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The board of advisers at the digital chamber is stuffed with former federal regulators, including a former member of Congress and a recent chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, J. Christopher Giancarlo, who was named to the board of BlockFi, a financial services company that tries to link cryptocurrencies with traditional wealth managers.

Max Baucus, the Democratic former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Jim Messina, a former top Obama adviser, also have recently been named to senior industry posts.

Lobbying disclosure records show that at least 65 contracts as of early 2021 addressed industry matters such as digital currency, cryptocurrency or blockchain, up from about 20 in 2019. Some of the biggest spenders on lobbying include Ripple, Coinbase the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States and trade groups like the Blockchain Association.

The lobbying burst is one of several recent signs nationwide that the industry is becoming a bigger presence in the economy. FTX, the cryptocurrency trading firm, is spending $135 million to secure the naming rights to the home arena of the Miami Heat.

The billionaire Elon Musk, who hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend, was asked about Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency featuring the face of a Shiba Inu dog that was created as a joke but has recently surged in value. Its the future of currency. Its an unstoppable financial vehicle thats going to take over the world, Mr. Musk said, before adding, Yeah, its a hustle. The price of Dogecoin plunged nearly 35 percent in the hours after the show aired.

With the industrys hires of recent government officials, claims of conflicts of interest are already starting to emerge.

Jay Clayton, who was the S.E.C. chairman until December, is now a paid adviser to the hedge fund One River Digital Asset Management, which invests hundreds of millions in Bitcoin and Ether, two cryptocurrencies, for its clients. Mr. Clayton declined to comment.

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As Scrutiny of Cryptocurrency Grows, the Industry Turns to K Street - The New York Times

Julie Hyman, Brian Sozzi, and Myles Udland discuss the flow of cryptocurrency as Dogecoin slows and Ethereum rises.

JULIE HYMAN: --open, and we got to talk about cryptocurrencies here this morning, following Elon Musk's star turn on Saturday Night Live. We'll leave the reviews of his performance aside. Well, maybe we won't. I thought he was fine. But he did, of course, as expected, talk about Dogecoin.

But, well, maybe those Dogecoiners didn't get what they bargained for, as we saw the price fall. And he basically said, it's a hustle, right, during the news update portion of it. Myles, you know, I guess this illustrates just what Dogecoin is all about, which is not much. But at the same time, we're seeing things like Ethereum go higher. So I don't know. What's our sort of Musk, SNL, Dogecoin correlation chart look like this morning?

MYLES UDLAND: Well, did you think that-- do you think that he was imitating Tom Kean with the bow tie? Because that was my thought, is that--

JULIE HYMAN: Oh.

MYLES UDLAND: --he trying to find, like, venerated financial commentator. And you kind of have two options. You could try to be Jim Cramer, which would be a jacket-- well, let's see, no jacket, tie, rolled up sleeves, bang the table, or you do the bow tie look with the glasses, which is what Elon went. And I sort of thought he was basically imitating versions of us, but no one's going to imitate any of the three of us on the air. But they might imitate Tom Kean. So maybe that was kind of my thought with that.

And I thought it was, you know, sure, it's a hustle, whatever. I think people's focus on the action in Doge during SNL, like, whatever. I mean, I'm surprised by myself, honestly, at how little interest I have in trying to get involved in the Doge conversation or the crypto conversation. But you know what? It just doesn't excite me maybe to the extent that it should, given this environment.

There we see in the real stock market, things that are not just vibes, or whatever we want to call them, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Coke Euro PAC Partners, CCET. Of course, there are multiple Coke-related tickers out there, KO, the main ones, CCET ringing the bell down on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. But let's stay on the important news, Julie. Talk a bit more about SNL.

Story continues

JULIE HYMAN: Well, all I was going to say is what's interesting here is that we're starting to see more differentiation among the cryptocurrencies. That perhaps is an interesting takeaway. I mean, the action in Dogecoin is pretty parallel to what we saw with the so-called Doge Day, right, on 4/20, where there was a lot of talk about it going up to the day, and then it fell on the day itself. You know, classic sort of buy the rumor, sell the news or whatever version of that trope you want to use. And we see Ethereum going up today.

There don't seem to be a lot of catalysts, usually, for this stuff. But it does show the different flows and the ins and outs of the different cryptocurrencies. I don't know exactly what's driving what, but we do see the breakdown in correlation between them for what it's worth.

BRIAN SOZZI: And for what it's worth, Myles, if I was going on SNL this coming weekend, I would imitate you. No doubt about it, baby.

MYLES UDLAND: I mean, look, there's plenty there. It's just that everyone's going to be like, no one knows who that guy is. So it can't be-- like, you have to imitate a famous person. And I think Tom is probably famous enough, although, look, I mean, we all know the crossover between the Bloomberg surveillance audience and SNL watchers probably pretty limited.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, I don't know. I wonder kind of what the boomer audience of SNL is at this point in time. And PS, I would love to see Brian Sozzi's Myles Udland impression. Perhaps at our afternoon meeting, you can give us a little preview. All right, we are going to move it on to commodities here, because as we talked about at the top of the show, we're definitely seeing commodities movement.

And it's really across commodities, right? Whether you're talking about metals or energy or agriculture, all of that is going up. We're watching copper prices hit new highs. We talked about the spike in gasoline, although that was event-driven. And most of what we're seeing in commodities is supply, demand-driven much more broadly, right?

I was telling you guys in this morning's meeting, you know, more and more, we are seeing the real world consequences of this, whether it's Tyson talking about feed costs going up or, you know, the-- my livestock farmer, who I talked to at the farmer's market, talking about lumber prices going up for his barns and feed prices skyrocketing, as I noticed his prices going up. I mean, this stuff is making its way through the system.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, and--

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, I mean, look--

BRIAN SOZZI: --it's amazing, Julie, that the market can absolutely care less. I mean, you have the Dow out of the gate here up on 170 points. You have that deep freeze in Texas a couple of months ago. The stock market still goes up here. To me, if this was a couple of years ago, I would have thought, well, maybe the market is down a couple hundred points here on the Dow in the early going. And it's not. And, Myles, I think we're continuing to watch the power of the Federal Reserve, their ability to put a lot of money into the system and essentially make any dips in the markets essentially viable.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, and look, I think we continue-- I mean, this story for 2021 is starting to come into focus, right? I mean, we don't-- I mean, it's the economic version of the medical supply story that hit in 2020. Last year, we didn't have enough PPE. We didn't have enough ventilators. We didn't have enough medical staff to take care of all the COVID patients. And now, we don't have enough workers. We don't have enough stuff, so it's commodities, inputs, whatever it might be, to provide for all the demand that is coming in from consumers.

And you can go almost infinite different directions with how that economic pressure is playing out. But it has been quite a long time since we have seen just this many real resource constraints on the economy, hitting all at once. And how it plays out, I don't think any of us really know. We all have sort of our ideas of where this goes. But it is certainly the most unique economic environment that we have seen, at least so far as I can recall.

JULIE HYMAN: And yet, it's not having that much of a depressive effect on stocks as--

Continued here:
Cryptocurrency On the Move - Yahoo Finance

Could this be the year that cryptocurrencies become mainstream? It certainly looks that way as a number of cryptos take off in value, reaching record highs across the board.

In April, Bitcoin exceeded $64,000 (52,700) while this month, Ethereum broke through the $4,000 (3,300) threshold. Even Dogecoin - the meme altcoin launched to poke fun at the former two mentioned - has made advances.

But its also hard to keep up with the sheer volume of cryptocurrencies being launched, with more than 5,000 estimated to be in circulation at the time of publication.

Despite their progress, the likes of Bitcoin and its ilk continue to be seen as risky investments due to their volatility though perceptions are changing. Their recent success has also brought increased scrutiny, particularly over energy-hungry practices such as mining.

But there is one cryptocurrency that is starting to make waves for more positive reasons - Chia.

Having officially begun trading last week, Chia is trying to do things differently. For one thing, it is being branded as the "green" cryptocurrency but what makes it eco-friendly and how does it differ from other cryptos?

As the original - and to date, highest valued - cryptocurrency, Bitcoin has set the standard for the altcoins that have followed in its wake.

In this respect, many cryptos use a practice first adopted by Bitcoin to create new tokens called "mining". Known as a "proof of work" system, mining requires the use of computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles in order to unlock new Bitcoin tokens.

This is the first major difference with Chia, the latter using what is called a "proof of space and time" system instead. What does that entail? To "farm" Chia, you need a large amount of empty hard discs to house "plots" which are then awarded a number of blocks based on available space.

Chias creator Bram Cohen, the man who founded the file-sharing platform BitTorrent, believes this method is more reliable, secure, and greener than how cryptos like Bitcoin operate.

Its this claim about it being more environmentally friendly that is particularly attracting attention.

The process of mining requires both rigs - made up of specialist computer processors - and access to large amounts of energy.

Bitcoins surge in popularity has meant that home miners have been unable to match the output of large-scale mining operations, particularly when it comes to prohibitive energy bills.

As well as pricing out small-scale traders, the colossal consumption of energy required by mining is having an indelible impact on the planet.

Bitcoin investors are keen to point out that the crypto is increasingly relying on more renewable sources of energy but due to the cost of electricity involved, the concentration of mines often moves around the global chasing lower energy prices.

More often than not, cheaper sources of electricity are more likely than not generated by coal-fired power plants rather than wind turbines.

In China, where the majority of the worlds Bitcoin mines are located, the process will create as many carbon emissions in a year as Italy and Saudi Arabia combined by 2024, as well as reports last month of localised power outages.

Given it doesnt use mining, Chia has been praised for potentially opening up a new cost-effective avenue for home users as well as providing a more environmentally sound alternative to energy-intensive Bitcoin.

On the face of it at least, Chia is living up to its green credentials in that it doesnt need to use up high volumes of electricity. However, the means by which Chia farmers mint new tokens is not without its critics - or an environmental cost.

Even before its launch on trading platforms at the start of May, Chia had already courted controversy after its early success caused a run on hard drives.

The surge in demand has already caused a shortage and pushed prices sky-high in China and other parts of Asia. Since the launch of Chia was first announced in February, prices for 12-terabyte drives have soared by 59 per cent in China alone, according to the South China Morning Post.

The reason for the increased demand is not just the sudden popularity of a newly-launched cryptocurrency, although this explains it in large part. It is also fuelled by the fact that Chia farming is incredibly wasteful when it comes to the required hardware.

According to recent reports from China, continuous Chia farming is resulting in the shelf life of a 512GB hard drive, for example, being reduced to just 40 days rather than a usual lifespan of around a decade.

The result is the voiding of all warranty on the hard drives used and the potential for vast mountains of discarded, unusable electronics. E-waste is an ever-growing hazard as consumers are quicker to consign their electronic devices to landfills in order to upgrade to newer models.

E-waste tends to contain toxic components, such as heavy metals like lead and lithium, which if disposed of improperly, risk contaminating the environment and posing a human health risk.

For the time being, low energy costs are incentive enough to keep Chias star in the ascent but the true environmental impact this "green" crypto will have is still uncertain.

More here:
What is 'green' cryptocurrency Chia and just how eco-friendly is it? - Euronews

Experts warn it could be a sign of a bubble. Crypto Vs Cash

Cryptocurrency has hit a significant milestone: Its now worth more than all US dollars currently in circulation.

Cryptocurrencies hit a valuation of $2 trillion on April 29, according to The Wall Street Journal. Thats about the same valuation as all US dollars in circulation. However, it has since hit as high as $2.25 trillion and in the process actually exceeding dollars in circulation.

While the stat is incredibly fascinating and a solid indicator of cryptocurrencies growing popularity, its also a little misleading.

Thats because US dollars in circulation isnt all US dollars. After all, circulation refers to just physical cash and coins.

Its the same way that the cash in your pocket doesnt represent all of the money you have (hopefully). Most of your cash like the US dollar isnt liquid. It exists in banks, investments, and other intangible assets.

So while cryptocurrencies might be worth more than all the physical dollars and coins out there, it definitely is not worth more than all the money out there.

Cryptos boom is a part of a trend across numerous investment classes and categories such as real estate and green energy, according to the WSJ. Much of it is fueled by rock bottom interest rates from the Federal Reserve.

However, the Fed is indicating that we might well be in bubble territory, saying that valuations are generally high and are vulnerable to significant declines should investor risk appetite fall, progress on containing the virus disappoint, or the recovery stall in a May 2021 stability report.

So as with all things finance related, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Also take heed from one of Elon Musks more measured takes: Dont go investing your life savings in assets like crypto. If you do, youre going to be in for a rough time if (and when) the bubble finally pops.

READ MORE: What Happens to Stocks and Cryptocurrencies When the Fed Stops Raining Money? [The Wall Street Journal]

More on cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin Crashes, Wiping Over $200 Billion Off Crypto Market

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Cryptocurrency Is Now Worth More Than All US Currency in Circulation - Futurism