"If you can't win - lead!"

In September 1988, Timothy May wrote The Crypto-Anarchist Manifesto, based on Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto: "A ghost haunts the modern world, the ghost of crypto-anarchy."  According to the manifesto, information technology will allow people to manage their lives without governments, with the help of cryptography, digital currencies and other decentralized tools.

Another cypherpunk, Eric Hughes, already declared in his manifesto that

"Information doesn't just want to be free, it needs it."

Perhaps, some people took these words too literally.  For example, torrent creators 😅

And recently, opening a newly installed μTorrent would have redirected you to the Huobi exchange, which has a new owner.  Its official buyer was the About Capital fund, whose main investor is the head of the Tron Foundation Justin Sun, who, by coincidence, is also a holder of HT (exchange token).

 “I would consider myself one of the largest holders of Huobi tokens in the world,” Sun said earlier.

Huobi token, by the way, by the same coincidence grew by 85% in a week 😅

Justin has an old love for torrents.  In February 2019, a series of BitTorrent token airdrops began, which will run monthly until February 2025.  You may have noticed that BTT tokens appear on your balance account - this is a very modest gift from Sun for dealing with the TRON blockchain.

Now Justin is also promoting Huobi through torrents. But not only marketing has become aggressive at the exchange, but also the attitude towards its slightly leaked stablecoin HUSD.

“As part of our continued efforts to promote the healthy development of the blockchain ecosystem, Huobi Global will close the trading of HUSD and delist the asset,” the exchange wrote.

On October 28 at 08:00 its support ended. The token was delisted, and users had an automatic conversion of HUSD to USDT stablecoin from Tether at a ratio of 1:1.

Meanwhile, stablecoins have become increasingly used as collateral in DeFi services. This is stated in a report from CoinMarketCap and TokenInsight.

“USDC, USDT and DAI together make up 58% of the collateral on MakerDAO and 52% on Compound.  In the second quarter, the figures rose from 50% and 40%, respectively,” the researchers noted.

And now for the sad part: if the death of the stablecoin HUSD can be called metaphorical, then the 29-year-old co-founder of MakerDAO and DAI Nikolai Mukhgyan was found dead in Puerto Rico in the literal sense of the word.

The day before, the programmer wrote a strange post on Twitter.  He announced the intention of the CIA and Mossad to "torture him to death."

Back in August, the MakerDAO co-founder suggested he was being pursued by intelligence agencies because he "poses a threat to the central banking cartel" (whatever that means).

However, some news from the Central Banks themselves: the Central Banks of France, Switzerland and Singapore, under the leadership of BIS, will test DeFi in the Forex markets to simplify cross-border payments.

The Mariana Project, coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Center, is exploring whether the protocols used in decentralized finance (DeFi) can replace the traditional, more labor-intensive processes of matching buyers and sellers in various fiat currencies.

“DeFi and related applications can become systemically important elements of the financial ecosystem,” according to a statement on the BIS website.  The bank added that automated market makers could become "the basis for a new generation of financial infrastructure."

This idea was developed in detail in his interview for Cointelegraph and Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of BitGo.

Earlier, the Thai Siam Commercial Bank, one of the largest private banks in Southeast Asia, suggested:
After studying DeFi, we came to the conclusion that DeFi will completely change the traditional banking industry.  Financial intermediation may disappear completely.

Let's now try to take a closer look at each of the above countries.  Let's start with Singapore.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued operating licenses to USDC and USDP stablecoin issuers Circle and Paxos.

“We believe that blockchain and digital assets will revolutionize finance around the world, but the development of this technology must be carried out under strict control and consumer protection,” said Paxos Asia CEO Rich Theo.

MAS also conducted a transaction using fiat currencies as part of a pilot project to explore the potential of DeFi for Forex trading.

During testing, DBS Bank, JPMorgan and SBI Digital Asset Holdings interacted with liquidity pools consisting of tokenized yen, Singapore dollar and Singapore government securities.

At the initial stage, the Polygon and Aave blockchains are involved.  Again, by coincidence, it is the MATIC and AAVE tokens that are the growth leaders for today.

By the way, Instagram will allow you to create and sell NFTs on Polygon.

However, we will talk about Big Tech a little later, but for now we will find out what is happening with France and Switzerland.

French stock market regulator Autorité des Marchés financiers (AMF) has approved the French bank Société Générale as a Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP).

The digital-focused subsidiary Société Générale Forge has been registered to provide custody of digital assets, purchase/sale of digital assets as legal tender, and trading of digital assets with other digital assets.

But the net profit of Societe Generale (the third largest bank in France and the 6th in Europe) for January-September fell 4.5 times compared to last year - up to 858 million euros!

However, the news from Switzerland is even sadder.

The country intends to introduce mandatory verification of users by passport for transactions with cryptocurrencies worth more than $1,000.

And Credit Suisse's long-term rating was downgraded by S&P Global Ratings, underscoring the difficulty of achieving a turnaround after the bank unveiled a sweeping restructuring plan last week.  Credit Suisse's long-term rating has been downgraded to BBB- from BBB.

And this state of affairs is not surprising.  In general, with the situation that has developed in Europe, everyone has long been wondering which bank will collapse, like the Jenga tower following the example of Lehman Brothers in 2008.  Deutsche bank?  Societe Generale?  I think it is Credit Suisse that has the best chance of pulling the block that holds everything together.

Recently, the Fed raised the rate to 3.75-4%.

“If the Fed funding rate rises to 5%, I think this will guarantee events like the collapse of Lehman,” Lawrence McDonald commented on the situation.

For EU banks, this value will be disastrous.  However, not only for them.

The rate of the Central Bank of Britain has been raised by 75 points to 3% - the most one-time increase since 1989!  According to the Central Bank, the country has already entered a recession that will last at least 2 years.

However, we discussed the UK in detail in a previous article.  We only add that the first NFT machine in Europe appeared in London 😅

The fact that the British pound has ceased to be a defensive asset is not as surprising as the fact that in 2022 the Swiss franc ceases to be one. The situation is similar with American bonds, which would seem to be the most reliable investment products on the planet.

It would seem that the previously mentioned Big Tech could take their place, but no!  Overheated by buybacks and only due to this, until recently, it-giants, with the exception of Apple, who pulled the entire SP500 on themselves, are flying to the bottom together.

Apple is now worth more than Alphabet, Amazon and Meta combined, but is already suspending all hiring except R&D.

As we well know from history, in times of crisis, the most “hot cakes” are precisely those things that can be touched: metals, commodities, energy resources and food.

It became known that the world's central banks bought a record 399 tons of gold worth about $20 billion in 3Q 2022

But personally for us, I think the most interesting asset is "digital gold" - bitcoin!

And it seems to be tightly nailed to the level of highs of the legendary winter of 2017-18. There is every reason to believe that it has passed the test of the crisis and already at the end of this year or at the beginning of the next, as soon as the printing press is restarted to save economies around the world, we are likely to face a new bullish trend in cryptocurrency.

This idea is also confirmed by the DappRadar study: in October, the activity of crypto wallets increased sharply. This is an indication of the strong resilience of the crypto industry in the current market situation.  A sharp increase in activity in the networks may be the first signs of the end of the "crypto winter".

And yesterday there was news from Bloomberg, rhyming with what we talked about at the beginning - the interest of classical banks in the DeFi industry.  It has been revealed that Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is considering buying banks in an effort to bridge the gap between the traditional financial system and cryptocurrencies.

Zhao specified that he would consider both partial funding and a full takeover.

"If you can't win - lead."

And now we are no longer interested in who will be the winner, it is much more interesting who will be the leader 😉