Tuesday's Markets Update (October 10, 2023)

10 Oct 2023 by rate3

On Tuesday, small businesses are reported to be less optimistic, but the Nasdaq and a broader range of stocks gained as Treasury yields fell after dovish comments from Fed officials. Tesla, Bank of America, and Amazon were among the top gainers. Bitcoin went sideways, while Ethereum continued its slump caused by its foundation's sell-offs. Other news: Some "crypto-analytic" firms point to cryptocurrencies as the important source of the Middle East war's financing.

Details

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index fell for a second month in September to its lowest level in four months, as inflation and labor quality remain top concerns. Owners are pessimistic about future business conditions, and sales growth has slowed.

Comments

NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said, "Sales growth among small businesses has slowed, and the bottom line is being squeezed, leaving owners few options beyond raising selling prices for financial relief."

What all world's governments, inundated by 70+ "rulers", stopped to understand is that they are riding people, not numbers. When you squeeze people's families, they will react. First by raising prices—a.k.a. increasing inflation— in their shops and then by something else. We have already seen how fast it might initially lead to throwing stones into someone's shop windows or invading unguarded property and, then, to much much worser acts of barbarism.

That Baby Boomers, still, would not see that as the direct consequence of their inability to fundamentally change the governance system in order to adapt to new realities, most of which have been always driven by implementing new technologies from within the society, and continue to blame all social calamities on "extremists-terrorists" is understood.

Old ruling bureaucrats, incapable of embracing the changes, always blamed the stupidity of their outdated "policies" on someone else—on "nationalists" in America 1861, on "anarchists" in Europe 1914 and then in 1939, on "communists" in Korea 1950, on "religious extremists" in Yugoslavia 1991, on "terrorists with nuclear weapons" in Iraq 2003—et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on and on.

In our day, only complete decentralization and the transfer of major governance mechanisms to the "bottom" of our society to millions of interconnected individuals, forming fluid, rapidly changing independent societies, helped by algorithms, might save our civilization from the chaos to which Baby Boomers are leading us now with their famously rigid brainlessness.

Crypto

Ethereum price fell sharply, after the Ethereum Foundation started selling coins. This is due to a number of factors, including an increase in the supply of tokens, sales by Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, and weaker-than-expected demand for Ethereum futures ETFs. These factors have created negative sentiment around Ethereum, which has weighed on its price.
Some "crypto-analytic" firms have attempted to use the current crisis in the Middle East to rise demand for their products from part of government agencies by blaming cryptocurrencies for playing a major role in financing the current conflict, citing unsubstantiated "UN research" that allegedly stated that crypto may constitute up to 20% of that war financing today.
Comment

We have come full circle in 10 years, from ETH emerging in 2013 to the current situation when, after the widely acclaimed conversion from PoW to PoS, ETH has started to gradually lose its practically unchallenged stance with investors.

Of course, most of this is due to the current unprecedented combination of deepening economic crises accompanied by a reduction in liquidity—vital for crypto survival—and political and regulatory pressure on the crypto community imposed by three-letter agencies and politicians all around the world.

However, the more decentralized a network is, the better its chances of survival. It looks like ETH taking that leap of faith and going to PoS didn't improve those chances.