Thursday, May 23, 2024

economic confusion, the FIT21 sweep, market reaction, inflation hedges and more…

“It always seems impossible until it's done.” – Nelson Mandela  ||

Hello everyone! Wow, this is turning out to be quite a week. Let’s see, in just three days, we’ve had:

• A radical shift in the probability an ETH spot ETF gets approved in the US

• A ~25% rally in ETH

• An epic US House vote on a comprehensive crypto regulatory framework

• The announced departure of the author of Choke Point 2.0

• Bitcoin Pizza Day

• …and more besides.

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to a breather this weekend!

If you find this newsletter useful, would you mind sharing it with your friends and colleagues? ❤

IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• Economic confusion

• The FIT21 sweep

• The market reaction

• Inflation hedges

• Not those credit spreads

If you’re not a subscriber to the premium daily, I hope you’ll consider becoming one! You’ll get ~daily insight into the growing overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes, as well as some useful links. And there’s a free trial!

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Economic confusion

Time for a personal confession, which I’m comfortable with because we’re all friends here.

Years ago, when I started writing about the macro economy, I was terrified of getting it wrong. There was no way I could absorb enough information, I thought, to make the right call on where the economy was going. I mean, you had housing starts going down, retail sales going up, employment steady but wait it’s not really, polls telling you consumers were upbeat no they’re downbeat. And that was just focusing on the US! Throw in the need to also monitor EU data, signals from China and concern about political shifts, and well, there were days when the noise felt a bit much. Even louder was the nagging suspicion that I was missing something, the errant piece of the puzzle, and without it, nothing would make sense.

Fast forward to today, here’s what I’ve learned: