Major crypto coins started to recover on Monday, following last week’s massive sell-off in the wake of China’s blanket ban on virtual currency-related businesses.
Bitcoin has rallied to about $44,000 per coin, nearing the level it was trading on Friday before the People’s Bank of China announced that crypto transactions in the country are illegal. Meanwhile, ether broke above last week’s level, trading up by more than 5% at $3,110 as of 10:47 GMT.
“As the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) around the cryptocurrency ban in China is slowly leaving the market, there is a sense of stability across the crypto spectrum. With bitcoin surpassing the $44,000 mark, most of the other top cryptocurrencies followed suit. The coming 24 hours could be a period of stability across the crypto spectrum,” Edul Patel, CEO and co-founder of Mudrex, told the Economic Times.
According to Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at Oanda Corporation, “Over the weekend sessions, bitcoin has shown some resilience and has now recovered the majority of those losses.”
“It may well be that China’s previously announced crackdowns had already been built into prices,” he said in a note seen by Bloomberg.
The People’s Bank of China revived its tough stance on digital currencies on Friday, ruling all crypto-related trading activities illegal and banning overseas cryptocurrency exchanges from providing services to mainland investors.
The regulator announced plans to bar financial institutions, payment companies and internet firms from facilitating cryptocurrency trading, as well as to strengthen monitoring of risks from such activities.
The ruling came as part of a broader state-run campaign by Chinese regulators against cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, Beijing banned mining in major bitcoin hubs, such as Sichuan, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, which led to a sharp drop in bitcoin’s processing power, as multiple miners took their equipment offline.
The British government could deploy military personnel to deliver gasoline to services stations if the situation with fuel shortages shows no sign of improving, media reported.
A series of emergency measures were announced by the authorities over the weekend to address the fuel crisis, including issuing temporary work visas for up to 5,500 foreign truck drivers and suspending the competition law to allow suppliers to deliver fuel to rival operators.
This came as long queues of cars have been seen outside UK gas stations in recent days, with drivers attempting to fill up their vehicles amid media reports of an impending shortage.
According to Gordon Balmer, executive director of the UK’s Petrol Retailers Association, temporary visas would ease supply constraints to an extent, but that is not enough. He told LBC News on Monday that he hoped the government was indeed considering measures like bringing in the army. “A lot of people have filled up over the weekend, many people only fill up once a month,” he said, adding: “That might give us some respite to start to replenish stocks over the next few days.”
On Friday, the Automobile Association (AA) appealed for calm after oil giant BP said it had temporarily closed some of its gas stations due to shortages of unleaded and diesel petrol. “These have been caused by some delays in the supply chain which has been impacted by the industry-wide driver shortages across the UK and there are many actions being taken to address the issue,” BP’s spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said on Sunday that he had exempted the fuel industry from UK competition laws, which he said would allow companies to “share information and prioritize the delivery of fuel to areas most in need.”
Budapest signed a new long-term contract on Monday with Russia’s energy giant Gazprom for gas supplies bypassing Ukraine, Reuters reports.
The agreement was sealed by Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller and Hungarian energy group MVM executives at the Hungarian Foreign Ministry.
The deal was signed after Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced last month that Budapest had agreed with Moscow on all the conditions for a new supply contract to take effect from October 1. The minister said that under the new deal, Hungary will buy gas “at a much better price than under the expiring contract,” which was signed in 2020.
According to Szijjarto, the duration of the new agreement with Gazprom would be 15 years, with a clause to change purchased quantities after 10 years. The price had also been agreed.
Gazprom would ship 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Hungary annually, Szijjarto said, adding that some 3.5 billion cubic meters will come via Serbia and 1 billion cubic meters via Austria.
The presidents of the Federal Reserve banks of Boston and Dallas are stepping down, after recent reports of potentially unethical investments in 2020 drew criticism and prompted the Fed to launch an ethics review.
Robert Kaplan of Dallas followed Eric Rosengren of Boston in announcing an early retirement on Monday. Both executives are 64, a year short of the mandatory retirement age at the Fed.
Rosengren said he would retire on Thursday, rather than in July 2022, citing health reasons – an upcoming kidney transplant to help him deal with a chronic condition, specifically. Kaplan will also retire effective October 8, because “the recent focus on my financial disclosure risks becoming a distraction” to the “vital” work of deliberating future monetary policy at “a critical point in our economic recovery,” he said.
The early retirements come following last week’s disclosures that Kaplan traded stocks of Amazon, Facebook and Johnson & Johnson – among others – in 2020, even while the Fed’s measures to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic boosted their profits and shares. Rosengren, meanwhile, invested in real estate trusts that dealt with mortgage-backed bonds the Fed was buying up to influence borrowing rates.
Fed chair Jerome Powell said the trades were technically legal under existing rules, but vowed to tighten ethics regulations in order to ensure the credibility of the Federal Reserve, the quasi-private institution that functions as the de facto central bank of the US.
The Fed has 12 regional banks and their presidents serve on the Federal Open Market Committee, with a rotating vote every three years. Rosengren was scheduled to be a voting member of the FOMC in 2022.
Today, something very rare happened: 2 Federal Reserve leaders “retired” early.
This happened largely b/c @michaelsderby of the WSJ put a big spotlight on the personal trades the Dallas and Boston Fed presidents did in 2020. Other stories soon followed.
Journalists hastened to claim credit for the highly unusual departure of two regional bank chairs, with a Washington Post economics correspondent citing the work of her colleague at the Wall Street Journal as key to this turn of events.
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The Brent crude oil price for November exceeded $80 per barrel for the first time in three years, trading data shows. The rally comes as energy demand runs ahead of supply amid post-pandemic recovery of the global economy.
As of 5am GMT, the price of December Brent futures grew by 0.85% to $79.36 per barrel, while November futures jumped by 0.83%, to $80.19, reaching $80.35 earlier on Tuesday. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) November futures were also up, gaining 0.85% to $76.09 a barrel.
The rise in oil prices comes amid signs of an improving outlook for global energy demand. At the same time, global refineries are failing to keep up, as supply is growing at a slower pace despite the efforts of OPEC. The group and its allies, including Russia, have been easing supply curbs initially introduced at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Markets are also awaiting a new OPEC forecast on global oil outlook later on Tuesday, which will detail the group’s views on market fundamentals.
Market experts say prices could continue to grow, with fuel demand projected to reach pre-pandemic levels by early next year.
“Oil demand could rise by 500,000 barrels a day as high gas prices are forcing consumers to switch to other feedstocks,” Vivek Dhar, a commodities analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, told Bloomberg. The expert says this will increase the supply deficit in the markets, especially given the fact that OPEC and allies’ production increase of 400,000 barrels a day each month will add only about 2% to the world’s supply by the end of the year.
