[Daily] It’s bulls versus bears

Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. Bruce Lee has returned. Not from the dead but on NFT. The Bruce Lee Estate and NFT video platform Shibuya have released an unlimited NFT collection that’s priced at $15 each. The NFT is termed “your ticket to the House of Lee”. The time to buy the NFT runs out today but the utility of the token will be defined later. It is the equivalent of going to a restaurant and paying the bill before you look at the menu. 🤷

As of Thursday, 7PM IST

The markets were generally euphoric after ETH's Shanghai update. Bitcoin saw renewed whale interest. Ethereum was bullish on active buying. S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained in early trade due to investor demand for technology stocks. Back home, Sensex and Nifty ended higher on gains in banking and realty stocks.

BTC Bulls Battle With Bears

Bitcoin slipped below $30,000 on Wednesday. The market was confused since the US inflation numbers were better than expected. Turns out, a large whale triggered it by sending $330 million worth BTC to exchanges.

What is happening?The bulls and the bears are in a tug of war of sorts. Bulls insist that Bitcoin’s rally is real because price rise is under control and the US Fed’s rate hike cycle may hit pause.

On the other hand, bears are worried about profit-booking by large whales that may affect the token price. Another concern is that the US Fed may take longer to halt rate increases.

Whales in action There are mixed reactions from whales too. Wallets HODLing between 1-9,999 BTC have grown. It’s a sign that large investors have faith in the token and want to buy more.

Despite the green shoots, a whale with $1.2 billion wasn’t convinced. This HODLer sent 11,000 BTC worth ~$330 million to an exchange on Wednesday. Just moments later, BTC fell to $29,990 levels. But the whale booked a neat profit of ~$390 million.

Nothing to worryThere is no need to panic. Bitcoin continues to outperform other assets. Inflation is under control, there’s a good chance the rate hikes may pause, it’s good times.

ETH Stands Strong

The Shanghai upgrade is complete and ~$100 million worth Ethereum has made its way into the market. There was a net outflow of ~11,000 ETH an hour. It’s a small number, just 0.3% of the 18.1 million ETH in circulation.

What changed? Apart from withdrawals, centralised staking validators have started to exit. Nothing to do with Shanghai but the SEC isn’t fond of regulated entities offering staking services. The locked tokens are unlocked and ETH took it well.

And mass withdrawals?No mass withdrawals so far. A Glassnode report says that 252 depositors queued up to exit, a very small number in the larger scheme of things. Analysts have looked at worst-case scenarios and concluded that downward price moves will be ~9%. That’s far below the 30% crash after FTX’s collapse.

Elon.AI?

The day wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Elon Musk and his latest whim. Now it seems he’s onto something that has to do with AI.

GPUs on boardMusk seems to have bought 10,000 GPUs for an artificial intelligence project at Twitter. As usual, nobody really knows what this project is. But there’s a Musk tweet to speculate on everything. This purchase could be related to this tweet from March:

FYI, GPUs are required to process the vast amounts of data guzzled by large scale AI projects.

Didn’t he ask for caution on AI?Ah yes, he did. He led this open letter asking for a halt on AI development. Because, well, threat to mankind, etc. But if his GPUs will help weed out misinformation, it’s all cool. Right?

Meanwhile, stock and crypto trading seem to be coming to Twitter soon. Never a dull day there.

It Ain’t Music To My Ears

That’s what Universal Music Group is saying about AI-generated music.

Hold on. There’s AI-generated music?It’s difficult to keep up, we know. But ChatGPT and the wave it has unleashed will see AI-powered everything. It’s just a matter of time. But let’s come back to Universal. The music industry company is asking streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple to block AI services from harvesting music and lyrics.

They can do that?They are trying. AI generated music is popping up more than you’d think.

And people have pretty mixed reactions to this. Artists have a right to their art but technology’s role is to reduce entry barriers and make things more accessible. If there are lawsuits coming, it’ll be interesting to see who will be held accountable.

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