Morning Minute | The Fed Says No More Rate Hikes, Crypto Pumps
TylerD's Market Summary
The Dow Jones hit a new ATH and risk assets are pumping post-Fed. Find out what happened, why it's a great set up for 2024 and more.
📈 Powell Sends Crypto After Bullish Fed Meeting
It seems Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve were filled with the Christmas spirit.
At Wednesday's FOMC meeting, they announced that interest rate hikes are effectively over and signalled 3 rate cuts in 2024.
Seconds after the news broke, markets instantly started sending across stocks and crypto.
The Santa rally has begun.
What Happened?
Here's the quick summary of the FOMC meeting:
- Benchmark interest rate held steady at 5.25%-5.5%
- Committee "penciled in" 3 rate cuts (or more) for 2024
- Powell said inflation has easier, with core falling to 3.2% in 2023 and 2.4% in 2024
- They noted the economy "has slowed" after a strong Q3
- The Committee is willing to hike rates again in 2024 if inflation spikes
It was as bullish of messaging as traders could have hoped for.
The Dow Jones reached a new ATH over 37,000 immediately following the meeting, the S&P 500 hit a new yearly high, and stock futures look up even more pre-market today.
Crypto rallied as well.
Leaders BTC (+4.7%), ETH (+5.6%) and SOL (+10.5%) all saw major gains, erasing the early week dip.
Alt leaders pumped even more, with INJ +25%, TIA +21% and ADA +12%.
It was a green wave.
Arthur Hayes commented on the Fed's decision, posting:
"At this point, there is no excuse not to be long crypto."
He went on to call for a $1M price target for BTC.
Why It Matters
Interest rate cuts are good for risk assets.
When traders can get 4-5%+ from simply holding cash (i.e. treasuries), they have less incentive to look to stocks or riskier assets for higher returns.
When that yield dips, traders look back at risk assets for higher ROI opportunities.
And that's the set up we have right now, headed into an election year where the incumbents will be incentivized to keep markets green.
It's a great set up for 2024 for those who are full risk-on.
🎅 Secret Santa and NFTs
If the markets rallying aren't fun enough for you, there is another new way to get in on some Christmas fun with NFTs.
Yesterday the Prohibition team introduced santa.fm as a decentralized gift exchange.
Give an NFT, get an NFT - with your friends.
How Does It Work?
The Santa.fm protocol works like this for interested users:
- Deposit an NFT
- Receive wrapped gift NFT
- Unwrap your gift and claim a random NFT from the pool
The protocol ensures on-chain randomness via Chainlink and also leverages Delegate Cash for additional security.
Each pool has rules for who can participate and which types of NFTs qualify.
So for example, a group of Art Blocks lovers could set some rules like only Factor projects from 2021 with floors between 0.1-0.2 ETH for their exchange.
Or PFP enjoyers from the same community could swap some floors.
It's a fun idea, and being on Arbitrum, gas fees should be low.
Pools open soon and gift unwrapping begins on Dec 21 at noon ET.
Go check it out and have some NFT fun this Christmas!
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- ETH trading volume fell to $22M on Wednesday, while NFT leaders switched to mostly green on the day
- Pudgy Penguins led notable top movers, +12% to 11.1 ETH, with Lil Pudgy's +12% to 1.07; gaming projects Edenhorde, Skyborne, and Seedworld also saw big jumps
- Solana NFTs have started to rebound, with Tensorians +16% to 108 SOL, Mad Lads +12% to 195 and Quekz +19% to 45 leading top movers
- Kim Asendorf's "Alternate" minted out at 0.5 ETH and immediately ran to 1.5 ETH on secondary
- Art Block's Curated "Blind Spots" had a tougher outing, minting out at 0.2 ETH and staying there on secondary
- And Hackatao's "Alepho" mint struggled to mint out at it's 0.23 ETH mint price but succeeded overnight, with secondary at 0.237 ETH
- The Sotheby's Bitcoin Shrooms auction ended on Wednesday, with top sales of $241,000, $107,950, and $101,600
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors were red on the day ahead of today's pivotal FOMC meeting; BTC +5.2% at $43,180; ETH +5.7% at $2,297; SOL +10.75% at $73.14
- Coinbase announced that BONK would go live today at 12 pm ET, sending the coin up 55% to a $925M market cap
- Animoca Brands is partnering with T&B Media Global, cross-promoting the pair's respective NFT projects, Mocaverse and Mittaria
- The Sandbox is partnering with AIA Carnival, bringing unique virtual-real world experiences to Hong Kong
🚀 NFT Total Volume
- Pudgy Penguins (1,316 ETH, 11.18 ETH Floor)
- MAYC (1,270 ETH, 5.34 ETH)
- BAYC (921 ETH, 27.8 ETH)
- Matr1x Kuku (866 ETH, 3.11 ETH)
- Milady (707 ETH, 2.8 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
- Edenhorde (75%, 0.27 ETH Floor)
- Skyborne - Nexian Gems (72%, 0.4 ETH)
- Candy Collective: Genesis (48%, 0.66 ETH)
- Impostors genesis (26%, 0.63 ETH)
- The Mounts of Seedworld (16%, 0.58 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is another very busy day of drops.
fxhash is back after its delay with a full day of drops, likely highlighted by ippsketch's Paradigm.
Arguably the art drop of the day is Richard Nadler's Izanami Islands, minting on Verse this morning. With Yamabushi Horizons at 1.79 ETH, expect this one to come in around the 1 ETH mark.
Portal Coin is also launching its hyped presale mint and Nodemonkes begin to mint over on Bitcoin in their now-fudded Dutch auction (originally said mint was free).
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Tyler Boswell x fxhash (10:00 a.m. ET)
- PORTAL presale (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Richard Nadles - Izanami Islands (11:00 a.m. ET)
- ippsketch x fxhash - Paradigm (11:30 a.m. ET)
- Nodemonkes (12:00 p.m. ET)
- Courtyard x Opensea - Holiday Box (1:00 p.m. ET)
- Des Lucrece - Monster Soup (5:00 p.m. ET)
Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
