Today I want to give you an update about crypto in Congress, the inflation numbers that just came in, and Bitcoin. Major SEC news. Of course, we'll talk about altcoins.
But as the Bitcoin price ranges in a very fragile state, Germany is almost out of Bitcoin to sell. From 50,000 originally to now under 5,000 BTC, Germany's Bitcoin sell-off is coming to an end. Over the last several days, we've seen the German government's Bitcoin balance. sold into euros. As of today, that selling continued.
Germany sells another $500 million worth of Bitcoin today. And while they started out originally with billions, they now have just under $285 million worth of Bitcoin left to sell, meaning this is coming to an end. At this rate, they'll be done by the end of today.
And to put this into perspective, imagine if a country were to sell their entire gold reserve in one week for fiat they can print, well, that's what Germany is doing, and they're going to regret it. So this is one of the reasons the Bitcoin price has been faltering. But good news from a regulatory standpoint in the US, the SEC will not pursue enforcement action against Paxos. Just as a reminder, back in February of 2023, Paxos received an SEC Wells notice claiming that Binance USD stablecoin BUSD was an unregistered security and that the platform violated federal securities laws.
Now Paxos is a US based company and they were issuing BUSD. For some reason, the SEC claimed a stablecoin was an unregistered security. And in this flashback clip from 2023, Paxos will no longer mint Binance's USD stablecoin at the instruction of the New York Department of Financial Services.
In a statement, NYDFS cited oversight issues between Paxos and Binance and said it was working with the company to ensure that it handled redemptions in an orderly fashion. For its part, Paxos assured customers that BUSD tokens issued by Paxos will always be backed one-to-one with U.S. dollar reserves. But the news comes as The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the SEC is probing Paxos over the BUSD token, too. And the news today is this.
Paxos prevails an SEC investigation of BUSD stablecoin. This was the direct letter from the SEC. Dear Paxos Trust Company, we have concluded the investigation and based on the information we have as of this date, we do not intend to recommend an enforcement action by the commission against Paxos Trust Company.
From the SEC. Of course, as pointed out on Twitter, how is this okay? The SEC literally destroyed a business that had $20 billion in total value locked and was making over a billion dollars by forcing the issuer to shut it down to only then drop the case after it was dead.
This should be punished. Meaning BUSD is essentially dead. It's the SEC picking a winner.
BUSD is a shell of itself. It's nothing of itself today. And in some slightly bearish news, in an update from our video yesterday, crypto win in Congress, which was of course referring to Ethereum as a commodity.
The news today is the house fails to override Binance's veto on nullifying the SEC crypto rule on a bill that would allow highly regulated financial firms to custody Bitcoin and crypto. They got a majority vote, but they did not receive two thirds majority vote. And again, this was the SEC's anti-crypto rule, SAB.
Look, there's been a lot of focus on this SAB 121 for the last couple of months. And in general, SAB 121 shouldn't exist. We all know that it shouldn't exist for your viewers that aren't familiar with it. The SEC came along.
earlier this year and said, hey, if you're a public company and you are holding crypto assets on behalf of your clients, you need to put it on your balance sheet. And this is a weird thing to do. You don't usually put your client's money on your balance sheet. This has a bunch of side effects.
The most notable one is that it makes it very difficult for the major custodians of the United States. And I'm talking about Bank of New York Mellon. I'm talking about JP Morgan.
I'm talking about State Street. None of these guys are going to put crypto assets on their balance sheet because it creates a problem with them in terms of how they do other accounting in terms of safety and soundness. All right.
So the word on the street is roughly that SAB-121. prevents the major custodians from entering into crypto. And of course, we want the major custodians entering into crypto. If you want to de-risk crypto, what's the best way to do it?
Take the guys that know how to manage risk and bring them into the industry. Now let's talk about the inflation numbers that just came out. But just FYI, for those of you that were asking me about this, it has arrived.
Thank you, Coin Vigilante, for these awesome Bitcoin watches. I loved the craftsmanship, the packaging, the sound money messaging, and this is my hand. And these are the Bitcoin watches that you probably will start seeing us wear around Los Angeles to conferences. Awesome gifts if you guys need something for Christmas or for Father's Day or just next week. They are a limited edition.
So I will link Coin Vigilante's website down below. But if there's one thing the Bitcoin market needs, the crypto market needs to turn us around, it's Fed cuts. And Fed cuts happen only if slash when inflation continues to come down.
Hot numbers coming out. June CPI down one-tenth of a percent on headline. Down one-tenth of a percent.
That would equal where we were on May of 2020. To find a lower number, you have to go to April of 2020 when it was at its extreme of minus eight-tenths. So that is the first time we've had a minus sign there. That's actually deflation, not necessarily disinflation.
So breaking news. U.S. inflation was just 3% in June, below expectations, and core inflation came in at 3.3%, below expectations. Get ready for Federal Reserve rate cuts.
Based on the data we see today, I think September looks like an appropriate time for them to start cutting. You know, we're starting to see data, as you've saw, and I've said many times as chair, this data are single points. You've got to see the trend. You know, Two months ago, we were on here talking about the unbelievable employment numbers. Then they revised them all back down a month later.
The CPI data is not nearly as volatile. The GDP data gets revised a bunch. So we've got to understand what the trend is.
Right now, the trend, because a lot of the data is starting to pile up in the same direction, looks like the Fed should start cutting in September. But at this point, they're not late. If we continue to see this data in this direction, I think all lights are green for September. Now, obviously, if you buy things in the world, you know inflation is still massive if you're trying to buy food, if you're trying to buy gas compared to just four years ago.
Inflation is not going away, but it's inflation rate. The rate of inflation is now down to about 3% in June. You think they get away with this whole cycle without seeing a recession? And has the Federal Reserve avoided a recession?
Have they avoided breaking the economy or waiting until the economy breaks to pivot? I've been in that camp. I'll continue to be in that camp.
And I think, you know, in spite of having been late to the party on raising rates, I think the strength of the underlying economy, the strength of the investment that's being made, we will get away getting through this cycle without seeing a recession. So what is the cycle? Like, what is the business cycle then? Is there a downturn?
Again, we're going back to this normalizing cycle. We went from a very normal economy pre-COVID, we went through all the COVID stimulation, we went through a fundamental tax change in the United States, we went through all the after effects of COVID, and now we're normalizing back to what we would have looked like had we not gone through COVID. And looking at Altcoin news, Solana flips Ethereum in DEX volume, meaning more trading is going on the Solana DEXs than Ethereum's DEXs.
So this is according to the Fed. to data from DeFi Llama, which is one of the leading DeFi data aggregators. And we see for the first time ever Solana is number one, then Ethereum, then Binance Smart Chain, then Arbitrum Base, Optimism, ThorChain, Blast, etc. and SWE. And it just goes to show where the most trading is happening. Now, maybe you could say, well, Ethereum offloaded some of its trading from the base chain to all these L2s. If you take away these L2s, they have to just...
clog up Ethereum again. But that's not the case. We have the L2s, but just something to note. And that is the video. And for those of you looking to hang out at the Bitcoin conference this year, as well as potentially hang out with Donald Trust, both of us will be speaking.
And for 10% off your tickets, use code ALTCOINDAILY and one day remaining before ticket prices increase. So link down below. Check it out.
Like always.