Oil-Demand Growth Is Over & $8 Million Lost Due to a Faulty Code #14

Our Monday edition provides our scan of key weekly trading/investing events, we look into the potential end of oil demand growth and I take my first look at Polkadot.

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Today’s Meditations:

1. Scan the Week

2. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Polkadot Technical Analysis

3. Defi Protocol Bzx Attacked Once Again, Lost $8 Million Due to a Faulty Code

4. EU Finance Ministers Call for Restrictions on Stablecoin Issuers

5. Blockchain Network Aelf Launches Sushiswap ‘Upgrade’ Called Sashimiswap, Already Has $315 Million in Liquidity

6. BP Says the Era of Oil-Demand Growth Is Over

7. UBS Chairman Studies Feasibility of Credit Suisse Deal

8. Oracle Beats Microsoft to TikTok US Deal

9. A Quarter of ETF Portfolios Could Be Actively Managed by 2023

10. What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Crypto News

• Sept 14th: TrustSwap mainnet launch

• Sept 15th. NEM testnest launch

• Sept 15th. YFI Coinbase Pro listing

• Sept 16th: Lamden mainnet launch

Global News

• Sept 14th: ECB’s Lane speaks on the economic outlook

• Sept 15th: UK average weekly earnings 

• Sept 17th: BoJ monetary policy statement

• Sept 18th: UK core retail sales

BITCOIN / DOLLAR

Three Day

ETHEREUM / DOLLAR

Four Hour

POLKADOT / USD TETHER

Four Hour

• Defi Protocol Bzx Attacked Once Again, Lost $8 Million Due to a Faulty Code. Decentralized finance lending protocol bZx was attacked yesterday and lost ~$8 million due to buggy code. Due to the faulty code, the attacker was able to increase their balance of interest-bearing tokens (iTokens) of bZx. The hacker managed to mint 219,200 LINK tokens, 4,503 ETH and around $3.8 worth of different stablecoins. bZx said that no users funds were at risk and the loss is being covered by its insurance fund. Read more.

• EU Finance Ministers Call for Restrictions on Stablecoin Issuers. Finance ministers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have called to issue regulation for stablecoins and possible sanctions for issuers that do not comply. The ministers said that regulation was needed to protect consumers and to preserve state sovereignty in monetary policy. Last year, both French and German governments already said that they were opposed to private companies launching currencies that could challenge the euro, referring to Facebook’s Libra project at the time. According to Reuters, the European Commission is expected to present its regulatory proposals later this month. Read more.

• Blockchain Network Aelf Launches Sushiswap ‘Upgrade’ Called Sashimiswap, Already Has $315 Million in Liquidity. Due to the open-source nature of crypto, competition has been fierce this year. After SushiSwap’s debacle last week, SashimiSwap promises to be an ‘upgraded and simplified’ version of the already cloned protocol. SashimiSwap is made by open-source blockchain project Aelf, a well-known project in the space. Like SushiSwap, liquidity providers will be able to earn SASHIMI tokens by staking their Uniswap liquidity provider (LP) tokens. Within a few days, already $315 million had been deposited on the protocol. Read more.

BP Says the Era of Oil-Demand Growth Is Over

• UBS Chairman Studies Feasibility of Credit Suisse Deal. Breaking M&A news today as UBS Group AG Chairman Axel Weber has been studying the feasibility of a mega merger with rival Credit Suisse Group AG as part of a regular thought-exercise on future strategic options, according to people familiar with the matter. UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, has been exploring the question with consultants but it hasn’t raised the topic at the level of the executive board, the people said. The assessment is part of regular internal planning procedures and there are currently no formal discussions going on between the two banks, said the people, who asked for anonymity because the information isn’t public. Both banks declined to comment. Speculation about a deal was stoked earlier Monday, when Swiss finance blog Inside Paradeplatz wrote that Weber and Credit Suisse Chairman Urs Rohner could agree on a merger as early as next year. Read more.

• Oracle Beats Microsoft to TikTok US Deal. ByteDance has reached a preliminary ‘technical partnership’ agreement with Oracle for TikTok’s US operations that does not include a full sale of the short video app (FT reports), according to three people with knowledge of the matter. As part of the deal, Oracle plans to address the national security concerns that Donal Trump’s administration has raised over the Chinese company’s ownership of TikTok, said one of the people. The US technology group chaired by Larry Ellison, one of the few people in Silicon Valley who has publicly supported US president Donald Trump, is likely to own a minority stake in the US business. Existing ByteDance investors are also expected to have a stake in the final deal, who added that the talks are continuing and could change. Any deal would require the support of the US and Chinese governments. Read more.

• A Quarter of ETF Portfolios Could Be Actively Managed by 2023. U.S. investors expect actively managed ETFs to skyrocket in popularity in the next few years, surging to more than a quarter of client allocations by 2023. Money managers in the world’s largest exchange-traded fund market predict the share of active products in ETF portfolios will rise to 26%, up from 19% today, according to a survey by JPMorgan Asset Management. American respondents are more bullish on the funds than their counterparts in other regions. In Asia-Pacific, predictions are that active products will make up just 4% of allocations, while in EMEA, the figure is 21%. One thing they all agree on: Passive funds will face increasing competition from both active and smart-beta strategies. The share of index-tracking ETFs globally will shrink to 61% of portfolios by 2023 from the current 69%, respondents to the survey predict. Read more. 

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?