The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers – March 21st, 2021
A bearish start to the day saw Bitcoin fall to an early morning intraday low $57,800.0 before making a move.
Steering clear of the first major support level at $56,391 Bitcoin rallied to an early afternoon intraday high $60,000.0.
Bitcoin broke through the first major resistance level at $59,594 before Sliding back to end the day at sub-$58,100 levels.
The near-term bullish trend remained intact supported by last Sunday’s new swing hi $61,699.0. For the bears, Bitcoin would need to slide through the 62% FIB of $26,041 to form a near-term bearish trend.
The Rest of the Pack
Across the rest of the majors, it was a mixed day on Saturday.
Ripple’s XRP jumped by 12.62% to lead the way on the day.
Binance Coin (+0.47%) and Litecoin (+0.14%) also joined Bitcoin in the green.
It was a bearish day for the rest of the majors, however.
Cardano’s ADA slid by 7.33% to lead the way down.
Bitcoin Cash SV (-4.63%), Chainlink (-0.62%), Crypto.com Coin (-3.12%), Ethereum (-0.14%), and Polkadot (-2.59%) also saw red.
In the current week, the crypto total market fell to a Tuesday low $1,593bn before rising to a Saturday high $1,839bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $1,749bn.
Bitcoin’s dominance rose to a Monday high 63.03% before falling to a Saturday low 60.83%. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 61.72%.
Bank Of America Calls Bitcoin ‘Impractical,’ And Crypto Community Has A Lot To Say About That
The Guardian
The ex-president has spent his time out of office attacking Republicans who dare to criticize him – and it could cause trouble for the party in the midterms Donald Trump campaigns in Wisconsin on 24 October 2020. Photograph: Tom Brenner/Reuters Days after being acquitted in his second impeachment trial last month, Donald Trump issued a statement lashing out against one of the very Republican senators who made that acquittal possible. “The Republican party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘leaders’ like Senator Mitch McConnell at its helm,” the former president said in a statement, after the Republican leader criticized him for inciting the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol. Trump added: “Mitch is a dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.” But the shocking statement is just one of many colorful examples of how Trump has spent his post-presidency so far: attacking fellow Republicans who dare to criticize him while continuing to promote his personal political brand and his own firm grip on much of the party’s base. Such antics and behavior could cause trouble for the Republican party, as it attempts to take control of Congress in 2022’s midterm elections by continuing to embrace Trumpism as its guiding philosophy. While party leaders have encouraged Trump to focus on the efforts to flip the House and the Senate, the former president at times seems more interested in extracting revenge against the handful of Republican politicians who supported his impeachment. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) late last month, Trump rattled off the names of each of the 17 Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach or convict him and suggested they should be removed from office. “Get rid of them all,” Trump told the CPAC crowd. Trump is already putting in effort to unseat those Republicans. The former president has vowed to help defeat Lisa Murkowski next year, attacking the Alaska Republican as “disloyal” after she supported his conviction in the Senate. Trump has also endorsed Max Miller, a former aide who launched a primary challenge against Anthony Gonzalez, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him. Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, said the former president would be releasing another round of endorsements in the coming days, including one for a primary challenger running against an incumbent Republican. “There are upcoming endorsements for folks running for reelection, as well as open seats, as well as, in one case, it will likely be a primary challenge against a sitting Republican,” Miller told the Guardian. “His endorsement is still the single biggest endorsement in politics. He plans on using that.” Trump’s attacks on “disloyal” Republicans seem to be the latest example of the former president’s vengeful attitude about politics and business, said Michael D’Antonio, the author of the The Truth About Trump. He is a person who very much believes in getting even with anyone he believes harmed him Michael D’Antonio “He is a person who very much believes in getting even with anyone he believes harmed him,” D’Antonio said. “It’s always a matter of, ‘Are you with me? And if you’re not with me, then you’re against me, and you must be destroyed.’” Miller emphasized that Trump remains “committed” to working with the party’s committee groups, such as the Republican National Committee (RNC), to elect candidates who support the former president’s “America first” agenda. But Trump has been adamant that anyone using his name or likeness to fundraise must have his pre-approval before doing so. In a fiery statement released earlier this month, the former president criticized “Rinos,” meaning “Republicans in name only”, for using his likeness to raise money for their campaigns. “I fully support the Republican party and important GOP committees, but I do not support Rinos and fools, and it is not their right to use my likeness or image to raise funds,” Trump said. “So much money is being raised and completely wasted by people that do not have the GOP’s best interests in mind.” Trump instead encouraged his supporters to donate to his own political action committee, the Save America Pac. According to Miller, the Pac already has more than $80m in the bank, with about a year and a half to go until the midterm elections. Trump supporters cheer at CPAC in Orlando, Florida, on 28 February. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Trump’s efforts to direct contributions toward his own Pac, where he and his advisers have much more control over how funds are spent, have led to criticism that the former president is more focused on raising money for himself rather than helping the Republican party regain control of Congress. “He doesn’t want anything to impact his ability to raise money for the super Pac that he has created, so he wants to divert as much cash away from the RNC to that Pac,” said Michael Steele, a former RNC chairman and a frequent Trump critic. “This is all transactional for him. It’s not personal. It’s the next level of financial transactions that Trump wants to engage in.” Capitalizing off of his political brand may be Trump’s best financial prospect at this point. The Trump Organization’s revenue sharply declined last year, and Trump is personally responsible for $300m in loans that are due over the next four years, according to a New York Times analysis of his tax records. His financial woes come as the Manhattan district attorney has launched an expansive investigation of the Trump Organization’s business dealings. “If you look at all the peril he faces legally and the near collapse of many of his businesses, he’s looking for a revenue stream, and no dollar amount is too small for him to fight for,” D’Antonio said of Trump’s latest fundraising efforts. “I think that’s his new business.” The RNC has continued to fundraise off Trump’s name as well, and senior Republicans have generally attempted to downplay any tension between the former president and party leaders, insisting they are united in their goal to push back against Joe Biden’s agenda. “The Republican civil war is now cancelled,” Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a widely shared memo late last month. Yet, when Scott met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida earlier this month, the former president would not commit to staying out of Senate primary races. “He didn’t say he was going to,” Scott told CNN on Tuesday, when asked if Trump indicated he would get involved in primary battles. “I’m sure he wants to be helpful, so the best thing for him to do would be to participate in whoever wins the primaries and come back then.” Scott is one of a number of Republican leaders who have made the journey from Washington to Palm Beach in recent weeks to consult with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and the House minority whip, Steve Scalise, have also paid visits to the Florida resort since Trump left the White House. Even incumbent Republicans, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have traveled to Mar-a-Lago to fundraise and meet with Trump, with the apparent hope to secure an endorsement from the former president and prevent any primary challenges as they seek reelection. Trump has already endorsed several Senate Republicans up for re-election next year, including Tim Scott of South Carolina and Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Miller said the former president’s next round of endorsements will include more sitting Republican senators. “Everybody is coming to Mar-a-Lago or trying to get President Trump on the phone to ask for his endorsement,” Miller said. The widespread efforts to appeal to Trump underscore the massive influence the former president still holds over the Republican party, even after leaving office. But Trump and party leaders may be on a collision course if the former president continues to target incumbents and redirect money toward his own Pac, potentially jeopardizing Republicans’ hopes of taking back Congress. “They are about to come headlong into each other because their interests don’t align,” Steele said. “Trump is not in the business of expanding the party. He is in the business of having in place people who support him, and he can afford to lose people who don’t support him.”
Crypto.com Inks Global Partnership With Visa: What’s Next?
Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) – The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into Visa Inc.’s practices regarding debit-card transactions.The department is looking into the network’s rules for routing transactions both in stores and online, according to a person familiar with the matter. Representatives for the Justice Department declined to comment.“The U.S. Department of Justice has informed Visa of its plans to open an investigation into Visa’s U.S. debit practices” and is cooperating with the department, the company said in a regulatory filing Friday afternoon. “We believe Visa’s U.S. debit practices are in compliance with applicable laws.”Last year, the department sued Visa to block a $5.3 billion deal the network had signed with Plaid Inc., saying that the combination would further limit competition in the market for online debit-card transactions. Visa and Plaid ultimately abandoned the deal.Visa shares slumped 6.2% to $206.90 Friday, their biggest one-day decline in almost a year. The Wall Street Journal first reported the investigation earlier Friday.In its suit against Visa last year, the Justice Department said Visa already possessed monopoly power in the market for online debit-card transactions, arguing that roughly 70% of such transactions in the U.S. routed over the firm’s network.At the heart of the Justice Department’s issues with Visa is the 2010 law known as the Durbin Amendment, which requires banks to include two networks on their debit cards. The idea is that merchants are then supposed to be given the choice of routing over a major network like Visa’s or the one run by rival Mastercard Inc. versus a smaller alternative such as Pulse, Star or NYCE. Those alternative networks can be cheaper for merchants.New TechnologyThat system generally works for in-store transactions. The problem, the Justice Department has said, is that Visa has created new technology that makes it harder for online transactions to be routed over alternative networks.“As a result, merchants do not use PIN networks in any significant volume to process online transactions, and instead pay higher fees to use Visa,” the Justice Department said in its lawsuit last year, referring to the personal identification numbers debit-card customers use when paying.Merchants’ complaints over their struggle to route online debit-card transactions over alternative networks has only intensified during the coronavirus pandemic, with consumers turning to online shopping in droves. Retailers already spend more than $100 billion a year to accept cards and other electronic payments, an amount that’s swelled in recent years as consumers shifted away from cash, and banks dangled rewards and perks to spur more card usage.Visa, in its response last year, argued that the Justice Department cherry-picked its definition of the online debit-card market to make it seem like the network holds more power than it does. Visa also said the department’s claim that it doesn’t face real competition from Mastercard was “dubious.”What Bloomberg Intelligence Says“Visa’s defense against a new U.S. Department of Justice probe may be the superior security of the company’s network vs. cheaper options, which we view as a sound argument and one that Apple may invoke against Epic Games. The Visa investigation will take at least a year and could spur a lawsuit that would further delay resolution.”–Julie Chariell, senior industry analyst, and Meryl Thomas, associate analyst“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Visa said. “In recent years, Mastercard has convinced numerous banks to switch their debit-card portfolios from Visa to Mastercard and competition has driven down overall pricing on accounts.”For years, Visa has reported in regulatory filings that the Department of Justice’s antitrust division issued the company a civil investigative demand in March 2012, seeking documents and information tied to its debit-card practices.“Although it’s not clear what specifically the DOJ might be looking at currently, we believe the threat of regulation has historically proven to be a near-term multiple compressor, as was the case with the Durbin Amendment, but note the financial implications were less impactful,” Daniel Perlin, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to clients.While Visa hasn’t received a civil investigative demand from the Justice Department yet, it did get a notice to preserve relevant documents, the company said in its filing Friday.(Updates with Visa comment in third, last paragraphs.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.