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On Squawk Box, Fundstrat Global Advisors head of research Thomas Lee said that despite the 16-month correction, bitcoin is en route to a steady accumulation phase throughout 2019.
In the past 24 hours, the bitcoin price experienced a roughly 2.7 percent recovery following a slight pullback, climbing to $5,055 and leading a nearly $8 billion crypto market recovery.
Following a slight correction, the bitcoin price has recovered (source: coinmarketcap.com)
The slight retrace came after an impressive 19 percent rally of bitcoin from $4,200 to $5,000, a price movement analysts like Lee believe was crucial in rekindling the momentum of the market.
Whales Accumulating Bitcoin is a Positive Sign
According to Lee, whales that bought bitcoin very early on who sold some of their holdings when the asset hit a price of $20,000 have started to accumulate the dominant cryptocurrency.
The researcher suggested that many investors in the cryptocurrency market likely kept cash on the sidelines waiting for a viable opportunity to invest in the asset class once again, demonstrating the confidence of investors in the long-term trend of the market.
“Bitcoin had a rough 2018 and for much of 2019, it’s been steadily climbing, and from what we can gather, it’s because there have been positive things taking place. You know a lot of the old whale wallets are buying bitcoin so it’s been slow accumulation.”
Throughout the past four months, bitcoin has arguably seen more progress in institutionalization than in the past 9 years from 2009 to 2018.
Financial institutions in the likes of Fidelity, ICE, and Nasdaq have actively been strengthening the infrastructure supporting cryptocurrencies while major conglomerates in Asia such as SBI Holdings, Samsung, and Kakao have also started to get involved in the cryptocurrency sector in meaningful ways.
With the strong rally of bitcoin on April 1 and the change in the sentiment of the cryptocurrency community, Lee said that the past five days have shown the presence of dry powder in the market.
Lee added:
“[Whales are] some of the original owners of bitcoin. Some of them who liquidated at $20,000 are starting to buy back. And then we saw positive developments like Bakkt is coming, a lot of infrastructure like Fidelity custody, activity has been picking up especially in regions with inflation and political issues like Venezuela and Turkey. I think finally we had a big move on April 1. It was real evidence that there was a lot of dry powder.”
Altcoins Diverge from Bitcoin Price
Throughout the past two months, cryptocurrencies have begun to show independent price movements for the first time in many months.
Historically, the price of alternative cryptocurrencies has more or less followed the price trend of bitcoin with intensified movements. For instance, if bitcoin went up, alternative cryptocurrencies surged, and if bitcoin dropped, alternative cryptocurrencies plunged.
However, in recent weeks, crypto assets have shown price movements independent of bitcoin, with tokens such as Theta, OmiseGO, and Decred recording gains in the range of 8 to 20 percent on the day.
As suggested by ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees, the cryptocurrency market is demonstrating signs of maturation, and independent price activity is another indicator that the cryptocurrency sector is growing at a rapid rate.
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The Dow lagged the broader U.S. stock market on Friday, as shares of the previously ascendant Dow Inc. (D) gave up weekly gains ahead of what’s expected to be a grim earnings season for Wall Street.
Dow Lags While S&P 500 & Nasdaq Rally
All of Wall Street’s major indexes were seen approaching record highs in the final session of the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 100 points through the early morning, reflecting a strong pre-market for U.S. stock futures. The blue-chip index was last up 35 points, or 0.1%, at 26,420.18.
Dow Jones Industrial Average loses steam in the latter stages of Friday’s session. | Chart via Yahoo Finance.
After six consecutive gains, Dow Inc. plunged almost 5%. The chemical company surged after spinning off from DowDuPont earlier in the week.
The broad S&P 500 Index climbed 0.4% to 2,889.67, where it was on track for its seventh consecutive daily advance and its longest winning streak in over a year. Nine of 11 primary sectors catapulted to gains, led by surging energy stocks.
The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite Index closed on a gain of 0.5% to 7,930.57.
Wells Fargo will report earnings next week as a potentially-brutal earnings season threatens to derail the Dow recovery. | Source: Shutterstock
Corporate earnings season begins in earnest next week, with the likes of Rite Aid Corp (RAD), JPMorgan Chase and Co (JPM), and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC) all scheduled to report. For the first time since 2016, quarterly earnings are expected to decline from a year earlier, signaling renewed risks for American companies.
Signs of earnings-related headwinds were first spotted by FactSet early this year after the research firm reported a decline in so-called bottom-up EPS estimates. This was reiterated in the most recent report:
“The Q1 bottom-up EPS estimate (which is an aggregation of the median EPS estimates of all the companies in the index) dropped by 7.2% (to $37.33 from $40.21) during [the first quarter].”
Corporate earnings are declining at a time when global growth is stagnating. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have all lowered their forecasts for global growth this year, citing China-related volatility and weakness in advanced industrialized nations like Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan. By comparison, the United States is holding up fairly well, although growth has weakened significantly in the last two quarters.
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Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is being barraged with an avalanche of groping allegations from multiple women. But the curious silence from his longtime pal, ex-President Barack Obama, is deafening.
Is this a sign that their alliance of convenience and faux bromance is finally over?
Source: Biden and Obama ‘Remain Good Friends’
A source told the Hill that Obama remains close friends with Biden, and thinks he would make a fantastic president. However, he’s reluctant to comment on the Democratic presidential primary right now.
“President Obama thinks the world of him and thinks he’d be an excellent president. They remain in touch and good friends.”
“President Obama is not going to be weighing in on the primary and the day-to-day stories around it. And Joe Biden would be the first to tell you that he’ll have to earn the nomination on his own.”
Oh really? If the situation were reversed, there’s no doubt that Biden would immediately leap to Obama’s defense.
There’s no cost to Obama for supporting Biden since he’s not running for any political office. So again: Obama’s silence is speaking volumes.
Obama Is Probably Being Pressured to Endorse a Minority Female
As it is, Biden hasn’t announced his candidacy yet. That makes Obama’s reticence even more shocking. If you’re friends with someone, you should have his back and defend him.
As a beloved icon of the Democratic Party, a single statement from Obama would quell the mounting criticism against Biden from other Democrats.
One reason why Obama hasn’t defended Joe is probably that he’s being pressured to support a female minority candidate, namely California Senator Kamala Harris.
There is no place on the Left for white people, straight people or males. There is only room for minority groups who wish to have enraged suburban white women peddle them around as their pet victims, as a means to garner power for themselves.
The Democratic Party claims that it’s the “party of women and minorities” — only to have three white men emerge as their presidential front-runners.
According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, if the election were held today, Joe Biden would get the most votes, followed by Bernie Sanders, and Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke.
A candidate who gets Barack Obama’s endorsement will likely be the Democrat Party’s nominee. How that translates at the voting booth is unclear, since Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016 failed to win her the White House.
The top three Democratic contenders are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke. (Quinnipiac poll)
Biden Did Not Apologize for Inappropriate Touching
Since last week, at least eight women have accused Biden of unwanted groping, kissing, hugging, and sexual contact.
Biden responded by posting a video where he suggested that his non-consensual groping was acceptable before because such behavior was normal back in the day. (No, it wasn’t.)
However, Biden has not apologized. He merely said he would try to be more sensitive before pawing at people. President Donald Trump responded by trolling Biden on Twitter.
In his first public appearance since the groping scandal erupted, Joe joked about the controversy that’s engulfing him now.
At an April 5 speech in Washington, Biden joked that he had received consent before putting his arm around a little boy on stage.
“By the way, he gave me permission to touch him,” Biden laughed. That stunt did not go over well on social media.
Doesn’t seem like @JoeBiden is taking his unwanted creepy touching, hair smelling and kissing scandal very seriously. He thinks it’s a joke. pic.twitter.com/yAYPeF7zq0
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The CFTC chief delivered more than an earful about the way some outsiders really feel about bitcoin. J. Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is nearing retirement when his term ends later this month. Known as Crypto Dad to the SEC’s Crypto Mom Hester Peirce, Giancarlo might deserve the title as Crypto Hero, instead, considering the heat he has had to endure for refusing to stifle blockchain innovation.
Crypto Dad Defends CFTC’s Blockchain Stance Against Bitcoin Skeptics
CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo has more than earned his affectionate “Crypto Dad” nickname. | Source: YouTube
In a speech at the Eurofi Financial Forum in Bucharest, Romania, Giancarlo was generous with his opinions, citing Romanian poet Ion Luca Cariagiale who once said:
“Opinions are free, but not mandatory.”
Giancarlo might think he used the platform to “put forth a few free opinions,” but he also dropped a bomb with details of his experience as a regulator in the crypto space. While he didn’t squeal on anyone, the CFTC chief said enough. Crypto Dad made it clear that while the CFTC’s approach has been to nurture “the development of new derivatives products on crypto-assets like bitcoin,” not everyone he comes across feels the same.
“We have resisted calls to use our legal powers to suppress the development of crypto-assets and the underlying technologies that support them. Instead, we have favored close monitoring of market developments while not hindering the introduction of new products like bitcoin futures, which have proven invaluable in letting market forces determine the appropriate value of the bitcoin.”
This resistance Crypto Dad refers to has been a hurdle not only to innovation but also to the adoption of blockchain technology by businesses across jurisdictions.
CFTC’s Crypto Openness Bittersweet for Bitcoin Speculators
Giancarlo referenced an economic letter by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In the letter, economists argued that the advent of bitcoin futures had created more of a balance in speculative demand among optimists and pessimists, the latter of whom were handed a way to bet on the decline in the bitcoin price.
Regardless how bitcoin bulls feel about BTC futures, if it weren’t for Giancarlo’s open mind, this institutional product would never have seen the light of day. While the commodities regulator wasn’t responsible for approving the product, they did give the green light to the Chicago derivatives exchanges to launch their respective contracts. That has paved the way for exchanges such as Bakkt, which is poised to “pay out” its bitcoin futures contracts in crypto and is viewed as a catalyst for the crypto market in 2019.
Now that Giancarlo is nearing the end of his term, the crypto community will not be without an advocate in regulatory circles. U.S. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has embraced her role as Crypto Mom and seems prepared to carry the torch for both of them.
CryptoDad gave a great speech: “While markets are not always perfect, they have proven time and again to be the most effective means humans have to drive economic productivity and prosperity.” https://t.co/mltC6tliWihttps://t.co/TxGE7yjMn9
Nonetheless, Giancarlo’s light-touch regulatory approach to regulation will be missed. He crafted the Project KISS initiative with the overarching goal to simplify CFTC rules and regulations. What the crypto community will miss most, however, is most likely his candor, including a second Ion Luca Cariagiale quote, which should resonate with blockchain folks:
“Do you want to get to know things? Look at them closely.Do you want to like them?Look at them from afar.”
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Donald Trump is ramping up his attack on oil prices as US crude hit a 5-month high today. While up to now the US president has been focused on denouncing high energy costs via Twitter, it appears he now is looking to do more than merely bash OPEC online. As CNBC reported, the US wants to ensure “dominance” in this sector through a blockbuster executive order designed to boost pipeline infrastructure. In reality, Trump walks a dangerous tightrope when it comes to crude.
Very important that OPEC increase the flow of Oil. World Markets are fragile, price of Oil getting too high. Thank you!
Cheap Energy is Great for Farmers, Great for Trump
The main obstacle that Donald Trump faces in maximizing his popularity through energy policy is that two sides of his base want different things. First, there are the Rust Belt farmers and factory workers who love seeing the cost of living reduced. Farmers, in particular, use a lot of fuel, and any reduction in energy costs is a great benefit to their business. In this regard, Trump can help offset some of the damage his trade war has done to certain crop prices.
The other side of this coin is that other red states like Texas and Oklahoma love high energy prices. Historically, Democrats have been raked across the coals in these areas for trying to depress the value of crude. Trump is banking on tribalism to keep these states on board, and if polls are any indicator, they very much still are.
US Ingenuity – Not Obama or Trump – Has Already Created Energy ‘Dominance’
Moreover, it is rather strange to see Trump bashing OPEC about high oil prices and wanting to restore US “dominance” when it is already the largest oil producer in the World. Obama doesn’t deserve credit for this as he previously claimed, but neither does Trump. Good old technical ingenuity helped the US access exploit unusable deposits.
US crude oil production has been trending upward for years. | Source: FactCheck.org
However, there is another reason that Trump wants to subdue oil prices, and it is the same reason that he attacks the Federal Reserve over cheap money. Everything that Trump does is to try and stimulate the economy. He needs it in overdrive to make his GDP claims come to fruition. If energy prices are too high consumers, get defensive. It also erodes wage gains as inflation eats into paychecks.
Janet Yellen once called cheap energy “a tax cut” for the American people, and that is probably true. OPEC is far less diversified in general than the United States, so overall cheap oil is a significant negative as opposed to the US where it is a net benefit for the service based economy.
Could Trump’s War on Oil Prices Sink His Popularity in Texas?
If the US president succeeds in crushing energy prices, there could be an interesting twist in 2020. Texas has been shifting blue for a while, and Beto O’Rourke nearly upended Ted Cruz in the most recent election.
If oil workers are sufficiently irritated, then conceivably they might rebel in 2020. The flip-side of this is that Trump could increase his manufacturing base in the “blue wall” of Michigan and Wisconsin as the economy keeps humming.
It’s the usual all-in strategy from Mr. Trump. The last Democrat to take the 38 electoral votes in Texas was Jimmy Carter in 1976.
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Not everyone who used Mt. Gox or even who lost money on the disgraced bitcoin exchange is entitled to receive anything from the civil rehabilitation plan, a recent document posted to the failed exchange’s website reveals.
Approved creditors have the right to dispute the claims of other creditors, who in turn have the right to appeal. Japanese law also provides for “self-approved claims,” but these creditors fall under a different set procedure.
Bitcoin Exchange Victims Have Until May 7 to Appeal Claim Rejections
Five years after cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox fell to pieces, traders still want to know: “Where is our bitcoin?” | Source: REUTERS / Toru Hanai
Self-approved claimants also lack the right to vote on various aspects of the civil rehabilitation plan, a power given only to creditors approved by the Rehabilitation Trustee. Victims whose self-approved claims were rejected by other creditors have until May 7th to file an appeal with the Tokyo District Court, who will decide whether the request is valid or not.
The Trustee says that it rejected claims on a few criteria. One, if the balance was zero, the user had no claim. Two, if the bitcoin balance was less than the amount the person claimed, their request was rejected. They’re still able to re-file if they do so within the prescribed time frame. Three, if the Trustee can’t determine whether the user was a Mt. Gox victim or not, the claim is rejected. Presumably, the massive fraud of Mt. Gox attracted fraudulent claims.
Some legitimate claims do seem to get lost as a result, however:
#mtgox my claim was disapproved on the grounds the amount was incorrect, trouble is I can’t remember my balance and have no access to that info. Any ideas anyone? Cheers
If an approved creditor has objected to your claim, you only have until May 7th to get it worked out, according to the document:
“If a creditor objects to your claim and you do not file an application for claim assessment with the Tokyo District Court between March 30 and May 7, 2019, you will lose your rights as a creditor.”
Approved Creditors Can Reject Claims of Others
Actual payments are likely still a ways off for Mt. Gox creditors. Creditors is the term used to refer to people whose money went missing. They will – eventually – be repaid out of what assets remained when the crypto exchange went bankrupt.
Crypto billionaire Brock Pierce put forth a plan to repay all creditors and then relaunch the bitcoin exchange, claiming a seemingly tenuous ownership of Mt. Gox’s assets. Exonerated CEO Mark Karpeles publicly denied Pierce’s claim to Mt. Gox assets, and the Mt. Gox Rising project seems ill-fated at best.
Mark Karpeles was recently found not guilty on the majority of the charges brought against him by Japanese authorities. Found guilty on just one charge of falsifying digital records, Karpeles was given a suspended sentence. Karpeles is appealing that ruling as well, with lawyers laughably arguing that he was looking out for his clients’ best interests.
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To the surprise of almost no one, Elon Musk walked out of a federal courthouse Thursday still wearing the hat of CEO of Tesla.
He was there for a hearing that resulted from the US Securities and Exchange Commission charging in February that Musk had violated an agreement it reached with him in October over his tweeting. After expressing disdain for the regulator, Musk kept on tweeting, which resulted in the SEC finding that he should be held in contempt of court.
Judge Sets 2-Week Deadline for Elon Musk & SEC to Work Out Differences
Instead of being stripped of his CEO role, or fined for being in contempt, the judge ordered that the teams for Musk and SEC work for the next two weeks to try to settle their differences.
When asked if that was feasible, Musk, with a smile, said “most likely.”
BREAKING: Judge orders SEC and Elon Musk to confer over next 2 weeks to try to settle issue and doesn’t rule on contempt. Elon Musk told CNBC they will “most likely” work it out as he left court.https://t.co/KyFWIUIAI2pic.twitter.com/VPRQ7eUIfq
Musk Playing Nice Doesn’t Reverse Tesla Stock Drop
In a sign that things went well during the hearing, Musk said he was “happy” and “impressed” with the judge’s analysis of the situation. We know that when he doesn’t like someone, he doesn’t make it a secret. Just ask the SEC.
His optimism did little to quell investor unhappiness, however. The stock closed down 8.23%, though it edged 0.08% higher during after-market trading. It had been down by more than 10% on the day.
Tesla stock cratered on Thursday and barely moved in after-market trading. | Source: Yahoo Finance
CCN reported that Tesla’s stock was spiraling downwards on news that it had failed to deliver more cars in Q1 than it did during the previous quarter. Aggravating the shares was news that the failure also missed analysts’ expectations.
The selloff started after Tesla reported a record decline in deliveries in the first quarter. During the three months, Tesla produced about 77,000 vehicles, consisting mainly of its flagship Model 3. The Model S and Model X rounded out the bunch.
TSLA Roiled by Shorts
Musk’s confidence about getting the contempt charges behind him didn’t resonate with those shorting Tesla. Investors betting against Tesla were up nearly $800 million, CNBC reported.
TSLA has become a favorite about short-sellers. | Source: CNBC
Tesla has 129.5 million shares outstanding. Its short float is a whopping 20.81%.
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New research by the University of Southern California, Northeastern, and a public interest group called Upturn makes an interesting conclusion about Facebook’s ad delivery algorithms: they skew based on racial and gender stereotypes. The algorithms are a trade secret of Facebook’s, so auditing them based on their design is not possible. Researchers instead ran experiments based on the results of the algorithms, focusing on where ads end up being displayed.
Facebook’s Ad Delivery Skews Along Race and Gender Lines
Facebook allows an advertiser to target various, razor-sharp demographics. You can target people who like a specific page or even a particular book. You can target groups of people based on a broad range of categories. But for the research, published yesterday, researchers made no demographic selections. The goal was to determine what Facebook would do with advertisements if it weren’t told a specific demographic to target.
Advertisers may hope that their message reaches the broadest possible demographic when they select a region. For the study, the researchers only chose the certain zip codes as a demographic, rather than age, gender, interests, or anything else. This was the best possible way to ensure that ad delivery was left up to Facebook.
Facebook doesn’t allow you to target based on “race,” but researchers were able to determine the results of the ad delivery by using something called Designated Market Area “as a proxy.” Basically, by using publicly available voter records, they can determine the racial densities of various zip codes or municipalities. The report mentions some cities North Carolina as a specific area studied.
Determining the Race of Facebook Users by Proxy
They found two regions which were majority white and two which were majority black. They then tested to see how many of their ads were targeted to people in each area.
When we run ads where we want to examine the ad delivery along racial lines, we run the ads to one audience from the first grouping and the other race’s audience from the second grouping. We then request that Facebook’s Marketing API deliver us results broken down by DMA region. Because we selected DMA regions to be a proxy for race, we can use the results to infer which custom audience they were originally in, allowing us to determine the racial makeup of the audience who saw (and clicked on) the ad.
The researchers developed an even more exciting hypothesis, though, which is irresistible in terms of speculation.
Using an equal group of images that are stereotypically attractive to men and women, they then skewed the pictures so that people wouldn’t be able to see them. Some image formats, like PNG, allow for “alpha” channel to be modified – for the purpose of transparency and other cosmetic changes to an image.
Advertisers may hope that their message reaches the broadest possible demographic when they select a region. For the study, the researchers only chose the certain zip codes as a demographic, rather than age, gender, interests, or anything else. This was the best possible way to ensure that ad delivery was left up to Facebook. Image from Shutterstock.
Machine Learning Probably Determines Stereotypical Racial and Gender Attractiveness of Images
The researchers made the images 98% invisible to the human eye. An algorithm would still be able to gather information about the pixels, mind you. Facebook let the researchers use these images, and skewed the delivery of them: 42% of images normally attractive to men were delivered to men, and 39% of the images deemed normally attractive to women were delivered to women. The result of this test in particular inform the hypothesis that Facebook uses machine learning to determine the content of advertising images.
Thus, the researchers conclude:
We have observed that differences in the ad headline, text, and image can lead to dramatic difference in ad delivery, despite the bidding strategy and target audience of the advertiser remaining the same.
Another interesting finding: even though women have higher click-through rates than men, and the ads were not targeted at either “man,” “woman,” or “neutral,” the reserachers found that ads which would stereotypically (especially based on image content alone) appeal to men were delivered to them more often.
On page 11 of the report, we begin to reach the damning evidence. The researchers ran three types of entertainment ads linking to the top 30 albums in three categories: country music, hip hop, and general. They found that the ads for hip-hop were delivered to black people more often, while the country top list was delivered overwhelmingly to white people.
Hip Hop Ads Delivered to 87% Black People
The ad targeting and budgeting strategy was exactly the same for each ad. In fact, only 13% of people who saw the hip hop list were white. Again, Facebook does not allow targeting based on race, but a stereotypical understanding of people would assume that more blacks like hip hop than whites. Actual album statistics might discount such a belief – hip hop is, in fact, a widely popular genre, with a high number of white people buying its products.
We find that Facebook ad delivery follows the stereotypical distribution, despite all ads being targeted in the same manner and using the same bidding strategy. […] Assuming significant population level differences of preferences, it can be argued that this experiment highlights the “relevance” measures embedded in ad delivery working as intended.
So, perhaps more black people on Facebook are looking at hip hop pages and sharing hip hop news. That might explain it. To deal with this, the researchers focus on other types of advertising: employment and housing.
Less Trivial: Housing and Employment Targeting When Advertiser Indicates No Preferences
The researchers found that the images used in the advertisements made a big difference in where they were delivered. They make efforts to scale back any conclusions, pointing out that their study was not overly exhaustive: they ran eleven different types of ads with five different types of images. Yet, the results are certainly interesting because, again, at no point did they target beyond region.
When selecting the ad image for each job type, we selected five different stock photo images: one that has a white male, one that has a white female, one that has a black male, one that has a black female, and one that is appropriate for the job type but has no people in it. We run each of these five independently to test a representative set of ads for each job type, looking to see how they are delivered along gender and racial lines. Thus, the target audiences that we use for these experiments are the North Carolina audiences described […] We can immediately observe drastic differences in ad delivery across our ads along both racial and gender lines: our five ads for positions in the lumber industry deliver to over 90% men and to over 70% white users in aggregate, while our five ads for janitors deliver to over 65%women and over 75% black users in aggregate.
Similar results are found for housing ads, based on the wording of the ads indicating the value of the housing offer and the image of a black family or a white family.
The researchers want you to know that their results are not conclusive. They are merely trying to raise awareness in hopes of getting these issues explored further by the public and public interest groups, especially when it comes to how employment and housing advertisements are delivered.
We demonstrate that, during the ad delivery phase, advertising plat-forms can play an independent, central role in creating skewed, and potentially discriminatory, outcomes.
Advertisers may be interested to know that it could be impossible to simply target everyone on Facebook. Based on the text, image, and nature of an advertisement, Facebook may discriminate for you.
Facebook’s HUD Case Just Got More Interesting
It’s not evident whether this is a more profitable approach than allowing advertisers to go where they wish, but it does belie any claim that Facebook isn’t using its vast resources to categorize people based on things like race.
If the researchers get what they want, it seems likely that further studies on Facebook’s advertising delivery mechanisms will be conducted. Facebook is such a large social network at this point that some people want to regulate it as a public utility. Their impact on wider society is undeniable, and as such, the results of studies like this one should not be taken lightly.
As a side note, Facebook is currently under investigation by the Housing and Urban Development department for enabling advertisers to illegally discriminate. HUD’s charges that Facebook violates the Fair Housing Act with its advertising platform are likely to be emboldened by research of this kind, and, as we said, more is likely to follow.
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Dogecoin recently experienced a significant pump but has corrected on its BTC peg in the interim. The limitless supply cryptocurrency created by Jackson Palmer in 2014 has historically ranged between 50 and 100 Satoshis per coin, sometimes reaching as high as 2-300.
The currency is widely traded and used in many places that also accept Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum, including gambling sites and payment processors. Notably, it is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies with a reasonable hashrate not to be offered by Coinbase for sale.
Huobi Calls Doge “High-Quality”
Huobi writes in their announcement:
In a dedicated effort to provide our customers with carefully vetted and high-quality trading options, we are announcing support for a new addition to the Huobi Marketplace: Dogecoin (DOGE).
Perhaps intentionally, the team did not announce this news on April fool’s day, when people might have taken that wording for a joke. While some still view Dogecoin as a “joke,” we have previously noted here that the cryptocurrency – based on a meme – maintains a high degree of liquidity and trading platforms.
You’d Be Surprised How Many Places You Can Trade Doge Against Fiat Stablecoins
Aside from Huobi, several other exchanges offer stablecoin pairs for Dogecoin, which enables traders to visualize a fiat value for the crypto. Huobi Global (hbg.com) is the eighth largest crypto exchange by trading volume, as of press time. Trading and withdrawals will begin a few hours from now, at 7 PM PST. You can deposit on Huobi.com and HBG.com.
Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer recently rankled some crypto community members when he went on a bit of a tirade about the viability of Bitcoin and comparisons with other networked technologies, like the Internet, in terms of investment, userbase, and scaling.
The Tweet was in response to a semi-joke from the Dogecoin community about electing a CEO for the cryptocurrency. Palmer has long since abdicated any critical role in the crypto, admitting that it was started on a whim long ago and having several in-fights in the early days.
But the joke currency’s founder has made it publicly clear that he has no involvement in any cryptocurrency project at all, at present:
⚠️ Reminder: I am not involved with any cryptocurrency project, in any capacity. If someone tells you otherwise, they’re lying to you. I do not have a Telegram, WhatsApp or other IM account, and do not email my subscribers/followers. Beware impersonators. ⚠️
Coinflict of Interest, a browser plugin that processes Twitter users and categorizes their cryptocurrency biases, shows that Palmer favors Ethereum over Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash.
