Don’t believe Vladimir Putin’s hype. The Russian economy is not OK. With western sanctions jeopardising up to 40 per cent of the country’s GDP, Putin’s assurances of an economic pivot to the East are a sham. And his weaponising of gas supplies to Europe is the financial equivalent of strapping on a suicide vest.That, roughly, is the message of a major new study published last week by the Yale School of Management about the impact of sanctions on Russia. Yale, working with a team of international economists, has looked past a wall of Russian obfuscation and used real-world data from retailers, energy traders and investors to reveal a picture very different from the rosy image presented by Putin at the St Petersburg Economic Forum in June. ‘The economic blitzkrieg against Russia never had any chances of success,’ he told an audience that included a delegation from the Taliban. ‘Like our ancestors, we will solve any problem; the entire thousand-year history of our country speaks of this… Gloomy predictions about the Russian economy’s future haven’t come true.’

The Yale study provides the first comprehensive set of data that proves Putin absolutely wrong. Let’s start with the outright lies.
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The endgame of this war will be a battle between guns and gas. Putin is gambling that the economic pain of his gas cut-off will break western support for Ukraine before western guns break his army. But sanctions have opened another economic front where Russia is suffering far more than was previously thought. Putin can and does deny that economic pain. But illusion has a price. Economic crisis will soon enough become a political one.

After years of resisting, the world’s largest asset manager has finally taken the plunge into crypto in a substantial way. BlackRock, which oversees $10 trillion in assets, is partnering with publicly traded Coinbase to provide its institutional clients with access to cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is the first digital asset being offered through the partnership, according to a blog post Coinbase, the most popular crypto exchange in the U.S., released on the matter today. BlackRock’s Aladdin investment management platform will offer connectivity to Coinbase Prime to offer crypto trading, custody, prime brokerage and reporting capabilities to shared clients.

“Common clients of Aladdin and Coinbase will be able to manage their bitcoin exposures alongside their public and private investments for a whole-portfolio view of risk,” BlackRock wrote in an announcement.

Some suppliers to Chinese real estate developers are refusing to repay bank loans because of unpaid bills owed to them, a sign that the loan boycott that started with homebuyers is starting to spread. 

Hundreds of contractors to the property industry complained that they can no longer afford to pay their own bills because developers including China Evergrande Group still owe them money, Caixin reported, citing a statement it received from a supplier Tuesday.

One group of small businesses and suppliers circulated a letter online saying they will stop repaying debts after Evergrande’s cash crisis left them out of pocket.

“We decided to stop paying all loans and arrears, and advise our peers to decline any requests to be paid on credit or commercial bill,” the group said in the letter dated July 15, which was sent to the developer’s Hubei office. “Evergrande should be held responsible for any consequence that follows because of the chain reaction of the supply-chain crisis.”

French bank BNP Paribas, the leading private bank in the Eurozone, will become a custodial service provider for bitcoin and other digital assets, according to a report from CoinDesk
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Still, Metaco has previously announced partnerships with the likes of Citigroup, BBVA, Zodia Custody, DBS and Union Bank Philippines. More recently, French bank Societe Generale also partnered with Metaco. Previously, CEO of Metaco Adrien Treccani discussed the rise of banks entering the custody ecosystem of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in an interview.

“The series of banks that were already working on certain topics suddenly transformed from innovation pilots to concrete go-to market strategies,” Treccani said in an interview. “You will start seeing a series of announcements involving very big custodians. It’s almost FOMO [a fear of missing out] as these large banking players know that their future somehow depends on this capability.”.

https://www-tristatecity-nl.translate.goog/?_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc&_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en


hmmmmmmkay we are going to need your land.......

Here's a sneak peek at what to expect on July 12.

We finally have hints of what the first operational images will be from NASA's deep-space observatory.

Among the first pictures coming in from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope will be "the deepest image of our universe that has ever been taken," according to NASA administrator Bill Nelson.

While not specifying which early-universe objects Webb will focus upon, nor how old these targets are, Nelson suggested the image will show the earliest objects yet seen. "This is farther than humanity has ever looked before, and we're only beginning to understand what Webb can and will do," he added.

Webb's new image may supersede the Hubble Space Telescope's series of deep image fields showing galaxies in our universe formed as little as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which took place roughly 13.7 billion years ago.

Nelson was speaking at a media event at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which manages Webb operations. NASA used the media event to discuss Webb's forthcoming operational image release July 12 along with the range of science the observatory will conduct early in its tenure, including solar system objects, exoplanets, the early universe and a range of targets in between.

Another of the images coming that day will be Webb's first spectrum of an exoplanet, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, who spoke at the same event. Such spectra, which measure the amount of light emitted at certain wavelengths, typically provide hints of a planet's chemistry, which point to its formation history.

Grayscale has already sued (backed by solicitor general Don Verrilli, one of the leading appellate litigators) the SEC. Similar what happened in Canada few years ago, 3iQ recieved world's first Bitcoin ETF afterwards.

Not saying it will be the same in the U.S.

Meanwhile, another new spot Bitcoin ETF has launched in Switzerland yesturday..

"Our product is the first spot or physical-backed Bitcoin fund, and the fund is not allowed to lend, stake or leverage any of the assets it owns. For the first time in Europe, investors buying an exchange-traded Bitcoin product will own the units that own the Bitcoin," Khurshid said. "There are other exchange-traded products in Europe but no other spot BTC ETF," he added.

A spokesperson for Euronext confirmed that BCOIN will be the first spot Bitcoin ETF ever listed on Euronext. "This will be the first Bitcoin ETF on Euronext, or the first fund directly investing in Bitcoin. All other currently existing products on our segment are exchange-traded notes, or legally structured as debt instruments," he said in a statement. While the ETF will arrive in July, Euronext did not provide a specific date for the launch.

call me shocked 

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/06/30/sec-rejects-grayscales-spot-bitcoin-etf-application/