The world’s most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, continued trading in the red on Wednesday, after a day which saw it briefly drop below $40,000 for the first time since August. Other leading cryptos are also trading lower.
Bitcoin later recouped some of the losses, but it was still down 2.2% to $42,352 as of 9:30am GMT, according to the CoinDesk tracker.
Ether, the second-largest crypto, was down 4.5% to $2,929. Litecoin dropped 3.93% to $154.43, while dogecoin lost 0.6% to $0.21. Other digital tokens like XRP, Solana, Uniswap, Stellar, and Polkadot also lost value over the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin started its steep downfall on Monday, losing as much as 10% during the day’s trading and dropping below the $44,000 level. Experts attribute this decline to the broader sell-off in the global equity markets due to fears over mounting problems at Chinese property giant Evergrande. However, some say that the embattled firm is not the only driver of the crypto decline.
“Truth be told, the market rout we’re seeing is reflecting a wider set of risks than just Chinese property, and comes after increasing questions have been asked about whether current valuations could still be justified, with talk of a potential correction picking up,” Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note on Tuesday, as cited by Coindesk. According to the bank’s recent survey, 68% of investors expect at least a 5% correction in equity markets by 2022.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) prices could skyrocket by 500% in Britain, the government warned its food producers on Wednesday, after extending emergency state support in order to avert a food shortage.
The warning comes as surging gas prices in Europe have sent shockwaves through industries reliant on natural gas, forcing some fertilizer plants to shut down in recent weeks.
Fertilizer production is a major source of industrial CO2. As plants convert natural gas into fertilizer, they produce CO2 as a byproduct for industrial use. Carbon dioxide is used in several ways in food production, including to stun animals, as an alternative refrigerant, to cool meat and other foods during processing, and to replace oxygen in modified-atmosphere packaging. Slaughterhouses in the UK depend heavily on CO2.
As the situation with CO2 worsened, London struck a deal with US company CF Industries to restart production at two closed plants.
“We need the market to adjust, the food industry knows there’s going to be a sharp rise in the cost of carbon dioxide,” Environment Secretary George Eustice told Sky News, adding that the price of CO2 would rise sharply, from £200 ($272) a ton to around £1,000 ($1,365).
According to the official, the three-week support from CF, which supplies some 60% of Britain’s CO2, would cost “many millions, possibly tens of millions, but it’s to underpin some of those fixed costs.”
While the government and Prime Minister Boris Johnson have repeatedly denied concerns that there could be a shortage of traditional Christmas fare such as turkey, some say the temporary deal to supply carbon dioxide would not solve the food industry’s problems.
“A three-week deal won’t save Christmas,” Richard Walker, managing director for supermarket Iceland, told Reuters. “And certainly, won’t resolve the issue in the long term – we need a permanent solution to keep the wheels turning for fresh food supplies.”
Secretary Eustice says, “We know that if we did not act, then by this weekend or certainly by the early part of next week, some of the poultry processing plants would need to close.”
“And then we would have animal welfare issues, because you’d have lots of chickens on farms that couldn’t be slaughtered on time, and would have to be probably euthanized on farms, we’d have a similar situation with pigs.”
Meanwhile, according to the Nippon Gases corporation, “other countries in Europe will also suffer shortages” of CO2, as their supplies have tumbled 50% across the region.
Russia is fully compliant with its gas supply obligations to Europe, Germany’s energy ministry’s spokeswoman Suzanne Ungrad said Wednesday, dismissing claims Moscow is pressuring the EU to speed up Nord Stream 2’s commissioning.
“According to our information, Russia is fulfilling the existing supply agreements… We do not know about the deliberate disregard of the existing contracts,” Ungrad stated, as cited by RIA Novosti.
She stressed that the department is monitoring the situation with gas prices, but believes that the market should be the one to respond.
“We do not see the need for the state to intervene in the situation,” Ungrad said, noting that many factors influence gas prices, including “difficult winter, economic changes, increased demand for gas, the situation in Asia, fires in Siberia.”
Furthermore, the deputy official representative of the German Cabinet of Ministers Ulrike Demmere also stated that Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom is “fulfilling its obligations under the current Russian-Ukrainian gas transit agreement.”
A number of politicians and analysts have been accusing Moscow and Gazprom of deliberately pressuring the market in order to speed up the commissioning of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Construction works on the pipeline which runs from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea ended last month. However, to start gas deliveries, the project needs to obtain European certification, which could take up to four more months.
Last week, European gas prices skyrocketed to an unprecedented $964 per 1,000 cubic meters. Russia’s Gazprom, as well as a number of analysts worldwide, attribute the price hike to the post-pandemic increase in demand for natural gas combined with underfilled gas storage facilities in Europe.
An investigation is underway in Brazil into whether JPMorgan Chase took part in an alleged bribery and money laundering scheme, dating back to 2011, involving state-run oil company Petrobras.
That’s according to an exclusive report by Reuters, which cited court documents and anonymous law enforcement sources. The documents include email messages between alleged co-conspirators, witness testimony, and bank records.
Police are reportedly looking into purchases of roughly 300,000 barrels of Petrobras fuel oil by JPMorgan in 2011. They aim to determine if the banking giant secured shipments of Petrobras fuel at artificially low prices by routing bribe payments to employees on Petrobras’ trading desk through a network of middlemen. They also want to find out if the alleged bribery continued in subsequent years, the sources said.
Among the court documents is witness testimony from a former Petrobras fuel trader named Rodrigo Berkowitz, who refers to two fuel cargoes that were sold to a JPMorgan unit.
Petrobras said in an email to Reuters it has “zero tolerance in relation to fraud and corruption.” However, US and Brazilian authorities have alleged that some Petrobras traders took bribes from counterparties for more than a decade through 2018. In return, those traders allegedly purchased fuel at inflated prices or sold it at a discount.
In 2020, JPMorgan agreed to pay more than $920 million and admitted wrongdoing to settle US market manipulation probes into its trading of metals futures and Treasury securities.
Polish energy company PGNiG has claimed Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline does not meet EU requirements, possibly causing further delays to the certification process needed to launch gas deliveries.
“A positive [certification] decision would put at risk the security of supply of the EU and member states,” the Polish company said in a statement, adding that the pipeline’s European operator Nord Stream 2 AG does not meet the requirements for certification as an Independent Transmission Operator (ITO).
According to its statement, PGNiG is now part of the group responsible for granting certification to the newly constructed Nord Stream 2. However, it seems the company does not plan to make the process quick or easy.
“We will prove consistently that Nord Stream 2 AG does not meet the formal and substantive requirements for the operator of the pipeline, in particular those relating to security of supply and the corporate structure of the company,” PGNiG’s head of management board, Pawel Majewski, stressed, as quoted by TASS.
The company also warned against launching deliveries via the pipeline before final certification comes through, calling it a breach of EU law, and vowing “to use all legal measures to oppose such conduct of Nord Stream 2 AG.”
Construction works on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, ended last month. However, to start gas deliveries, the project needs to obtain European certification showing that it conforms with technical norms of Germany’s Stralsund mining authority. It should also be registered as an ITO with Germany’s federal network agency (Bundesnetzagentur), which has until January 8, 2022 to issue certification. According to EU law, the agency cannot officially ban gas pumping, but if it starts before the registration is ready, Nord Stream 2 AG would face fines.
Many experts believe the early launch of Nord Stream 2 with daily capacity comparable to the entire volume of liquefied gas that is now supplied to Europe could help curb rising gas prices. October futures on the Dutch TTF exchange reached a record $963.9 per 1,000 cubic meters this month. According to Russia’s state energy giant and owner of the pipeline, the deliveries could help stock European storage facilities, which at their current volumes are unable to meet the demand of the upcoming winter.
