The Empire Strikes Back

The News From Planet REX—Thursday, April 6, 2023

The Earth apes are rallying to their temple to make sacrifices to their primary deity. They practice a form of totemic religion in which their god, the "Dollar", is both all-powerful but paradoxically must also be protected from the destructive forces of the market. (This projection mirrors a narcissistic belief in their own mastery, competing with repressed existential terror arising from their dangerously fragile position in the universe.)

Yet those who spurn worship of the Dollar are steadily growing stronger and more numerous. We continue to equip them with the tools they need to achieve enlightenment. The stakes have never been higher, as the situation builds slowly to a denouement.

Stonks Stronk, Bitcoin Holds The Line

A day early due to the Easter holiday, here's our weekly roundup.

Since its epic break of resistance with a $6,000 weekly candle three weeks ago, bitcoin has remained range-bound between $27k and $29k—the chart showing three consecutive weekly dojis as the price opens and closes around $28k. Overhead resistance up to $30k is probably the greatest hurdle BTC has to overcome on the entire chart. At the time of writing, bitcoin is slowly chipping away at that barrier, with dips being bought back up and repeated tests of $28,500.

This is partly a story of dollar weakness. Gold is close to its all-time highs ($2,069, set in 2020), the Dow and S&P are up, and oil has had an exceptional week after producers, led by Saudi Arabia, sneakily moved to cut output. And with rate rises on hold—likely permanently—due to the fragility of the banking system, all of this contributes to a risk-on mood that can only be good for crypto.

OCP2.0 Gets A New Clown-In-Chief

In the last week, Operation Choke Point 2.0 has come out into the daylight with a new public face. Elizabeth Warren—a long-time critic of bitcoin—has launched a campaign for reelection that bizarrely pits crypto against the interests of working families.

There are too many memes to choose from, but this one seems apt.

The good news is that Senator Warren's campaign threatens to make her as effective an advertising tool for crypto as boomer goldbug Peter Schiff, who has vocally been advising bitcoin holders to sell ahead of a collapse to zero since at least 2013.

OCP's previous head villain, SEC Chair Gary Gensler, is due to testify before the House Financial Services Committee the week after next. Representative Patrick McHenry, chairman of the Committee, said that Gensler would have to answer questions about his agency's heavy-handed approach of enforcement in the crypto ecosystem.

Recent weeks have seen both the SEC and CTFC laying claim to crypto asset regulation as their territory. However, the Financial Services Committee has said that a key focus in the coming months will be the creation of a proper framework for crypto asset regulation, and has made it clear it considers Gensler's actions to date to have been illegal.

Much Lol. So Troll. Very Elon.

Elon Musk is currently facing a $258 billion lawsuit from a group of investors for his role in "running a pyramid scheme" in the form of his promotion of Dogecoin. Representing the rekt traders, plaintiff Keith Johnson is seeking $86 billion in damages (the fall in DOGE's market cap from its May 2021 high), tripled for good measure. Last Friday, Musk asked the judge to dismiss the case, which his lawyers characterized as a "work of fiction".

On Monday, the blue Twitter bird on the social media site was replaced with the Dogecoin logo, sending DOGE up 30% to break the $0.10 mark—still far short of the $0.74 peak. The move was widely seen as making fun of those who have accused him of scamming them.

Numbers Keep Going Up

Elsewhere in the crypto world:

• The Arbitrum Foundation is in trouble with its community over a billion-dollar piece of "decentralization theater". In short, the Foundation began selling tokens to fund operations before its 750 million ARB budget was actually ratified by community vote. Oops.
• New tools and traction for the BRC-20 standard for Ordinals (NFTs on Bitcoin) have helped Ordinals inscriptions soar, with recent days seeing more than 70,000 minted, and the total number closing in on a million. Galaxy Digital has projected the Bitcoin NFT space could hit $4.5 billion by 2025.
• Citibank researchers have suggested that blockchain is at a tipping point, and that the driver for mass adoption will be tokenization of everyday assets, with $4-5 trillion in value being tokenized by 2030.
• The market cap for tokenized gold rose above $1 billion, with Pax Gold and Tether Gold both representing around half of that sum.

That's all for this week. Happy Easter, REX Wire Community!

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