Bay Area Times

Top 4 stories today:

🌎 1. Worldcoin, Sam Altman's cryptocurrency, launches

❌ 2. Twitter rebrands to X, to introduce personal finance features

❤️‍🩹 3. Longevity VC increases 23% to $282M in Q2; much below Q1 2022's $4.5B

👧 4. Barbenheimer brings in $235.5 in first weekend

Top 3 stories to start your day:

🧠 1. Llama 2 released by Meta: available for commercial use, similar to GPT-3.5

💻 2. Microsoft 365 Copilot to cost $30/user/month, stock +4%

📈 3. Bullishness among individual investors reaches November 21 high

5. Sequoia China to open a Singapore office, competing with Sequoia India

6. West and South grow GDP faster than Northeast and Midwest

7. From the War in Ukraine: Zelensky is expected to visit NATO summit in Lithuania, while Prigozhin pledged loyalty to Putin in a June 29 meeting.

Top 7 stories to start your day:

1. Threads reaches 100M users in 5 days, a record

2. New class actions filed against OpenAI, Meta

3. U.S. suggests it wants to deescalate trade war with China

4. CPI is expected to drop and core CPI to remain high (Wed)

Truflation shows U.S. inflation at 2.22%.

Reports of the U.S. government faking inflation (which would mean faking real GDP) are greatly exaggerated.

In the U.S., it was the steepest rate hike over the past 40 years.

Looking back, we've seen a sharp rise in base rates around the world.

Economists also expect the Fed to continue to reduce its balance sheet, to $6.9T in 2024.

Markets and economists expect rates to remain above 5% by year-end and then fall to 3%.

Markets are surprisingly confident that CPI will gradually return to 2%.

This Wednesday at 2 PM, the Fed will likely stop its rate hike cycle. Markets are pricing in 76% odds of the Fed keeping rates at 5.00% - 5.25%.

TRUMP FACES 37 CRIMINAL COUNTS --COURT RECORDS

DRUCKENMILLER SEES CORPORATE PROFITS DOWN 20% TO 30%

DRUCKENMILLER SAYS THE FED WILL END UP WITH HIGHER TERMINAL RATES

MICROSOFT IS BRINGING OPENAI’S GPT-4 AI MODEL TO US GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

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The Bay Area Times's view: like SEC v. Ripple, these cases will take years to finalize, and its outcome is uncertain.

• These cases may go to the Supreme Court, whose current Republican majority might be torn between originalist anti-crypto arguments and pro-business pro-crypto arguments.

Nansen identified $1.4B in net outflows from Binance in the 24 hours since the SEC sued it.

Will these lawsuits kill these platforms?

• Probably not. First, even if they do, it will likely take years for the lawsuits to finalize.

• These companies can very easily leave the U.S. markets, if U.S. regulations become prohibitive.

If this happens, and you are a user of Binance US or Binance, your assets can be frozen indefinitely, pending a trial.

This could take years, literally.

If you have money on these platforms, it is prudent to withdraw as soon as possible.

After filing the suit on Monday, yesterday the SEC requested an order to freeze Binance US's assets.

What about Binance? There, the case is much worse.

Binance's case includes more serious allegations, such as:

• Transferring customer assets to 3rd parties.

• Wash trading to inflate the exchange's volume.

• Allowing U.S. customers on the non-U.S. platform.

Coinbase stock closed -12% near its all-time low. Its valuation stands at $12B, with $5B in cash.

In a separate case, a U.S. Court ordered the SEC to clarify its position on a rulemaking petition from Coinbase.

Coinbase even already has an ad that claims that the SEC does not provide a path to registration.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was quick to give his usual response that there is “no path” to registration.

First of all, the main news yesterday was that the SEC sued Coinbase, alleging it should have registered its securities sales and as an exchange, broker, and clearing agency.

Is the SEC out to kill crypto, by suing Binance and Coinbase?

Will customers lose their money?

Here is what you need to know:

6. It was one of the most bipartisan debt ceiling votes in recent history.

5. The NYT maintains that the bill only cuts $1T, rather than $1.5T.

4. The no votes were concentrated among the progressive and pro-Trump wings of the parties.