Bitcoin to be RESTRICTed? Markets rally into Thursday.

GM, money printer go brrr.

Markets broadly rallied on Wednesday, with the S&P and Nasdaq both up over 1.4%.

But what caught our eye the most today was the discourse around the recently introduced RESTRICT Act. Under the guise of banning TikTok, 20+ senators from both sides of the aisle have endorsed a broad expansion of executive branch power.

Under the Act, The President-nominated Secretary of Commerce will have unilateral authority to ban a specific app, website, and if broadly interpreted, an entire protocol or technology, if the secretary believes it to be a threat to national security.

Penalties for evading restrictions by masking your location with a VPN appear to be up to 20 years in jail / $1m in fines. Life ruining.

While the bill is unlikely to pass in its current form, it’s revealing that this is the direction so many of our senators have prioritized. Bigger government. Eliminate freedom and speech. Outlaw innovation.

Unsurprisingly, the Senators supporting this bill are the same ones that vote for big government and support preemptive war at every turn.

Interestingly, other members of Congress appear to be fighting the good fight. They’ve summoned SEC commish Gary Gensler to appear at a hearing later this month to explain his broad hostility towards crypto and why he cozied up to FTX without investigating them.

Here’s what we brrr’d today:

• Markets up, driven by tech, banks, and chipmakers

• ETH news: Up by 45% in ‘23, staking its own way forward

• Crypto concerns, among others, with RESTRICT ACT

Markets rally Wednesday around Tech and Banks

• Meta and Netflix added more than 2%, while Apple closed nearly 2% higher, and Amazon jumped over 3%.

• Micron shares climbed over 7% despite the company posting a $1.4 billion inventory write-down; Nvidia and AMD also rose.

• The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF advanced around 1%, while big banks such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs gained more.

• Some investors worried about higher interest rates potentially causing an economic recession, while others are optimistic that the Fed has control of limiting further contagion following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Ethereum: Staking, Hard Fork, Sentiment Shift

• Ether (ETH) has been performing well: its price has increased by 45% since the beginning of 2023

• Staking Ether (locking up coins to secure the protocol and earn yield) may be a wise investment as proof-of-stake consensus algorithm has made a potentially lucrative investment opportunity. Yield may reach 5% APY.

• The Shapella hard fork is scheduled for April 12, 2023: This upgrade to the ETH network will allow staked coins to be withdrawn.

• Last year’s implementation of EIP-1559 and the transition to proof-of-stake have helped shift the narrative around the Ethereum network, as its carbon footprint and inflation rate have dramatically reduced

  Seeking Alpha

RESTRICT Act: a digital Patriot Act 2.0?

• The RESTRICT Act gives broad authority to ban transactions and financial holdings involving foreign adversaries that pose risks to national security, similar to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

• The Act could potentially be used to ban or disrupt cryptocurrency transactions and Americans' access to open source tools or protocols like Bitcoin.

• The RESTRICT Act does not have a statutory carve-out for transactions dealing primarily in information and protected speech activities, like the Berman Amendments in IEEPA.

• It empowers the Secretary of Commerce to make prohibitions without the need for the President to first declare a national emergency.

• It limits judicial review to the D.C. Circuit and exempts agency action pursuant to the Act from review under the most relevant sections of the Administrative Procedure Act.

  Coincenter

TWEET OF THE DAY

smh

What We Own

$BTC, $ETH, $NVDA, $AAPL, $COIN, $XOM, $TSLA, $MSFT, $AMZN

Bitcoin was today’s best performer, up 3.3% to $28,350 per coin. The chart looks great as long as it holds $25k. I like it to hit $38k by the end of the year.

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The BRRR is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor before making any investment decisions.