Markets ride spooky see-saw

In the wake of fiscal health scrutiny from bond market vigilantes and emergency market stabilization strategies deployed by British monetary policymakers, the pound is getting pummeled versus the dollar. At the same time, BTC/GBP trading activity is picking up.

Whether the volume increase in recent days stems from anxious UK investors switching to the largest crypto to avoid sterling slippage – or merely arbitrageurs seizing on volatility – makes for an interesting, if not monumental, debate (CoinDesk).

As of Thursday, at 9:30 a.m. (EST), Bitcoin was about $19,300 on the back of a 1% gain over 24 hours following a brief but nerve-fraying visit with $18,925.25, per CoinGecko. Over seven days, BTC's low point is about $18,550. The digital money gargantuan has been as high as $20,300 in that span.

BTC's price in the GBP market has diverged from prices in other fiat currency markets, creating an arbitrage opportunity, as CoinDesk explained.

And while volumes in BTC/GBP have increased, the overall activity still remains relatively low compared to the broader market. The pure BTC/GBP cross trading volume on Binance totals $95 million, compared to the $9.5 billion worth of BTC/USDT cross trading on Binance, pointed out Markus Thielen, CIO, IDEG Asset Management

Central bankers have themselves a tiger by the tail. And it's not just the BOE and the Fed. Historic interventions include an unexpected 100 basis points rate hike by the Swedish Riksbank and the Bank of Japan's surprise move to strengthen the yen (YahooFinance).

"Global bonds are collapsing in their fiat currencies, which are collapsing against the dollar, which is fast-losing purchasing power," tweeted Saifedean Ammous, an economist and the author of "The Bitcoin Standard."

It will be months or years before the average fiat user realizes “just how much they're getting ruined," Ammous added.

Meanwhile, a bunch of Big Ten coins greened up for the week, including Ethereum, XRP and Solana.

Checking for noteworthy gainers this morning, we spotted Helium, gassed and jumping a la Jack Flash, up 12% in 24 hours as of about 8 a.m. (EST). The decentralized wireless hotspot validation project's native asset, HNT, ranks as CoinGecko's 67th-largest coin.

Helium is not to be confused with Hydrogen, a fintech firm charged today by federal regulators for allegedly pumping and dumping its Hydro token.

The SEC’s complaint alleges that starting in January 2018, Hydrogen Technology created its Hydro token, publicly distributed it in various ways, paid people to promote it and engaged a South African trading firm to create the false appearance of robust market activity for Hydro, artificially inflating the market.

The SEC says Hydrogen involved itself in market manipulation, "effectuating" the unregistered offers and sales of securities.

With these allegations, the agency once again is raising new questions central to decentralized money, and not only about whether the accused firm's Hydro token should be categorized as a security. The case will spotlight the various ways in which the token was distributed to the public. One method was an "airdrop," which is essentially a giveaway to potential users.

"Theoretically, the case brought against Hydrogen may also signal that tokens distributed through airdrops can be deemed unregistered securities," said Decrypt.

As the Hydrogen case now demonstrates, the SEC is not shying away from its investor-protection-minded mission to "enforce the laws that prohibit such unregistered fund-raising schemes," said Carolyn Welshhans, associate director of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. “Companies cannot avoid the federal securities laws by structuring the unregistered offers and sales of their securities as bounties, compensation, or other such methods.”