PoliFi fever

On its 248th-birthday, America finds itself at a thorny crossroads, one giving rise to feuds, fear, loathing - and a genuine crypto-correlated phenomenon.

To quickly recap, U.S. President Joe Biden, ahead of the November election, finds himself under mounting pressure to step aside, while Vice President Kamala Harris insists that she's merely his running mate, end of story.

Crypto denizens beg to differ.

"If prediction markets and meme coins are any gauge," as Decrypt explained, "Harris is the odds-on favorite to replace Biden."

On Polymarket, there's a probability-based market based on the question "who will be the Democratic nominee?"

This political-poll-stakes had garnered $76 million worth of wagers as of yesterday. The Veep’s chances of becoming the nominee surged from 7% to as high as 31%.

At the same time, KAMA, a Solana-based memecoin serving at the moment as a kind of proxy for the VP's possible ascension to the top of the ticket, experienced a 127% spike yesterday. Keep in mind, KAMA has a relatively insignificant market cap of about $8 million, per CoinGecko. Still, per DexScreener, some 1,171 unique wallets traded it (CoinDesk).

As a five-day streak of net inflows into U.S. Bitcoin ETFs came to an end on Tuesday, the largest crypto dumped below $61,000. And then yesterday, the crucial $60K line was breached. As of Thursday, July 4, at 9:30 a.m. (EST), BTC was barely clinging to $57K, down 5% in 24 hours.

"Concerns about the Mt. Gox distribution may have contributed to a sell-off," CoinDesk said.

The largest memecoins, DeFi governance tokens and AI-related assets are taking the brunt of the Independence Day downer, one of the more nasty 24-hour skewerings the digital markets have endured in weeks.

Backyard cookouts surely will be garnished by some crypto-peppered conversations ("well, it was up but then it was down ... oh, it just went back up again") although, markedly, there is one coin that is way, way down and that would be Jeo Boden (BODEN).

The Solana-based token was touted as a satirical representation of where political culture and technology meet up, but it was clearly created a few months ago as a complementary instrument to be played off Solana-based Doland Tremp (TREMP), a political memecoin which followed MAGA (TRUMP) which is the largest Trump-based token among several, and which, counterintuitively, plunged 37% over the one-week period ending Wednesday morning.

But back to BODEN, yikes: as of yesterday, it was down 95% from its peak of $1.04 in early April.

Meanwhile, TREMP, Solana's "TrumpFi" asset, is getting slapped about, plummeting 39% in the past seven days.

Prior to Tuesday, Bitcoin seemed to have legit momentum as it barreled toward a four-day Fourth of July weekend. Kick back, BTC certainly did.

In a particularly lazy, hazy, crazy period Wednesday, between 2 a.m. (EST) and 9 a.m. (EST), BTC rolled from $61,000 to as low as about $59,800.

As of Thursday morning, BTC had long bid adieu to the psychologically important $60K mark. Mt. Gox considerations did not wind up overblown.

However, as Cointelegraph noted, BTC's price even fleetingly sinking below $60K in itself "threatens to prolong the current price consolidation" as the Tokyo-based, rehabilitation-trustee-administered estate (connected with the recovered digital remnants of the now-defunct Mt. Gox exchange) starts to put $9 billion worth of BTC into motion, some of which may be sold, creating real and perceived sell pressure.

Big buyers could step in (e.g. ETFs, institutions, AI-program traders, Latin American countries); and there's always the Fed.

Inflation seems in check, although keepers of the U.S. monetary policy flame still remain reticent to cut interest rates. "We’ve made quite a bit of progress in bringing inflation back down to our target,” Powell said earlier this week during a speech at a gathering of central bankers in Portugal.

But Powell also said he wants to see even more progress before becoming sufficently convinced that a loosening policy is in order.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, a U.S. Commerce Department gauge and the Fed's favorite inflation-monitoring device, rose in May, reflecting an annualized inflation rate of 2.6%. While that level has declined steadily (it was 4% one year ago) policymakers don't expect to reach their 2% inflation target until 2026 - when America is set to celebrate its 250th birthday.

As if there needed to be any further splintering around the country - now it's becoming increasingly unclear what the milestone year will be called. Perhaps it's a question for Polymarket. But will 2026 be referred to as the United States "Semiquincentennial" or "Bisesquincentennial" or "Sestercentennial" or "Quarter-Millennial" or alternatively ... ah, whatever.