Good morning. Here is what happens:
Prices: The 2023 Consensus Festival brought builders and investors to Austin and ended Friday night with attendance records that exceeded expectations. But bitcoin (BTC) opens the Asian trading week flat.
Knowledge: Crypto developers and other industry stalwarts who attended Consensus were optimistic about the future of the industry, but U.S. regulatory actions remain a hurdle, CoinDesk reporters noted in Consensus 2023.
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As the region opens the trading week, major crypto tokens are largely stable.
Bitcoin is up 0.7% at $29,404, while Ether is down 0.5% at $1,892.
“Bitcoin has remained below $30,000, which is a key resistance level, but has yet to test any major supports,” Joe DiPasquale, CEO of BitBull Capital, told CoinDesk in a note. “Right now, the market is expecting a 25 [basis point] rate hike in the [Federal Open Market Committee meeting] this week, but we will likely see some price swings following the Fed's post-release comment."
“Attempts to break through $30,000 this week failed to reach a higher high which should be concerning for bulls,” DiPasquale also wrote. "Generally, we wouldn't be surprised to see the market leader testing $25,000 in the coming days, especially after the FOMC."
Meanwhile, other crypto majors were also stable, including layer 1s Solana and Avalanche – the latter seeing its AVAX token drop 1.2%.
5 takeaways from the 2023 Consensus
CoinDesk's annual Consensus Conference wrapped up on Friday, and hearing all of the fascinating discussions that have arisen from its many speakers and panels has been exciting and informative.
Members of the CoinDesk editorial team gathered on Twitter Spaces as the event drew to a close to assess the big picture at Consensus 2023 and share their takeaways on the critical issues that will shape how the he industry continues to evolve.
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Nick Baker, Deputy Editor of CoinDesk
Being a newbie to Consensus this year, I'm like a small-town yokel blown away by the sheer scale and awesomeness of this event. Here are some of my takeaways:
First, the level of optimism people have about crypto is very high, which is a surprise given the seriousness of the regulatory outlook. And I know that's partly a self-selection bias at work: people who are going to pay a lot of money to attend this event are going to be optimistic about the space. Yet this juxtaposition of existential questions and a lot of optimism strikes me.
Second, the people I know best come from traditional finance and they also remain very optimistic about the future of crypto and moving TradFi elements into crypto or crypto-adjacent infrastructure. Now, of course, they've been trying for years to show progress in that direction and don't have much to show for it. But they are not discouraged. This point rhymes with my first point.
Ben Schiller, Director of Consensus Magazine
Something that really struck me came out of what Kate Brady, communications manager for Web3 at PepsiCo, said on stage. As you know, PepsiCo is a very mainstream American brand. It's not part of the crypto industry by any means, but it's looking to get into Web3. And one of the things she said on stage was that she was stuck in her job and PepsiCo got stuck in her job because of the lack of regulatory clarity, and I thought that was interesting because that It's obviously something the industry says a lot that we need to do. There are guidelines from Washington, DC, lawmakers and policymakers. And we believe that this conversation or issue only affects people in the relatively small world of crypto.
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On day three of Consensus 2023, "First Mover" guests included 16z Chief Crypto Policy Officer Brian Quintenz, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre, Fidelity Digital Asset Research Analyst Jack Neureuter, and Michael Bacina , Chairman of Blockchain Australia.
Farewell Bitcoin Bear: No investor or financial advisor has a crystal ball that can predict the movement of any asset, including bitcoin, with complete certainty. But past bitcoin halvings can provide clues as to what we could potentially expect.