This past weekend I talked about how the latest AccuWeather 2019 crop production analysis predicts a significant decline from last year’s corn and soybean yield. And how this past Monday, the fate of many farmers would be decided by the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) is a monthly report that forecast supply and demand for major crops (global and United States) and livestock (U.S. only). But this was another example of why I don’t really care about reports, news or Trump twits because price action trumps everything and the chart suggested corn prices were going to decline.
The Agriculture Department on Monday said farmers planted a bigger corn area than analysts estimated and pegged crop yields that also exceeded expectations, sparking the biggest rout in futures since 2013. That was a blow to growers who were holding back supplies, hoping a rally that started in May due to delayed sowing would extend through the fall.
“This is a huge disappointment for farmers that have already been struggling with a lot of uncertainty with this corn crop, trade wars and what have you,” said Tanner Ehmke, manager of the research team at CoBank, a $138 billion lender to the agriculture industry. “A lot of people were banking on the opportunity to sell at much higher prices. This report now really brings that into question.”
I do feel story for all the farmers in the Midwest as they have just been reduced to pawns, as Trump continues to play chess with China. And like the big Ag companies, I would love to teach those farmers how to hedge their crops with futures so they can protect themselves win, lose or draw.
If there was one message I could send the farmers, it would be the chart suggests price will retest the weekly demand at $356.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of the Ethereum Network and current CEO of IOHK, has announced that IOHK-created project Cardano is rolling out version 1.6 within a few days’ time.
Hoskinson teased the upcoming launch in a Twitter post on Aug. 13. Hoskinson also asked users to send screenshots and comments on the latest version of Daedalus, which is an open source cryptocurrency wallet also backed by IOHK.
As per IOHK’s website, Cardano is a blockchain platform that uses the proof of stake algorithm Ouroboros. Its native cryptocurrency, ADA, is based on the functional programming language Haskell. Daedalus, for its part, is the only cryptocurrency wallet that supports ADA. Additionally, the website states that Daedalus can also be used as a wallet manager to organize and provide backup for other wallets and their assets.
A new project for Hoskinson
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Hoskinson announced during the blockchain conference Consensus 2019 that he would be working on a new project with the security token platform Polymath. The project is called Polymesh, and is reportedly an attempt to create a blockchain for tokens centered on meeting regulatory requirements.
In the announcement, Hoskinson said: “After co-founding Ethereum and Cardano, two of the most widely used blockchains in the world, I am looking forward to working on Polymesh. There are quadrillions of dollars of financial securities, and building a blockchain to secure them is an incredibly exciting task.”
The most prestigious banking relationship in crypto has ended.
Barclays, the London-based global bank, is no longer working with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, industry sources told CoinDesk. And while Coinbase found a replacement in U.K. upstart ClearBank, according to people familiar with the situation, the change has indirectly inconvenienced the exchange’s users.
That’s because, aside from the cachet of working with a household-name bank, Barclays connected San Francisco-based Coinbase to the U.K. Faster Payments Scheme (FPS), enabling users to instantly withdraw and deposit British pounds at the exchange. The end of the relationship disrupted Coinbase’s access to FPS – which in turn slowed deposits and withdrawals in GBP for U.K. customers, which now take days to process.
The situation is temporary, though, thanks to Coinbase’s new relationship with ClearBank. One of the U.K. “challenger banks” that have sprouted up in recent years to compete with market incumbents, ClearBank is expected to restore Coinbase’s FPS access by the end of the third quarter.
Barclays, ClearBank and Coinbase all declined to comment.
A new amended complaint against Ripple draws on the SEC’s framework for digital assets to outline how XRP might be a security – likely the first federal case to do so.
The filing also cites California advertising law, in addition to federal securities law, to argue that investors were misled by Ripple’s promotion of XRP.
While the case is a year old and has not yet received class-action status, the new complaint is the first that Ripple must respond to with a substantive answer.
Ripple has until mid-September to file its response.
The Dallas Mavericks have become the second NBA team to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as a means of payment for match tickets and merchandise.
A tweet from cryptocurrency payment processor BitPay confirmed the news on Aug. 13. Mavs’ billionaire owner is a crypto enthusiast
Cryptocurrency adoption has been on the horizon for the Mavs since early last year, when team owner and billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban hinted that fans would soon be able to use Bitcoin to buy tickets to the team’s games.
A year and a half later, Cuban’s plans have materialized and the Mavs join their NBA rivals, The Sacramento Kings, in rolling out cryptocurrency access for their fans.
European blockchain company The Bitfury Group, valued recently at more than $1 billion, has launched its artificial intelligence (AI) division, the company’s top official told Reuters in an interview.
The AI division will operate alongside Bitfury’s existing blockchain services and remain part of the company.Bitfury is one of a handful of blockchain companies around the world with at least a $1 billion valuation. That list includes Coinbase, a U.S.-based exchange, and China’s Bitmain, the largest cryptocurrency mining firm in the world.
Valery Vavilov, chief executive officer and co-founder of Bitfury, said the need to analyze and extract value from tons of available data drove the company to go into artificial intelligence, that branch of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that act and behave like humans.
“International Conference on Block Chain & Data Science” in Tokyo, Japan from August 14-15.
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
So yesterday, we have been rejected from the pink mobile line (MMA50). It was already a bad sign for the short trend and it is confirmed today by the drop which is back. We should try to go test the previous low around 0.175$. Let’s see if it will hold us or not.
The yield for the longest-dated Treasury bond is now a hair’s breadth away from plumbing its lowest level in history.
Investors said the $22 trillion U.S. government debt market was now approaching this key milestone on a combination of factors including the growing world of negative-yielding government bonds, expectations for Fed easing spurred by rising recession concerns, and the absence of inflation pressures.
The 30-year Treasury bond yield TMUBMUSD30Y, +1.26% ended at 2.13% on Monday, following a relentless rally in long-term government bonds in the past few weeks. The 30-year yield is only a few basis points away from its all-time low set in July 2016, when it touched 2.09% after the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.
So what’s the significance of the 30 year bond yield reaching all-time lows?
Well Interest rates and bond prices are inversely correlated, meaning when one goes up, the other goes down.
Because a bond’s payout is fixed, as interest rates go up, the existing bond becomes less attractive because people want to buy the new bond that pays more interest. So to make the existing bond more attractive, the value of that existing bond decreases.
And as the global and US economy continue to slow down, Fed Powell won’t have any choice, but to lower rates again…possible two more times this year. So I personally expect the 30 year bond to continue to go up in value.
The chart suggests price will move higher to the monthly supply at 174’00.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Back in late March Lyft made their debut on the stock exchanged and opened at $72 per share. Lyft is now down 18% since its IPO. Despite the positive earnings last week, which included raising their full-year outlook, Lyft has further downside. There have been countless questions and discussions surrounding Lyft’s business model.
In fiscal 2019, Lyft expects to generate revenue of at least $3.47 billion with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $850 million to $875 million. In 2018, Lyft’s EBITDA’s loss was around $850 million. Thus, Lyft may never make a profit, nor do they have a clear path to profitability.
But here is why I think Lyft is a short now. During their earnings announcement last week, where they reported raised their full-year outlook, Lyft said they are cutting down their lock-out period from late Sept. to Aug 19th.
“The lock-up period is scheduled to end on September 24, 2019, which falls within the Company’s quarterly blackout period that commences at the end of the day on August 31, 2019,” the company said in the filing. “Therefore, in accordance with the lock-up agreements with the underwriters, the lock-up period will end at the open of trading on August 19, 2019, which is ten trading days prior to the commencement of the Company’s quarterly blackout period. The Company will also release the market standoff agreements when the lock-up period expires.”
Lyft expects that about 257.6 million shares of Class A common stock may become eligible for sale in the public market beginning August 19. This includes about 12.8 million of Class B shares of common stock converted into Class A stock.
Newly public companies are typically subject to a lock-up period preventing insiders including founders, directors and other employees from selling their shares for a designated period of time. The restriction is intended in large part to prevent these investors from injecting large numbers of shares into the market, which could send stock prices lower by quickly increasing supply.
So there are about 274 million shares outstanding. The founders, institutions that bought a stake in the company before going public want to cash out. We are talking about potentially diluting the float (float is the number of shares actually available for trading) by almost 100%.
August 19th simply becomes a supply and demand issues, very similar to the supply and demand issues on Steem. It’s way too expensive to short the stock by borrowing shares due to the borrowing rates, which was once 100%. Thus, the best way to short Lyft is through options. But give yourself so time for the trade to work. The leap options, January 2012 options are too illiquid. But the January 2020 put options gives one plenty of time for the trade to work, which also includes time for an additional two earnings report (which may not meet expectations).
So if you think Lyft will at least test the lows within the next five months,
Consider buying some January 2020 put options with a strike price at $50, but first ensure its liquid enough.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
As climate change related risks are becoming more pronounced, major investment firms have been increasingly pushing companies to address these risks and their role in exacerbating them.
This year, almost every major public oil company faced at least one shareholder resolution involving climate change, with proposals winning record support.
While most asset managers prefer engagement to divestment, frustration over fruitless discussion and resolutions has also led to a growing divestment campaign.
Earlier this year, Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) reduced its stake in oil giant Exxon by US$300m, using its remaining stake to vote against the reappointment Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods.
Analysis and Comments
The whole debate around divestment vs engagement is a potentially divisive one – not so much among asset managers but in discussions with asset owners and particularly retail investors.
Over the last few years, it has been interesting to watch the shift in focus, as the engagers have increasingly honed in on the stranded asset risk across a whole range of industries, which has real and tangible implications for value.
Google announced beginning of the week that it would neutralize carbon emissions from delivering consumer hardware by 2020, and include recycled plastics in each of its products by 2022.
According to Anna Meegan, the company’s head of sustainability for its devices and services unit, the company’s transport-related carbon emissions per unit fell 40% in 2018 as it increased the use of ships rather than planes in transport.
Currently three out of nine products for which the company discloses details online contain recycled plastic (ranging from 20-42%) – which trails behind hardware rival Apple’s sustainability efforts.
Analysis and Comments
The trend may be slow, but for those companies that sell high profile products such as Apple & Google, the pressure to show their green credentials appears to be growing.
It is not clear how Google will fully “neutralise carbon emissions from delivery” – initially it looks as if at least part of the solution will be via carbon credits (which will gradually become more & more expensive to buy).
Hence longer term, this increase in carbon crédits price could be providing an incentive for the transport sector to accelerate its own shift to low carbon.
British spirits maker Diageo is investing £180m into green energy and water recoverysolutions such as biomass boilers, solar installations and water recycling systems at 11 of its breweries across Africa.
The investment is the company’s largest environmental investment in a decade, and will include £50m in upfront capitalfor solar, water treatment and biomass equipment, as well as£130m in long-term supply and maintenance contracts.
The company’s ultimate goal is to become 100% green and it plans to half its water usage and GHG emissions by 2020 as part of a group-wide commitment. It is also increasing its focus on sourcing locally in, with 78% of agricultural materials used in its 12 breweries across Africa currently sourced from local farmers.
Analysis and Comments
Africa contributes c. 13% of Diageo’s global turnover and about half of the company’s beer sales, and a minimum of 20 of the company’s African production facilities are in so-called “water-stressed locations”.
Unsurprisingly, water is an essential ingredient in all of Diageo’s brands (90%+ of beer and 60% of spirits) and the company has thus far been able to achieve a c.44% improvement in water efficiency between 2009 and 2018.
According to new data from WRI’s Aqueduct tools, 17 countries (including Africa) – home to one quarter of the world’s population –face extremely high levels of baseline water stress, as water withdrawals globally have more than doubled since the 1960s.
Of the 17 most water-stressed countries,12 are in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where growing demand and climate change are pushing already constrained countries even further into extreme stress.
According to the World Bank, this region has the greatest expected economic losses from climate-related water scarcity (c. 6-14% of GDP by 2050), stressing the importance of pursuing SDG 6 – ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
The People’s Bank of China is “close” to issuing its own cryptocurrency, according to a senior official.
The bank’s researchers have been working intensively since last year to develop systems, and the cryptocurrency is “close to being out,” Mu Changchun, deputy director of the PBOC’s payments department, said at an event held by China Finance 40 Forum over the weekend in Yichun, Heilongjiang. He didn’t give specifics on the timing.
Mu repeated the PBOC’s intention that the digital currency would replace M0, or cash in circulation, rather than M2, which would generate credit and impact monetary policy. The digital currency would also support the yuan’s circulation and internationalization, he said.
The number of publishers using the blockchain-based decentralized browser Brave has increased by 1,200% over the past year, industry-focused news outlet Decrypt reported on Aug. 11.
According to data from BATGrowth — a website that monitors Brave browser adoption — the number of Brave Rewards publishers were 18,931 in July, 2018, while its current number is more than 230,000 at press time.
29,278 website publishers including the Washington Post and Smithsonian Magazine, 17,417 Twitter publishers, 2,917 Reddit publishers, 166,698 YouTube publishers and over 12,000 Twitch publishers use the Brave Reward program.
Earlier in August, Brave announced a feature for tipping content creators on Twitter with its native Basic Attention Tokens (BAT). The announcement also listed a number of features associated with the tipping service, including setting up regularly recurring tips as well as a mechanism for tweeting at a tipped creator to tell them how to claim their donation.
Newly-launched cryptocurrency exchange Beaxy has suspended trading after some users deliberately crashed the price of altcoin Ripple (XRP).
XRP/BTC dips 40%
According to a blog post and social media messages, beginning on Aug. 12, Beaxy experienced a sudden surge in XRP trading volumes, with a huge sell-off reducing XRP/BTC to 40% of its price on other exchanges.
“As a result and precaution, we are temporarily halting all trading activity and withdrawals across the exchange as we investigate,” the blog post reads.
The Binance-owned digital currency wallet, Trust Wallet, has released a desktop application for macOS.
The team behind Trust Wallet announced the development in a tweet today, Aug. 12, also revealing that the wallet will be available in the Mac App Store shortly.
In a series of tweets, Trust Wallet founder Viktor Radchenko disclosed that support for Linux will be launched next week. Radchenko further said that the main challenge for the team now is to port Trust Wallet to Windows, which they have ostensibly not done yet. Radchenko also noted that most desktop crypto users — around 75% — are on Windows.
“International Conference on Block Chain & Data Science” in Tokyo, Japan from August 14-15.
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
Today the STEEM still progressed in the direction of the resistance line around 0.21$ but we have been rejected after a touch on the pink mobile line (MMA50). When this mobile line is broken, it means that the trend is reset. The fact that we didn’t break it now can be considered that we are still in bearish trend at short term, even with the last bounce. SO let’s see if we will finish to break it or if the drop will come back.
The Commitments of Traders (COT) is a weekly market report issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) listing the positions held by commercial traders and the “Smart Money”, the hedge funds and bank institutions in various futures markets in the United States. Since the COT measures the net long and short positions held by speculative traders and commercial traders, it is a great resource to gauge sentiment in the Markets.
In recent weeks gold has hit a six year high and is on the verge of closing above a key psychological level at $1500. Since December, gold is up 15%. Because of the ongoing trade war between the US and China and now a pending currency war between US and China, Goldman Sachs said last week the risk of a recession is rising. And what is the Smart Money doing, they are rushing into safe havens.
The Smart Money is buying Gold as evidence of open interests increasing, along with the price of gold.
Which has translated into Gold long positions rising for the 9th time in the past 10 weeks.
We haven’t seen this much bullishness in Gold by the Smart Money since 2016.
But this is the chart that does it for me, as it indicates the Smart Money really became bullish on Gold at the beginning of June.
Thus, the chart suggest to go long on Gold during pull backs.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
When you think about Cryptocurrencies, one name immediately comes to mind, Bitcoin. Since the creation of Bitcoin, there has only ever been one cryptocurrency at the top of the market cap rankings…Bitcoin.
When the price of Bitcoin rises, generally you can expect altcoin prices to rise with it. Likewise, when the Bitcoin price drops, altcoins also follow. And sometimes when Bitcoin is rising, the altcoins are declining due to cash moving from the altcoins to Bitcoin and vice versa.
Bitcoin dominance is used to measure the percentage of the cryptocurrency market that can be attributed to Bitcoin. Thus, it’s very easy to determine the relative strength of Bitcoin at any point. Not the case for the altcoins…until now. I have taken the more popular altcoins and determined their relative strength, relative to Bitcoin using just moving average.
Binance
EOS
Ethereum
Litecoin
Neo
Steem
Tron
Zcash
Based on the moving averages and the last daily closing price, relative to the moving averages,
the altcoins relative strength, relative to Bitcoin are the following:
Two Weeks Ago
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Rocket League, a highly successful live-service video game (PC/console) debuted in 2015 is still very popular, ranking in the top 10 most played games on gaming distribution platform Steam.
Its developer, Psyonix, was recently acquired by Epic Gamesand is now dropping the lootbox-style crate system it used to generate revenues from its player base.
Psyonix has already shifted the main focus of its monetisation strategy over to premium progression passes (so-called Battle Passes), which have been very lucrative for Epic Games.
Analysis and Comments
Lootboxes and micro transactions have long been popular monetisation techniques in mobile games, but it is only more recently that the big-budget games from AAA studios have been introducing them as well.
The main reason we are highlighting this story is because it showcases the subsequent shift away from monetisation techniques based on randomized item rewards (in premium games), as they have received a lot of attention and criticism in the near past – and come with a looming regularity overhang.
Battle Passes, on the other hand, are a tried and proven method to generate revenue from a game’s player base (and importantly not hated by gamers, unlike the “surprise mechanics” of lootboxes).
There are many successful examples of companies using this technique (including Epic Games & Riot), with perhaps one of the best ones being Valve’s annual Battle Pass sale for the esports World Championship of its game Dota 2: the game’s prize pool is almost entirely crowdfunded via the Battle Passes, and while only 25% of the in-game sales actually go towards the prize pool, the total prize pool currently amounts to more than US$32m, with 18 days left until the crowdfunding ends.
Notably, the Battle Pass-funded prize pool has consistently broken its own recordevery year, with this year’sofficially being the largest single-event prize pool in esports history.
Tencent’s Share price (majority shareholder of EPIC Games)
The global economy faces its biggest crisis in 11 years.
In theory, this should be bitcoin’s moment to shine, a chance to prove itself as an uncorrelated asset immune from political risks. Eventually, that result may bear out. But a rocky road lies ahead – for bitcoiners and nocoiners alike.
Before we do the bitcoin up or down game, let’s dive into why the current situation in global finance is so disturbing.
The Backdrop
It all begun last Monday, when Beijing let the renminbi fall below RMB7.0 to the dollar. Almost immediately, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would take the rare step of labeling China a “currency manipulator,” a move that, in theory, would give the Trump Administration legal cover to impose punitive sanctions against Chinese. Markets freaked out at the specter of a currency war, a tit-for-tat feedback loop of exchange rate depreciations fueling a destructive downward spiral in trade and growth.
Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun has said that getting the cryptocurrency listed on the American version of Binance or Coinbase is his company’s number one priority.
The entrepreneur was responding to tweets from Tron enthusiasts on Aug. 9, with some claiming that investors were concerned that United States citizens will be unable to trade TRX on Binance.
Alarm bells also sounded after TRX was absent from a list of 30 digital assets being explored for the upcoming launch of Binance’s U.S. marketplace.
Thanks to ALL of you, Steemmonsters (aka Splinterlands) is growing, it does not care about bear/bull markets and is ready for the next Bull Run !
SteemMonsters reached 247k visits in July 2019!
There is an important difference between total visitors to a site and unique ones. In this case the 247k include the multiple times a person visited the website.
Therefore, as a good Steemian you probably connect everyday which will make you count for a total of 30 visits.
Therefore, how many “unique users” does SteemMonsters has?
This is a very important question that I will try to answer later on. According to the Beta Analysis from the website I use to compile these datas, it is c.30,6k in July (compared to an average of c.20k over the past 18 months) !
I] Traffic
Daily SteemMonsters Traffic
SteemMonsters Daily Traffic kept on improving since the launch to reach close to 10k daily visits in July 2019.
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has claimed that its digital currency “can now be said to be ready.”
According to PBoC deputy director Mu Changchun, a prototype that adopts blockchain architecture has been successfully developed after five years of research.
His announcement, made at the China Finance 40 Forum, was reported by local news site Shanghai Securities News on August 10.
A new patent application from IBM describes a blockchain-based web browser.
Filed on August 6 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, IBM’s patent is for a web browser backed by a peer-to-peer network.
The browser collects pre-specified information from web browsing sessions, according to the patent. The information is then transferred to a network of peer-to-peer nodes for collection and storage. Information collection depends on the type of browsing experience chosen. Browsing on a work computer versus a personal browser would demand different settings, for example.
Types of potentially storable session information include what websites one visits, bookmarks, task performance, geolocation, plugin installation, and security patches. As the company states, a blockchain-based browser “affords a system for storing browsing information such that privacy is preserved and places privacy in the ‘hands of a user’ rather than a third party.”
There is an important difference between total visitors to a site and unique ones. In this case the 12.2mn include the multiple times a person visited the website.
Therefore, as a good Steemian you probably connect everyday which will make you count for a total of 30 visits.
Therefore, how many “unique users” does Steemit has?
“We will perform XWallet system upgrade from 10:30 to 14:30 GMT+8 on Aug 12, 2019. This upgrade will take approximately 4 hours.”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
So the Bounce is still in progress on STEEM like on most of the altcoin. Let’ see if we will be able to go test the resistance line at 0.21$ or if the Drop will come back before that touch. Be very carefull if we touch that resistance line but we don’t break it. It could be a pull back before the resume of the drop.
