We know that Bitcoin missed a much-awaited milestone of $100,000 at the end of 2021. However, only 5% of JP Morgan’s clients still expect the token to reach that level by year-end. But, as per a recent poll, the majority (41%) of the clients see a $60,000 price level as a fair year-ending valuation.
We know that Bitcoin has already lost close to 40% of its value since its ATH was seen in November 2021. Meanwhile, bank strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou commented,
“I’m not surprised by Bitcoin bearishness.”
That being said, apart from the 5% above, some industry-wide analysts see bitcoin reaching $100,000 in 2022, now that it has missed the crucial level last year. Goldman Sachs had recently stated that Bitcoin hitting $100K is a possibility if acquires the market share from gold.
Meanwhile, Ryan Selkis, Founder & CEO, Messari took to Twitter to take a dig at the massive price predictions.
My price targets for BTC and ETH are $100k and $10k by May.
I arrived at these targets by looking at the charts yesterday, and writing down the numbers I wanted the markets to hit by springtime.
Bitwise Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told CNBC that he is optimistic about what the demand will be long term,
“Now we’re seeing a little bit of a pullback, but still some strong fundamentals underneath.”
In November, JP Morgan had renewed Bitcoin’s long-term price target to $146,000 if its high volatility subsides. Otherwise, it had said that a price target of $73,000 “seems reasonable” for the short term.
Collin Plume, CEO and founder of My Digital Money opined in a report that the BTC dip is on the back of tapering, which is “sending investors to bonds and other more conservative assets.”
1. Will the price levels improve?
Stephen Pair, CEO of crypto payments processor BitPay sees increased adoption of crypto in the coming time from both an investment perspective and a payment perspective. While it can be a positive trigger for the market, Edelman Financial Engines founder Ric Edelman also supports the idea. He commented that a third of American adults are going to own Bitcoin by the end of 2022.
“We’re already at 26% of American adults. I’m simply ratcheting up to 33%.”
However, as of now, Bitcoin is not quite there yet. Santiment noted in its recent research that Bitcoin whale transactions have been dropping after November.
Major whale transactions aren't quite coming at the frequency they were in October or November. Our metrics indicate that the $BTC network is getting around 13k transactions per day that exceed $100k in value. $ETH's network is seeing about 9k per day. https://t.co/Z46GfB7huMpic.twitter.com/vrGxGIMDMC
As NFT trading activity remains high in volume, a new wave of NFT trading platforms have begun to crop up in 2022.
LooksRare, a recently launched nonfungible token, or NFT, marketplace, says it wants to index all NFT collections on the Ethereum blockchain. The site went live on Monday with a token airdrop.
— LooksRare 👀💎 – NFT Marketplace (@LooksRareNFT) January 10, 2022
Created by two anonymous co-founders, known as Zodd and Guts, LooksRare claimed to be made “By NFT People, for NFT People.” According to its blog announcement, the LooksRare team is “tired of the deplatforming of creators, and the decision-makers who value business over community, seeking IPO instead of benefiting the communities that got them there.”
Their alleged solution is to offer a marketplace that rewards the platform’s participants and creators. Users who buy or sell NFTs from eligible collections can earn its native utility LOOKS tokens. OpenSea users who traded 3 ETH or more between June 16–Dec. 16, 2021 are eligible for an airdrop of LOOKS Tokens.
In addition, the platform has a 2% standard fee on all NFT trades, which is lower than OpenSea’s 2.5%, that goes to LOOKS token stakers. And users can trade NFTs with Ether or wrapped ether (WETH). At the time of publication, LOOKS traded at 0.0008748 WETH($2.69).
The LooksRare site was down for a few hours on Monday, which caused some users to experience difficulties while connecting their wallets and completing listings. According to the project’s Discord, the site was under a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS, meaning that its network was overwhelmed with malicious traffic.
On Monday, another NFT marketplace launch announcement was made by the news organization Associated Press, which plans to debut its photojournalism NFT platform on Jan. 31.
We have key news coming up from Polygon developers as they unveil the world’s fastest ZK Scaling Technology, Polnky2. This is a part of the Polygon Zero mission that uses zero-knowledge proofs to scale the Ethereum blockchain to a billion users.
As per the official announcement, Plonky2 is a recursive SNARK that’s natively compatible with Ethereum and 100x faster than the existing alternatives. The announcement further adds:
Plonky2 combines PLONK and FRI for the best of STARKs, with fast proofs and no trusted setup, and the best of SNARKs, with support for recursion and low verification cost on Ethereum.
One of the biggest strengths of ZK-Proofs is recursion. Meaning it allows one SNARK to verify the other SNARKs making the network performance even faster. Apart from being faster, the recursive process is less resource-intensive and more decentralized.
Recursive proofs help in significantly reducing the proving times and thus are very critical for blockchain scalability.
Plonky2 Compatibility With Ethereum
As the blog post notes, the scaling technology of Plonky2 is completely compatible with the Etheruem blockchain. the latest step will also help Polygon transition from being just a solution provider to building the future of Ethereum. The blog post notes:
ZK L2s have benefited from a lot of hype, but current solutions rely on cryptographic primitives that are inefficient and limit scalability. Ultimately, L2’s will compete on throughput and cost, and Plonky2 gives the Polygon ecosystem the opportunity to build the most performant and scalable L2s.
This is yet another feather to the cap of Polygon which has been releasing some promising updates over the last few months. As a result, investors are also keen on getting their hands on Polygon’s native cryptocurrency MATIC. Soon after the news, the MATIC price jumped another 3% and is currently trading at a price of $2.16.
The king coin’s curious trajectory over the last couple of months has left the market in a bizarre state of confusion. Bitcoin’strajectory after an early November ATH of $69,000 has mostly been on a downtrend – Making lower highs and lower lows each time.
The 4 December flash crash pulled Bitcoin down to $42K. As the same price level was tested again on 7 January, the market’s sentiments took a turn for the worse.
Waning interest
In December, Bitcoin registered its most significant month-on-month loss since the crash in May 2021 when it fell by 49.2% from a high of $58,943 to $29,925 in just 19 days. In December, BTC fell by over 30% from its ATH of $69,000 as CME BTC Futures volumes also noted the biggest monthly decrease of 77.4% to $11 billion.
Furthermore, spot volumes from the 15 largest Top-Tier exchanges fell by 22.6% compared to November, with total spot volumes of $1.4 trillion. This followed an overall trend of crypto-prices declining in December. This continued into the new year, defying expectations of a 2022 bull run.
The market sentiment as BTC fell close to the $40K-mark was a state of ‘extreme fear,’ according to the Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index. In fact, it noted its lowest value since July last year. Also, more Bitcoin has moved into exchanges over the last week, indicating a mildly bearish shift in investor sentiment.
Source: Glassnode
Net inflows represent investors’ intention to sell, while sustained outflows represent strong HODLing sentiment. It also reduces the circulating supply. Thus, fueling supply shock narratives.
So, while the recent uptick in net inflows to exchanges doesn’t signal a trend shift altogether, it does present the possibility of a market sell-off in the future.
Where next – $30K or $50K?
BTC’s price action now looks eerily similar to the price action in Feb-May when the price made four tops as the Relative Strength Index made lower highs. The four price tops making lower highs alongside the RSI replicating a similar downtrend triggered BTC’s fall to the $30K-level in May.
Source: Trading View
Yet again as Bitcoin stands near $40K, the question is the same – Whether Bitcoin will see $50K or $30K first?
At the time of writing, the $40K support looked like BTC bulls’ last hope for a meaningful reversal if the same sustains and BTC is able to replicate gains. However, there’s still a bigger bearish trend line to get through.
For now, a reversal in MVRV 365 days presents a decent reversal opportunity. But, if the price fails to hold, bullish expectations would be invalidated.
Source: Sanbase
If Bitcoin closes the week below $40K, there’s a decent possibility of a visit to the $30K support in the mid-short term. A crucial reversal of the $40K-level could dictate BTC’s move ahead.
Bitcoin pushed past the $42,000 level over the weekend, after last week’s broad market bloodbath, which sent the No. 1 cryptocurrency by market capitalization spiraling toward $40,000 from about $48,000. At the time of publication, ether and most of the altcoins in CoinDesk’s top 20 by market capitalization were up, although still way down over the past week.
Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies fell last week amid the Federal Reserve’s release of minutes from its December meeting. The Fed signaled that it would tighten monetary policy faster than was once expected.
The leading cryptocurrency fell to as low as $40,505.3 on Coinbase on Saturday, its lowest level since Sept. 21, before it rebounded above $42,000, data from TradingView and Coinbase show.
But as markets in Asia open, it remains uncertain whether the recovery will last since bitcoin’s spot trading volume across major centralized exchanges on Sunday was thin, according to data compiled by CoinDesk. (At the time of publication, bitcoin’s price had sunk below $41,900.)
Source: CoinDesk/CryptoCompare
Bitcoin fell for six straight days before the weekend and the downward move escalated after the Fed minutes showed that policymakers discussed aggressive interest rate hikes and a faster pace to normalize its balance sheet.
“The minutes confirmed a strong hawkish bias with markets now pricing in a 90% chance of a Fed [rate] hike in March,” Singapore-based crypto quant trading firm QCP Capital wrote in its Telegram channel on Sunday. “…In the bigger picture, it seems likely that the all-time highs in BTC and ETH will remain capped for most of 2022 as a result of central bank tightening.”
Technician’s take
Bitcoin (BTC) remains in a two-month downtrend, defined by a series of lower price highs.
The cryptocurrency was down about 9% over the past week as upside momentum continued to slow.
There is minor support around $40,000, which could stabilize the current pullback. However, upside appears limited around the $45,000 resistance level. This means buyers could quickly take profits if a price bounce occurs.
The relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart is the most oversold since Dec.11, albeit within a price downtrend.
Over the long-term, BTC is vulnerable to further selling, especially if buyers fail to hold the $38,000-$40,000 support zone over the weekend. On the weekly chart, the RSI is not yet oversold, which suggests the downtrend remains intact.
Lower support is around $28,000, which is near the June 2021 low.
BTC is roughly two weeks away from registering a downside exhaustion signal, which typically precedes a countertrend price bounce. Still, similar oversold readings on the daily chart have been delayed as buyers remain on the sidelines.
Important events
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“First Mover” hosts spoke with Ernst & Young Principal & Global Innovation Leader Paul Brody about his outlook for Ethereum in 2022 and some of the key issues that need to be addressed. Looking at the markets, the U.S. economy added 199K jobs last month, fewer than expected. Ben McMillan, CIO of IDX Digital Assets, shared his view on the crypto markets and the impact of macro factors. Plus, Open Earth Foundation Executive Director Martin Wainstein shared insights into using NFT art to help tackle climate change.
Latest headlines
India’s Central Bank Creates Fintech Department as Challenges Posed by Crypto, CBDC Grow: According to an internal document viewed by CoinDesk, the upgrading of the unit into its own department is aimed at promoting innovation in the sector.
Industry Body for Indian Startups Seeks Crypto Rules in Coming Budget Session of Parliament: The development comes a few days after news broke that tax agencies “inspected” offices of five major cryptocurrency exchanges in the country and “recovered” over Rs 84 crore ($11 million).
Binance.US Is Building an Office in the Solana Metaverse: Several crypto companies are setting up shop in Portals.
PayPal Is Exploring Creating Its Own Stablecoin as Crypto Business Grows:Hidden code in the company’s iPhone app shows that a potential “PayPal Coin” would be backed by the U.S. dollar.
Bitcoin Falls Toward $40K, Racks Up Longest Losing Streak Since 2018: Cryptocurrency analysts had warned of the possibility of a steeper sell-off, and now traders are wondering when and where the market shakeout might end.
JPMorgan Sees More Crypto Adoption in 2022, Debates Bitcoin’s Status as Store of Value: The investment bank also continues to rate crypto exchange Coinbase as a buy.
Said and heard
“Even more than in equities, Warren Buffett’s timeless advice applies: Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
“I look at the DAO space and definitely can see how tokens, governance systems, cross-border and trustless relationships can help with executing completely legitimate causes (like ConstitutionDAO). I also believe this may be the right path towards more complex and perhaps legally self-sufficient constructions. But we’re not there yet.”
”Policymakers should think holistically about three realities. One is that climate change is not going away. The other is that Bitcoin is not going away. The third is that Bitcoin’s geography-agnostic miners are highly adaptable and will continue to seek out the most cost-effective energy sources anywhere and anyhow.”
As per the report from Electric Capital, Polkadot is currently the second biggest ecosystem after Ethereum to see development on-chain. This is not surprising since Polkadot is known to have a significantly higher development activity in comparison to other major altcoins.
Even though Solana became the DeFi attraction earlier this year owing to the NFT hype, it still tailed Polkadot when it came to total developers which Polkadot leads after Ethereum at around 1k – 2k devs.
Plus, everyone is aware of Polkadot’s parachains and the ensuing auctions which recently ended. In fact, within a few days the first winner of the parachain auction, Moonbeam will complete its second phase of the launch on Polkadot. Also, as this is completed, the network will be enabling the EVM for its users.
But, even before Moonbeam’s launch could be completed, Polkadot had already begun its second round of auctions. Well, after Efinity winning the sixth slot, Composable Finance is looking to take the win for the seventh slot.
This is proof that Polkadot will continue to draw in more and more developers and might even in the future become a prime DeFi hub.
Now, it can be ascertained that the network can surely attract developers.
1. But, can Polkadot also…
Attract more investors? Since higher investors would majorly support the growth of the network. Well, the answer is- unfortunately, not at the moment.
Owing to the overall bearishness of the market, DOT is also oscillating far away from its ATH. It has even lost more than 17.35% in the last three days.
But the bearishness isn’t canon for the altcoin since its downtrend’s strength is pretty weak at the moment. Although the MACD does indicate the possibility of a bearish divergence, it can only be confirmed within the next 72 hours.
Right now, recovery is the only hope. DOT has to bring new investors since people themselves aren’t interested in investing in the asset. It is visible by the fact that their sentiment is at the worst in seven months.
However, because the risk-adjusted returns for DOT are negative at the moment, it would be best to look out for a couple of green candles before jumping in.
NFTs look ready to rule 2022, and the recent pivot toward NFT utility in P2E gaming could make blockchain gaming this year’s sector darling.
After the popularity of DeFi, came the rise of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and to the surprise of many, NFTs took the spotlight and remain front and center with the highest volume in sales, occuring at the start of January 2022.
Growing number of unique NFT buyers on Ethereum Source: Delphi Digital
While 2021 became the year of NFTs, GameFi applications did surpass DeFi in terms of user popularity. According to data from DappRadar, Bloomberg gathered:
“Nearly 50% of active cryptocurrency wallets connected to decentralized applications in November were for playing games. The percentage of wallets linked to decentralized finance, or DeFi, dapps fell to 45% during the same period, after months of being the leading dapp use case.”
Blockchain, play-to-earn game Axie infinity, skyrocketed and kicked off a gaming craze that is expected to continue all throughout 2022. Crypto pundits and gaming advocates have high expectations for p2e blockchain-based games and there’s bound to be a few sleeping giants that will dominate the sector.
Let’s take a look at five blockchain games that could make waves in 2022.
DeFi Kingdoms
The inspiration for DeFi Kingdoms came from simple beginnings— a passion for investing that lured the developers to blockchain technology. DeFi Kingdoms was born as a visualization of liquidity pool investing where in-game ‘gardens’ represent literal and figurative token pairings and liquidity pool mining.
As shown in the game, investors have a portion of their LP share within a plot filled with blooming plants. By attaching the concept of growth to DeFi protocols within a play-and-earn model, DeFi Kingdoms puts a twist on “playing” a game.
Built on the Harmony Network, DeFi Kingdoms became the first project on the network to ever top the DappRadar charts. This could be attributed to an influx of individuals interested in both DeFi and blockchain games or it could be attributed to its recent in-game, utility token (JEWEL) surging.
JEWEL is a utility token which allows users to purchase NFTs in-game buffs to increase base-level stat, and it is used for liquidity mining that grants users the opportunity to make more JEWEL through staking.
JEWEL/USD daily chart. Source: Gecko Terminal
JEWEL is also a governance token that gives holders a vote in the growth and evolution of the project. In the past four months the token price surged from $1.23 to an all time high of $22.52. At the time of writing JEWEL is down by nearly 16%, trading at $19.51.
Surging approximately 1,487% from its humble start of $1.23 four months ago, back in September, JEWEL token price has increased roughly 165% this last month alone, according to data from CoinGecko.
Guild of Guardians
Guild of Guardians is one of the more anticipated blockchain games in 2022 and it is built on ImmutableX, the first layer-2 solution built on Ethereum that focuses on NFTs. Aiming to provide more access, it will operate as a free to play, mobile RPG game modeling the play-and-earn mechanics.
Similar to blockchain games like Axie Infinity, Guild of Guardians in-game assets can be exchanged. The project seems to be of interest to many gamers and investors with both its NFT founder sale and token launch generating nearly $10 million in volume.
Launching its in-game token in October of 2021, the Guild of Guardians (GOG) tokens are ERC-20 tokens known as ‘gems’ inside the game. Gems are what power key features in the game such as mint in-game NFTs, interact with the marketplace and are available to earn while playing.
GOG monthly price action. Source: CoinGecko
For the last month, the Guild of Guardians token has performed rather steadily after spiking to its all-time of $2.81 after its launch. Despite the token being down over 50% from it’s all-time high, at the time of writing, some members of the community are looking forward to the possibility of staking and liquidity pools, which are features that tend to help stabilize token prices.
Galaxy Fight Club
Imagine taking a proof-of-picture (pfp) NFT and making it into an avatar to battle other fighters in a galaxy far away?Galaxy Fight Club (GFC) is a blockchain game that switched its gear from a 10,000 avatar collection to the first cross-brand and cross-platform PvP fighting game where players can fight with their collection of avatars.
Focusing on interoperability, GFC uniquely places high value on its original fighters, but allows other avatars to battle for the opportunity to earn rewards.
Artist’s depiction of gameplay in GFC. Source: Galaxy Fight Club Avatar
The game is expected to launch on the Polygon network and it will feature different themes from various partnering collections such as Animetas and CyberKongz, integrating its cross–platform aim. GFC plays on the nostalgia of SuperSmash Bros., except one is battling for loot keys to open loot boxes rather than simply wiping out their opponent.
GFC is currently in beta testing, and is facing minor setbacks, including a delayed IDO. To date, it’s not clear when public access will be made available, but many are hopeful for a Q1 2022 rollout.
GCOIN
Each Galaxy Fighter generates anywhere between 5 to 15 GCOIN daily, and each fighter began generating GCOIN in October of 2021. If a fighter is sold, the new owner will inherit the GCOIN presently accrued. GCOIN is likely to be valuable in the ecosystem because it is needed to power players in game moves, the forging of weapons, opening loot boxes and training and selling second generation fighters.
Despite its minor setbacks, an IDO for GCOIN was scheduled on PolkaStarter for January 6 and released 4 million tokens for sale at $0.50 each and a max allocation of $500 per wallet. Sadly, the project’s KYC and whitelist requirements have left many residents sitting out.
According to Ado, a team lead for the project, “The first $1.5M was purchased and sold out in roughly 15 minutes, at which point the remaining $500K reserved only for the Battle Pass holders took another hour to be filled,” indicating a successful IDO. Approximately 2,600 unique wallets are holding GFC fighters, with the top wallet holding nearly 2% of the entire collection.
Bitcoin fell for a seventh-straight day, the longest losing streak since 2018, slipping toward the key psychological threshold of $40,000.
As of press time bitcoin (BTC) was changing hands around $40,800, down 2.3% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin’s stretch of losses is now the longest since the downdraft from July 30 through Aug. 4 in 2018.
The price hasn’t fallen below $40,000 since September 2021, and it’s well off the all-time high near $69,000 reached in November.
Launched in 2009, bitcoin celebrated its 13-year birthday last week, but there hasn’t been much of a party.
Crypto market analysts had warned recently that bitcoin might be prone to a steeper sell-off, though there were some signs late last week that the market might be stabilizing. January tends to be a seasonally weak month for bitcoin, but this year has been especially harsh, with the largest cryptocurrency down 11% so far in 2022.
The market was roiled last week by the release of Federal Reserve minutes signaling that officials at the U.S. central bank were starting to discuss whether to take more aggressive steps to tackle an inflation rate now at its highest in almost four decades.
Many investors say bitcoin has benefited in recent years from the Fed’s ultra-loose, emergency monetary policy since the coronavirus hit the economy – including printing more than $4 trillion to bolster ailing traditional markets.
So a reversal of those policies is seen as a fresh headwind for bitcoin.
There’s also a narrative in the market that bitcoin trades like a risky asset, similar to tech stocks. And the Fed’s hawkish turn could curb appetite for high-risk, high-reward investments.
“Macroeconomic uncertainty has led to relatively low conviction from market players,” analysts at Coinbase Institutional, an arm of the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, wrote Friday in a weekly update.
The question now is when and where the bitcoin price will find a floor.
As of Friday the price was down 35% from the all-time high; previous drawdowns have reached levels of nearly 80% and it took the market months to recover.
Some bulls are still betting that the market is on the cusp of a fresh bull run, but analysts for the investment-research firm FundStrat say the market looks to have little near-term price support until it drops down to $39,570 – roughly where the price bottomed in September 2021.
Although the entire market has been facing a downtrend along with Ethereum, the altcoin king holders have surprisingly been in a better position when compared to other coins in the market.
1. Ethereum investors are safe?
Indeed they are. The reason behind this is Ethereum’s quick recovery post a price fall. Other altcoins usually fail to post a substantial recovery after a price fall, Ethereum on the other hand observes a price fall in accordance with the rises.
Thus, technically Ethereum has primarily been in a rally all this while but the broader market cues cause the coin to register red candles frequently.
This is why despite losing almost 33% since its all-time high, less than 20% of all Ethereum investors have seen any kind of loss.
During such an unsure market, investors are expected to hold their assets for as long as they can and find an appropriate exit, and that is the case with Ethereum as well.
But one observation that puts Ethereum investors apart from other coin holders is that their HODLing sentiment is not recent.
Ever since July, the network’s velocity has been falling, which indicates that the rate at which ETH changes hand has reduced significantly. This 6-month HODLing fact is also verified by the 5 million increase in mid-term holders’ (1 month – 12 month) addresses.
But now that Ethereum is trading at its 4-month lowest of $3221, there will be many potential investors looking to buy the dip and enter the market as soon as possible.
It is important for them to practice caution since Ethereum’s on-chain indicators are slightly bearish currently.
The HODLing sentiment has led to reduced on-chain volume which in return led to the network value shooting up against a low transaction value. Additionally, the altcoin’s market value is also at a 7-month low.
Thus, once there is a positive indication of recovery, investors can jump in until then “wait and watch” seems to be the more appropriate strategy.
With the addition of Caroline Pham’s and Summer Mersinger’s names sent to the Senate for confirmation, the U.S. president has the opportunity to completely reshape the CFTC leadership.
The White House has officially submitted President Joe Biden’s nominations to fill two seats at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the upcoming departure of another commissioner.
In a Friday announcement, the White House said it had sent Citi managing director Caroline Pham’s and Summer Mersinger’s names to the Senate for confirmation. Mersinger previously served as chief of staff to commissioner Dawn Stump — who is expected to leave the agency this year — as well as the director of the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. She and Pham will be taking the places of recently departed Commissioner Dan Berkovitz, whose term expires in April 2023, and that of Stump, with a term ending in April 2027, respectively.
The CFTC nominations came the same week the White House officially announced it had sent the nominations of Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard to the Senate to await confirmation before serving as the next chair and vice-chair of the Federal Reserve, respectively. Confirmation from the Senate would allow Powell and Brainard to act as two of the top leaders of the Fed until 2026. President Biden also submitted Christy Goldsmith Romero’s and Kristin Johnson’s names for the remainder of the empty CFTC seats on Tuesday.
With the nominations for four CFTC commissioners — subject to confirmation from U.S. lawmakers — there will no longer be any vacancies at the agency in 2022 after a shakeup in leadership. Berkovitz announced in September that he was planning to leave the CFTC on Oct. 15 to join the Securities and Exchange Commission as general counsel, and the Senate confirmed the nomination of Rostin Behnam to chair the CFTC in December.
At the moment, the Democratic party under the leadership of President Joe Biden controls 50 of the 100 seats in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to act as a tiebreaker if needed. A simple majority vote is needed to confirm the president’s CFTC picks.
While the White House has put forth four names for CFTC commissioners, it has yet to officially name candidates to fill upcoming vacancies at the Federal Reserve. Board member Randal Quarles resigned his position effective as of the end of December 2021, while current vice-chair Richard Clarida is expected to leave by February 2022. A Wednesday report from the Washington Post suggested the U.S. president is considering Duke University law professor Sarah Bloom Raskin to join the group of seven governors serving at the Fed, in addition to economists Lisa Cook and Philip Jefferson.
There may also be an opportunity for Biden to shake up the leadership at another government agency responsible for digital asset regulation in the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC commissioner Elad Roisman is expected to leave the agency by the end of January and commissioner Allison Lee’s term is set to expire in June. Some experts have noted that placing different financial experts across these three major U.S. government agencies could have an impact on crypto-related policy.
