James Malcolm News

The rally in the Japanese currency, which has been languishing at around 38-year lows, began on Thursday just after data showed U.S. consumer prices for June eased, boosting the odds of the Federal Reserve cutting rates as soon as September.

cautious trade as tensions in the Middle East escalated, while investors awaited a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell later this week for further clues on the U.S. central bank's rate outlook. The Israeli shekel fell to more than an eight-year low of 3.9900 per dollar in early Asia trade, after the country's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to «demolish Hamas» as his troops prepared to move into the Gaza Strip in pursuit of Hamas militants. Carry trades funded by the yen could be the biggest casualty of further escalation in the war, analysts said, as global investors who have for months been shorting the yen to invest in higher-yielding currencies buy it back as a safe-haven. The yen was last steady at 149.53 per dollar. The Japanese currency, which is near to potential intervention levels around 150, could also rally if the Fed has to stop hiking rates even as the Bank of Japan feels compelled by domestic inflation to tighten policy.

By Rae Wee

Surging inflation led to investors fleeing higher-risk assets - tech stocks and cryptocurrencies.(File)

A long-awaited software upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain aimed at slashing its huge energy consumption is expected this week, a move proponents say may widen the technology's use and support the price of the ether token.

Bitcoin climbed almost 8% in the final three days of the work week, while Ether surged 20%. Neither of the two dominant tokens has set a new low point in this bear market for almost a month. Bitcoin has been hugging the closely watched $20,000 round number, while Ether is hovering near $1,000. The relative stabilization in the charts is fueling hopes that contagion may have run its course following the spectacular collapse of tokens on the Terra blockchain, a wipeout that also sent hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and brokerage Voyager Digital into bankruptcy court. While much of the crypto world’s leverage is not recorded on blockchains, and therefore hidden from scrutiny, what is visible is encouraging, according to James Check, lead analyst at Glassnode.

crypto, in which case a winter is worse. The chilling term refers to a sharp slump, followed by a drop-off in trading and months of market doldrums — a phenomenon that memorably befell the crypto market in 2018. Bitcoin’s price plunged by more than 80% to as low as $3,100 from the end of 2017 through December of the following year, a period characterized by the boom-and-bust of initial coin offerings and several big banks shelving their plans to start cryptocurrency trading desks. Bitcoin wouldn’t reach a new high until December 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Memories of 2018 are sparking fears that a repeat is playing out now after the world’s largest cryptocurrency plummeted 50% from its most recent high of almost $69,000 in November. The crypto universe has shed more than $1 trillion in market value on growing conviction that the Federal Reserve is set to start ratcheting back the ultra-accommodative policy settings that fueled a boom in risk assets. The pullback has hit all corners of the crypto ecosystem, from Bitcoin to memecoins and publicly listed crypto exchanges. While the collapse has been rattling enough on its own, it has spawned an even bigger concern that the pain may persist for many months, according to UBS.

Bitcoin's price plunged by more than 80% to as low as $3,100.