Majors fall as traders digest headlines

Shiba Inu (SHIB) climbed by 1.68% overnight after a significant move by major holders. Twenty trillion tokens have moved anonymously between wallets in recent weeks in large blocks. Analysts are baffled as to the endgame for the whale or whales making the move.

Kaspa (KAS) continued its upward march overnight as total gains year-to-date now exceed 1,700%. Traders have focused on Kaspa’s blockchain technology which provides bandwidth for 10,000 transactions per 3 second block.

Account Labs, a Singapore-based wallet provider, announced a successful $7.7 million funding round. Venture Capital backers are betting that the company’s new UniPass Wallet, which is built for peer stablecoin transfers and shares many features with online banking platforms, will find rapid adoption. Investors include Qiming and the Amber Group.

Bitcoin reached a new low for the month of October during morning trading. The move down for BTC came as surprisingly strong producer price inflation released in the U.S. suggests that the Federal Reserve may need to keep rates high for an extended period and lead to USD strength.

USDR, the real-estate backed stablecoin, fell below its USD peg after a flurry of redemptions. The breakdown comes as a major setback for the issuing protocol, Tangible, which was focused on hard asset tokenization. The USDR decline below $1 came as the liquid portion of the portfolio, primarily in the form of DAI, was sold to meet demand. The token has since recovered from lows to a level of $0.53.

Platypus suspended all pools overnight after a flash loan attack led to losses of $2 million in AVAX. This marks the second such successful attack in 9 months for the Avalanche-native StableSwap protocol. The protocol received $3.3 million during its founding round from the now shuttered Three Arrows Capital. AVAX declined in morning trading to a level down by more than 4% for the trailing 24 hours.

Maker (MKR) fell by 3.71% in trading on Thursday, extending a slide that is now over 15% for the preceding trading week. Earlier this month a MakerDAO member proposed that a new Uranium backed token be issued to capture alternative energy interest among traders.

Steve Scalise, the majority leader in the US house of representatives, emerged as the frontrunner for the open speaker of the house position after winning a vote of 113 to 99 on Tuesday.

With opposition from both the conservative and moderate factions of his own party, the Louisiana Republican appears to lack sufficient votes to win the speaker’s gavel. This sets the stage for a drawn-out selection debate.

The ultimate outcome has major implications for digital assets.

Scalise has not expressed strong opinions on Crypto regulation to date. His main GOP rival for the speakership - Jim Jordan of Ohio, has been vaguely critical of digital currencies in past statements. Notably, Jordan used donations by Sam Bankman-Fried to house democrats as an opportunity for partisan attacks.

Meanwhile, as the race for the speaker’s seat remains in limbo, a key crypto supporter - Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, is acting as the temporary leader on the house floor.

One of the strongest advocates for digital assets in Congress, In May of 2021 McHenry posted his support of lighter-touch regulation in a post on Twitter “It’s time for the Commission to take a more welcoming approach to crypto, not put-up additional barriers.”

Several crypto regulation bills are currently stalled in Congress. Proposed legislation includes a bipartisan effort aimed at looser regulation introduced by the Financial Services Committee headed by McHenry. This bill, currently in a holding pattern, would establish guidelines for which digital assets fall under the regulatory purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and which should be policed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

For Crypto markets, a sustained period of McHenry in the speaker’s post as a caretaker opens the door for goodwill to build for the stalled legislation.