work the quicker we will recover from this whole experience
Russia's Ministry of Finance Wants to Let Banks Sell Crypto: Report
Russia’s Ministry of Finance is proposing new regulations which would actually legalize cryptocurrencies as financial assets. This is just after last week when they also said they were looking to ban crypto completely from the country. It is hard to keep up with what a lot of countries are doing as far as regulating the space as everyone is approaching it differently.
All of the important decision-makers when it comes to financing in the country are all on different pages making everything more confusing. The Bank of Russia wants to ban it, the ministry wants to legalize it, and the government is undecided. This is sadly the story in most countries that no one is on the same page as to what should happen.
The blanket excuse is to just ban it when they are not sure what to do like we saw with China in May of last year. This gives them complete control of digital assets tracking since they are frontrunners to put out the first functioning CBDC. Putting outright bans or strict regulations with high taxes does nothing to benefit the citizens and directly hinders the growth of a growing asset class.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the citizens of Russia currently own close to $26 billion worth of various cryptocurrencies. They are also pondering a universal license that would allow people to actually trade cryptocurrencies but in a controlled environment. There is no confirmation but rumors are swirling that president Vladamir Putin is in favor of regulating the asset class.
We are possibly looking at the third straight-down month in terms of volume as the markets continue a downward slide. Risk assets are not the most popular at the moment as people are still struggling because of Covid.
As time goes on and Bitcoin gets bigger it will be less volatile and truly earn its title as a hedge against inflation. Until then they are the opposite of that as the price dumps every couple of months depending on macroeconomic factors. This is what makes people skeptical for now with these crazy swings.
The lack of demand currently is not a bad thing but just part of the market cycles. Lack of faith in the new administration and everything else we already spoke about is deterring retail investors at the moment. Hopefully, this is the worst of the crypto winter that leads into an upward spring as covid fears start to fall off.