 Hello friends and thanks for hanging out with us here on the market report today on Cointelegraph. I'm your host and we're joined again by our resident expert Marcel Peckman and today's special guest Joe Hall. Joe Hall is a research and interview journalist at Cointelegraph who brings five plus years of Bloomberg experience covering financial markets around the world. Marcel Peckman applies his 17 years of experience training derivatives options and futures to the crypto derivatives markets. Guys, big news around the CPI that we're going to be diving into. Theory emerges upon us. Big week for crypto, but we got blood in this and we got volatility all over the market. What is going on this week Marcel? Welcome back Joe. Welcome to the show today. How are we doing today guys? Well, every time there's an important macroeconomic data, I feel bad for crypto investors because we have nothing to do with that and yet we are impacted. So this week was not different. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, sure. I mean, I've got to put my certainly and serious business voice on, right? Because I'm here for Sam, who would have the serious outlook on things. But at the same time, I think there's still a lot of optimistic week ahead. You know, we've had 0.2% off the CPI print and things aren't too bad. The level of volatility, but nothing new for the crypto markets, let's say. Exactly. And things seem to be holding steady despite the rainy storm outside that most of the people are freaking out about most recently, the CPI print, like Joe mentioned. We got an exciting show today, folks. So make sure you're dropping comments in the chat. We're going to be, if you have questions from Marcel or Joe, want to make sure we get to those today. So we're going to be monitoring that chat all day throughout the show. And we appreciate everyone for tuning in from around the globe. Let us know where you are watching from today. We have Queen here. Welcome back. And I also see Radar BTC is here and Ahmed. Thanks for jumping in today for the market report. So to start things off for today, we're going to get into our weekly roundup to make sure we get you the biggest headlines around crypto Twitter. So Danilo, let's go ahead and jump into our weekly roundup video for this week. So we got lots of chatter around Twitter this week as we saw Google get into the countdown around the Ethereum merge. You saw time talking about this could be one of the biggest events inside crypto, but guys, I want to get your thoughts real quick. Is it merge going to be a before and after moment for crypto? Yes or no? Marcel, what do you think? I think more people will understand how Bitcoin differs from the remaining outcoins, not necessarily good or bad. They're created. They have been created for different purposes. So yes, I do think it's going to be a huge milestone for crypto setting apart what is outcoins and what is Bitcoin. I like this question. Marcel's going to be diving into a lot of these. But Joe, what is your take here before and after a moment for crypto? I like this. Maybe in 10 years time, we might look back at this moment and think this was the pre-merge moment, the run up to it. And it's true, Bitcoin will be the only sort of last standing top 20 cryptocurrency with proof of work on it. So, yeah, if it does manage to pull off what they're saying is changing the engines mid-flight with the switch to merge, which, by the way, I Googled just use the counter now. And it's true, it's saying one day, 11 hours, 59 minutes and counting. Then it will be an impressive feat for the second largest cryptocurrency. I think, yeah, we will look back on this as a defining moment in crypto history. Very good. Well, we're going to dive into that a little bit later here with some big headlines and I know Marcel's going to cover you all the Ethereum stuff that you need to know about the upcoming merge and some of the latest greatest insights. But let's have a good laugh to start off today's show. We got some memes to jump into today, folks. So, Danilo, let's go ahead and pull up some memes. All right, first one today. Money doesn't matter. Rich people, looks doesn't matter. Portrait of the people. Proof of work doesn't matter. People who pre-mine. This is definitely a toxic maxi or a Bitcoin maxi, isn't it? Yeah. Current market status right now. This is a bull market. It's a bear market. I think we all know it's a bear market. No, it's a bear market, dude. Come on, this is wrong. I do this quickly. Yeah, this is how PMX passed. Exactly. Hey, CYD will always wear that. Protect investors, protect banks, let's keep it up. Yeah, I don't think the SEC ever worked for the little guys, the little investors. And the recent bad bets and beyonds, the BBB stock, meme stock, whatever happened there. Proved our case. They don't care about who is investors. Is that Warren? That's a senator from Massachusetts? Yeah, it was with Warren, I think. Yeah, Warren. Yeah, the biggest anti-crypto advocate in the Senate there. Yeah, classic meme. Evergreen buys the top. And we're going to get into the Luna topic a little bit later today in our articles. I think this is a great meme. That was a good touch, a good touch there. I had a friend text me asking, should I get into Luna? Luna Classic, Luna C implemented the burn mechanism. And Luna, the other coin, which has nothing to do with that, also read it. Is that it? Is that what happened? It makes no sense. Do you want this one? I just want an article of it. It's a minefield. I was just going to say, we're going to dive into that a little bit later. Luna C did pass a governance proposal that burns 1.2% tax. Lunatics. So, exactly. All right, let's get into some headlines from Cointelegraph headlines this week. First one we got today, I'm going to go ahead and pull this one up. Bitcoin price jets in 1K in three minutes as US CPI inflation overshoots folks. You didn't hear the news about CPI. It is in at 0.2% less than August. And Bitcoin did not like that. A lot of crypto markets did not like it. But we're still maintaining this 21K level. We're floating. It's going down closer to 20K. What are our initial thoughts here about this CPI print? I want to quickly pull up just a quick excerpt here. So data from Cointelegraph. Market trading views should VTC USD swiftly falling $1,000 after the CPI inflation for August came to 8.3 year on year. Let's get your thoughts here. Marcel, what is this latest CPI value? And is this a nothing burger? Or is this something to be concerned about here for the greater markets? Okay. So if I were Sam, I would be telling the viewers, well, the CPI meaning inflation slightly above what's expected. It's going to cause the Federal Reserve and the central banks to keep pushing interest rates up. So a 75-bips rate hike on September 21 is the most likely scenario. And this has been enforced by a medium to moderate high inflation. So that's what the basic economics and analysts will tell everyone. But the thing is, I think the market is not only crypto markets, but stock market is clinging to a hope that someday the Federal Reserve will magically say, well, I think this will be the last or the two last rate hike. So over the next three or four months, we're going to be resuming our, we're not going to be tightening the markets anymore. We're going to resume buying back bonds and debt instruments and ETFs and et cetera. And the bull rally will continue. So on everyone's mind, this will happen. Investors just don't know if it's going to happen in three months time or in a year time. But eventually the inflation will see it because as the Federal Reserve to push the rate ups, it causes the economy to retract. So at some point, this equilibrium will happen because companies will be forced to lay it off and other companies or investors will withdraw money from markets. So the markets will shrink. They will reduce by itself as the inflation continues to pressure consumption, for example. So the bottom line is crypto markets continue to track on a high correlation to stock market. So the volatility was already expected. And since the data was not good, was kind of bearish, both stock markets and crypto markets went down today. So no surprise here. Joe, what is your take? Is a 75 basis point to be expected at the next Fed meeting? And then is this going to have a larger impact on how the Fed views their next rate hike? Are they going to continue with their aggressive rate hikes? Or do you think they're going to maybe bump down to 50 basis points? What are your kind of general thoughts here? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right? They've missed it again. The expectations versus the reality, it makes you wonder who is doing their forecasting and why they keep being so many points out. I mean, with this one, they were at least slightly closer than previous guesses. With regards to whether or not they will hike it up over 75 basis points, I think it's probably quite likely. There's still too much uncertainty on the horizon. There's still a war raging in Europe, which is causing havoc with energy prices and general geopolitical stability. And on top of that, the Dixie is hitting highs. High has not seen Fino 20 years. So I think another day that the Fed is trying to create this sort of stability when the whole world seems to be running around thinking the sky is falling in. So I think it's a great day to be a trader. But maybe if you're in the part of the DCA Army, then I think just keep soldering on, keep doing what you're good at. And try to ignore the fact that there's one party in the US which has incredible power and incredible influence over entire world markets. We see billions of dollars of value, economic value wiped out in the space of a few minutes because one group, the Fed announces what CPI inflation is. It's fascinating from a social standpoint. But yeah, if you're looking at it from an economic perspective, but yeah, if you're looking at it from an economic standpoint right now, we're not in a great place. And I think the Fed may be resolved, may result in more basic point heights in the future. The OG here chimed in in chat says, but CPI dropped from 9.1% to 8.3% from June to August. Is this a bad thing? I mean, Marcel, why don't you jump in here first? Yeah, answering to the squared OG question. It is bad because the government has been using their strategic oil reserves to pressure down energy prices, blaming Russia crisis or whatever. So they're unloading stockpiles from oil reserves to pressure down the inflation. And even doing that, the food, the housing and every other costs went up more than 8% or 9% year over year. So that's definitely bad for the government. So is it safe to say that CPI is actually being manipulated because of how heavily weighted energy is inside of that metric? Yeah, definitely. They're kind of cheating the metric. But in the end, if the inflationary pressure continues for another two or three months, they will have to further extend their tightening movement. So not only raising the 75 basis point on interest with hikes, but maybe selling even more debs and ETFs and treasuries that they hold on their balance sheet. The Federal Reserve currently holds over $8 trillion worth of assets. That's unseen ever in history. And Joe, what's your take here? Even though the CPI came down, it's still high. I mean, we're still looking at levels that we've never seen before. And so, Joe, what's your take here? Yeah, it's uncomfortable on a personal level to live with. We've all filled up our cars. We've all went to the shops. We've all realized it personally. And this is the summer. Winter rolls around. And if Ukraine and Russia are still at it as they are in Europe, then it might be a really, really dark winter time for those living in Europe. I'm based between Portugal and the United Kingdom. So I can speak from my own experience across these countries. There was, I mean, I like to give a note of optimism here as well. There was supposedly a successful lightning offensive in Ukraine over the past week. So they recaptured some northern territories. So this stalemate war or this evergreen war that commentators were previously speaking about may actually have an end in sight, which would inevitably free up energy reserves across Europe, bring down the prices of energy, as Russia currently has a stranglehold on European energy prices. But from the US standpoint, yeah, inflation is down to eight and a bit percent. But the target we've got to remember here is 2%. We're still 4x the target inflation rate here. So it's not like we're out in the open. There's a lot of work to be done, and there's a lot of better money management, let's say, that the Fed could be doing here. Yeah, so to get a better handle of this situation. Well, I wanted to share my screen real quick with a quote from the dear leader, President Biden, of the United States here. He said, today's CPI data shows more progress in bringing global inflation down in the US economy. Overall, prices have been essentially flat in our country these last two months. That is welcome news for our American families with more work still to do. So clearly, like this is a spin zone in my book. They're trying to create these new cycles trying to downplay the significance of some of these events. But I think you've heard all of us kind of talk and share our points about what the CPI actually means. I don't think it's a sky's falling situation, but it's definitely something that we need to monitor. And the Fed is clearly doing so. So I saw a med chime in there with a comment saying 50 basin points is off the table. We're going to see that quantitative tightening. So it's going to be a bumpy ride ahead. And we're going to see, especially with the war in Ukraine and Russia taking place. We got a lot of geopolitical things happening right now and a lot of uncertainty. So not everything is doom and gloom, but I want to shift us into the next article that we have this week with such big headlines. This was written by William Seuber. The headline reads the Fed, the merge, and 22K BTC, which now is at closer to 21K. Five things to know about Bitcoin this week. So last week we closed and then obviously had the CPI print and folks did not like that. We're seeing consolidation right around 2100 and failed to break the 200-week moving average, which is now near that 23K mark. And we continue to fail to break that. So the first thing I want to look for here from you guys is what price ranges are you kind of looking at here in the short term? Let's call it over the next 30 days. We see a drop below that 18K level that we saw a few weeks ago. I'll start this one off with Joe. Sure. I mean, do I have to put my Sam hat on and be like, we're going lower, guys. Strap it. You can give me a take. Give us a range. Okay. Okay. I'll be me instead. I think that, yeah, unfortunately, a sub-18 is definitely on the cards. If Bitcoin were to decouple, if people were to suddenly wake up tomorrow morning and understand what a hard money is and understand the importance of money that only you can take control of and all of these wonderful things that Bitcoin is associated with from self-sovereignty to decentralization to separating money from state, then yes, we would definitely be going a lot higher, a lot quicker. But as it stands, I think that people are more concerned about the next three to six months, about keeping their homes warm and their jobs, keeping their salaries coming in. So I think that, yeah, there could be a lot more downward price action soon. Whether or not 18K will break or not, I don't know. When we get closer to that level, there was that really funny meme that went around last week regarding the rainbow chart. You know, that chart that sort of arcs across the screen and now we're in like the bluest band, which is like basically a fire sale. To short the bottom, I might not be a trader, but I know that that's definitely a very bold move. So when it goes to that levels, I know that personally, I'll just be looking to DCA more Bitcoin in, more Bitcoin, more fiat money into Bitcoin, because long-term we know that this is the lifeboat. But around those levels, I would be, yeah, I'd be feeling pretty gloomy, I reckon, because people still don't understand the value of this innovation or new monetary protocol. But I certainly wouldn't be looking to short around those levels. Very good. And the second point in this article to watch out for this week was obviously Unbound CPI. We talked about this, but Marcel, the article speaks about how the DXY was essentially a self-signal. So I guess walk us through your insights as to why this is something that you're monitoring this week for Bitcoin. Okay, so the DXY is the dollar index, which measures the United States dollars against other major currencies, such as the Euro, the UK money, money from Japan, China, and et cetera, the top six currencies worldwide. And the US dollars strengthened over the past two or three weeks to the highest level in 20 years. What does it say to us? It's say that investors are selling stocks, are selling their investments, and piling in on US dollar cash positions. So they're not even buying US treasures, because those are paying, I don't know, 3% per year, 4% per year, which is much lower than inflation. They're so afraid of everything that they're hoarding cash, and they're not hoarding euros, they're hoarding US dollars. So they're afraid that other countries will collapse or the economies will enter a recession earlier than the US. So they're perceiving a risk of a high recession on maybe governments having to bail out banks, and similar to what we've seen in 2007-2008 crisis. So the fear of recession is there. And under this scenario, expecting investors to buy Bitcoin or any other assets considered as a risk investment is simply not going to fly. So they're not even willing to buy the treasures or corporate bonds to get a 3% to 8% yield per year. They don't want that. They want the safe of the US dollar cash at their bank accounts. So they're protecting their assets like thinking, well, maybe something really bad is going to happen. So until this mindset changes, we shouldn't expect cryptocurrencies and risk markets to bottom. So for the next 30 days, I do think that we could see another 10%, 15% drop, but not 20%, not 30%. Very good. And the third point of this article is the merge is upon us. So we've been waiting for this moment now for what seems like ages. And it's coming this week, Joe. Just pulled up the Google tracker. It is a day and hours away. So for those who aren't familiar with the merge, Joe, can you give us just a quick recap and give us the skinny? For those folks watching at home who maybe have no idea what the merge is, can you explain to them what is it? Why is this happening? And then we can maybe dive into some of more of the details surrounding that. Sure thing. And I'm still just amazed that the Google has this tracker for this thing. Like why does Google not do a tracker for the Bitcoin halving, for example? It does make you wonder, doesn't it? But yeah, so the merge, the top line here is that Ethereum, the world's second largest cryptocurrency, which was at one point, it was the world's computer and it's since become sort of the home for all things decentralized applications. It's going from a process called proof of work to proof of stake. Now proof of work is an energy hungry way of securing a blockchain and it requires miners which are basically like little computer rigs which look for a very long number and in Bitcoin's case, they try to find this number on average every 10 minutes and if successful, they are rewarded with the block reward which in the case of Bitcoin right now is 6.25 Bitcoin. Now a lot of people don't like that Bitcoin uses energy because we live in a world where for some reason we demonize energy use. Despite the fact that, and I'm sure we'll come on to this later, Bitcoin is actually a really effective tool for building out renewable energies, for stabilizing grids, even for the capture of methane that would have otherwise gone into the environments, therefore catalyzing rising temperatures and impacting global warming. Now proof of stake is much less energy intensive and is the switch that Ethereum is making right now. They've been trying to do this for, I want to say four to five years, but I think it could have, you know, it might have been since even inception, you know, basically, you know, Vitalik and his pals realized that if Ethereum were to carry on at the rate it was going, it would use, you know, incredible amounts of money and money, energy, much like Bitcoin does. You often hear those headlines like, oh, Bitcoin consumes more energy than Norway or Argentina or whatever else. And as a result of switching this proof of stake and proof of stake works in that you stake, literally, your Ethereum to secure the blockchain in a way that means that, in order to be a stake in the Ethereum blockchain, correct me here. It's 32 or is it 64 Ethereum? Ether, even, I can't remember which one it is. Guys, I need your help here. Is it 32 or is it 32? Oh my God, that was a, it's the end of the day here for me. So please excuse me with these basic nuggets of crypto information here. And yeah, this has been going on for the past about four years, but in parallel to Ethereum's proof of work blockchain working, the beacon chain has been working and they've realized that it's been working successfully and that's the sort of test pilot for the merge to take place on. And so tomorrow, in 12 hours tomorrow, according to Google, the switch will be made and from then on, there will effectively be two chains as the change will fork. There'll be the proof of work chain and the proof of stake chain. And this is where things get really complicated because there are now two cohorts of people wanting to support the ETH POW and the ETH POS in the future. I mean, presumably the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik will support POS and some of the miners who have a vested interest in seeing Ethereum POW be a success will want that to continue. So if you guys, you guys remember when the Dow happened back in 2016, was it? When Ethereum and Ethereum Classic were born, we could end up with a similar situation to that in which a zombie chain may continue, but it might still have some value. So it's another great time to be a trader because you will effectively have free money to play around with and play off each other. I haven't gone into the technicals of proof of stake because I haven't really understood them correctly myself yet and I'm really hoping that Marcel will be able to help me out there. But Joe, what effectively is going to change after the merge to the average user, even if it uses... Oh, nothing. If I and etc. So it's nothing going to change, at least on this current phase of the merge process. I know there will be another in 2023, 2024, etc. It's a huge plan even to implement the ZK proof sharding, etc. But that's for later. But right now, nothing is going to change for the user. Yes, there's going to be the inflationary reduction. So less coins are going to be printed each day because there's not the expense to cover with the miner. So you don't have to pay them. The validators need a lot less energy, so less cost. But remember, Avalanche and Solana have inflations that are higher than 25-30% per year. And yet in 2021, they went up 10,000% or 9 times or 20 times. So Avalanche and Solana are the best examples that the users, they do not care about inflation. They might care about the defy applications. They might care about the cost of the transaction, but they do not care about inflation. So I think everyone that's thinking that the merge is a game changer, I mean, in 30 days pricing? No, I don't see any change, any major change that could drive the Ethereum price above $2,000 in 30 days. Yeah, no, I'm really excited for me. Yes, sorry. So I go ahead, Penton. Go ahead, Joe. Okay, no, I was just saying, I'm really fascinated by it from a sort of a journalistic standpoint. You know, my day job of Cointelegraph is to observe these things and to report on them and to speak to people that are informed or are on the inside, and they might even be implementing these changes. So yeah, I think it's going to be fascinating to see how it plays out. But yes, for the average user, they're not going to see much difference. But the other thing is what happens if you have, say, some USDT on the proof of work chain and you have some USDT on the proof of stake chain, what happens to that USDT? Is it now effectively worth nothing on the proof of work chain, which is now technically dead? You know, there are a lot of questions here that I think it's going to be amazing. Like, I'm only working very hard over those two days of the merge. Traders are going to be trading incredibly hard. And yeah, we could see fireworks. As you say, it is a real turning point. And I mean, it makes me even more laser focused or laser eye focused, let's say, on why Bitcoin should never change, because this whole thing is just complete mad uncertainty. And in a world where uncertainty is the mode du jour, wherever you go, I think it's fascinating and interesting. But who knows what could happen, right? And I think you brought up a fascinating point is that money is going to be falling from the sky. It's because of the fork of, if you have, assets held on proof of work, they're going to essentially be duplicated on the new chain. I talked about this last week, the strategy of how to approach that. You heard Bobby on of coin get go say, he's going to be selling off all assets on your chain. What is your guys approach here on how to play this? And I want to pull up a quick tweet from Earthheimer. And he says that everyone larking about if they should long the short, along the merge for short, the merge, which feels like games where the best move is not to play. So are you playing the merge? How are you approaching this? Are you playing on trading it? Are you going to be dumping all your tokens on the new chain? Why don't we start out with Marcel here first? First, there's an IOU, which is a derivatives contract for the Ethereum proof of work coin, already trading on PoloniEx, BitMEX, and some other derivatives exchanges. And that coin started trading near $100. And it's currently sitting at $45 right now. So investors are closely monitoring what the developers team are doing on Twitter or etc. What are their remarks? And people have seen and interpreted it that it's just a bunch of miners that don't want to lose their power. And some of them are already migrating to Ethereum classic, for example, or to Raven coin, another altcoin. So I don't think that those miners will disappear. They will pick other competing chains. Maybe Ether Classic is going to have a great bull run because of the higher hash rate. But as Joe questioned, okay, so you're going to have two cryptopunks. You're going to have two tatters, one in the proof of stake chain that is backed by Ethereum Foundation, one on the proof of work chain, which we've already seen that has low community support. So I don't think there will be any value in that. So I do think that traders should be selling their cryptopunks on proof of work chain or their tatter on proof of work chain. Even if they sell the tatter for 10 cents, or if they sell a cryptopunk that's worth half a million dollars for, I don't know, $5,000, it's free money. Just take it and go home. I love the approach there. Joe, how do you emerge and what are some things that folks should be on the lookout for? Yeah, I've got to echo Marcel there. It's free money. Yeah, take it and go home. You know, cut your losses. This is an incredible event of gambling, effectively. Remember when Bitcoin forks and became Bitcoin cash? As in Bitcoin base chain carried and there was then VCH and those that had Bitcoin also got the equivalent in Bitcoin tokens. Again, it was effectively free money. A lot of people just swapped that straight into dollars and left with it or managed to swap it back into Bitcoin. If I don't actually have any Ethereum tokens right now, and I don't want any Ethereum token right now, the only NFTs that I have have been gifts for other people. So I'm actually going to ask them and be like, you know, what is going to happen to these NFTs? Do you know how two of them, for example, if they do have two of them? Then I don't know, do you even keep it as a piece of digital memorabilia? Does that become, you know, funny in of itself? You know, I remember when you can look back on this in five years and we're talking about this turning point event, and you're like, oh, yeah, I've got my rare Pepe NFT from the 2022 merge. And it's now worth zero. But I hold on to it because it wasn't a funny time when they decided to change their consensus mechanism mid-flight, as they say. It's a weird time to be in crypto. And yeah, I'm not a trader and I can't possibly give any trading advice at this moment during the merge. So I would just say sort of best of luck and maybe also take Udi's tweets with a pinch of salt because, you know, he likes to troll quite a lot of the time. Very good. And it looks like we have Sabash and Sam Maruj will take until late 2023 to finish, which Marcel was alluding to. The other thing I want to just warn folks at home is just make sure you're safe. What does that mean? I'll pull the quote here from the article that talks about be wary of scams, fork tokens, et cetera. We've already seen multiple around the merge and ETHPOW forks. So this is definitely something that you should be on the lookout for. Don't fall for the scams. Don't give away your keys to your wallets for whatever reason. And don't be clicking on links from folks you don't know and discord and telegram. We all know the oldest tricks in the books. But this is the time that people maybe get taken advantage of that are newcomers to the space and don't know what's best from a security and scam angle. So definitely be on the lookout for those. I want to move forward throughout through some of these that the article talks about, about the five things that we should be aware of. And one of the interesting parts of this article that talks about is the difficulty the hash rate has actually peaked at all time high for Bitcoin. So Bitcoin's fundamental network fundamentals have been anything but bearish lately. And this week the trend continues in new heights. According to estimates for monitoring resource BTC.com, difficulty will increase by 3% at the next automated readjustment, sending it further unknown territory with a total of $31.91 trillion. So I guess what is your biggest takeaway from this metric about the hash rate? Why is minor competition a good thing for the network? I'll kick this over to Marcel to kind of jump in here first. Well, so for those unfamiliar, the hash rate is an estimate of the number of machines competing for the solution to each new block on Bitcoin. So the hash rate means that either we have more powerful machines or we have more miners plugged in on the network. And the hash rate just went up to the all time high recently. But what you've got to remember is that when you order a miner from Bitmain or from the producers, there's a lag of three or four months until you get them, shift, and you can install them effectively. So those machines that are plugging in right now may have been bought when Bitcoin was trading at $30,000 or whatever. So if the bear market continues for another three or four months, maybe we're going to see a stagnation or even a decline on the number of miners because nobody's going to mine Bitcoin at a loss. So if his energy costs are up or he wasn't able to move the miners to a location with a lower production cost, a lower energy cost, he's going to simply shut down the computers, the miners. And that's not what's happening right now. So the hash rate is at all time high and that's a good thing for the network. And Joe can explain better why this is a good thing. Yeah, Joe, I'll let you jump in here first. I want to bring up another point, though, that the tie brought up in this article. So the increase of the hash rate had moved the timing up for the next Bitcoin block subsidy having event, so which is kind of fascinating because this accelerated growth of hash rate is now moving forward to the next having event. So I guess, can you provide any other color insights here as to why this metric is so important in regards to Bitcoin? Sure, and thanks Marcel. I'll do my best. You did a great job explaining yourself, though. Obviously, one of Satoshi's genius inventions was this difficulty adjustment. It's every 2,060 blocks, but again, I'm worried about my knowledge here now that I'm live. I know it's 32 weeks, but I'm pretty sure it's 2,060 blocks, which roughly translate to every two weeks. This number is adjusted, and with that, miners know roughly how hard that computational puzzle will be to solve every 10 minutes. And so usually what you get is, if the miners are solving blocks too quickly, then the blocks will be made too fast. So it might be one block is made every 7 minutes or 8 minutes or 9 minutes. It tends to be 10 minutes on average over time, but there could be a two-week period in which blocks are sold every 7 or 8 minutes. And sometimes, for example, when blocks go offline, the blocks will take longer to create during that two-week period. And so as a result of that two-week period, the average block time might be, I don't know, 12 or 13 minutes, but it always comes back to 10 minutes because it resets every two weeks. Now, I'm now able to answer your question because I've explained that first bit. Because there's more and more miners coming online, that means the hash power is increasing, which means that for the next two weeks, these blocks could be sold in, say, 7, 8 or 9 minutes rather than the average 10, which has led some crypto commentators and some Bitcoin engagement people on Twitter to suggest that as a result of this, the halving will be brought forward to, say, 2023, rather than 2024. But you just need to read the white paper one more time to realize that Satoshi had planned for this eventuality and knows that miners coming on and offline is going to be part and parcel of securing this cryptocurrency, this decentralized cryptocurrency. And yeah, he planned for it. With regards to the security of the network, we should be celebrating this. And this is finally a burst of good news at a time of darkness and despair because more and more miners securing the network means that the network is less susceptible to a 51% attack in which one person could theoretically take control of the network. It's obviously every 10 minutes, that likelihood becomes less and less probable. But it's still important to realize that, okay, miners still believe in this technology. They still reckon they can get a block reward every 10 minutes. And they're willing to buy new machines. They're willing to find new facilities. They're willing to find new untapped sources of energy to secure this protocol. And as a result, get those Bitcoin that are rewarded every 10 minutes on average. Wow, it's hard to explain Bitcoin sometimes, isn't it? It's a dead subject, man. So, Square of the OG, another question. Thanks for trying it in with all your thoughts and questions. Doesn't higher hash rate lower rewards which leads to a pump in price? So quick answer to this one. Joe or Marcel, I'll let you jump in the answers and then we got to touch the fifth point to be watching out for Bitcoin this week. Sure. The reward per 10 minutes is 6.25 Bitcoin. And that is hard coded into the Bitcoin white paper or the network. So every 10 minutes, my node will make sure that no miner has to make any funny business. So the reward issuance or the supply issuance rate is guaranteed by the network. There was a meme for a time that said price follows hash rate. So whenever the hash rate pumps up, then the price might follow. But I think we've seen that that correlation is not complete given that we are now in a bear market and we've got the highest hash rates ever in all time high. So I like the thinking of Square of the OG. It's nice. But unfortunately, the issuance rate is just, it is what it is. In two years time, it'll be 3 Bitcoin per 10 minutes and then it'll be 1.5 and so on and so forth. There's no manipulating the supply as you might be able to do with other currencies, for example. Very good. All right. In the last point that we're going to touch here on Bitcoin and what to watch out, crypto fear and greed index has been back in extreme fear as of September 12th. And this is something that has been a constant steady here. I think in the last six months, everyone's in fear. Oh my gosh, this guy is falling. But extreme fear is where the index has spent much of his time in 2022, including its longest ever consecutive cent lasting over two months. So that was our quick hit on the five things you need to be on to look out for this week for Bitcoin. The other headline I want to touch on here is really quickly guys. This headline was about Terra. They have a governance that got passed this week. We talked about a little bit earlier and it saw a 300% rise in September, folks. Luna's back, back from the grave. So is Luna rising again? People want to know at home here. And well, what happened? Well, first, Luna Classic Passive Governance will add 1.2% tax on all of its on-chains transactions on the day. In other words, proposals will permanently remove 1.2% of LU&C supply from each on-chain transaction as CoinSellerF covered. Is this a game changer? Should we be watching Luna? Joe, jump in here with a quick answer and then I'm going to pivot over to Marcel next. Yeah, I'm going all in. That's it. Everything's going to Luna. I think this time I trust him. You know, I think this is, I think this Luna 3, 4, what Luna we on now, they must have got it right. You know, I'm definitely going to trust them now. No, I mean, I mean, trade is going to trade. You know, it's a liquid, people are looking for liquidity. They're looking for volatility. Where else to go than the next version of one of the craziest trades of 2022? You know, I think we'll see repeats of this. It's reminiscent of when I'm squid game token. Do you remember that one from last year? Like an absolute rug in October, November time. I had friends asking me like three days after it went to zero saying I'm going in again. I was like, but you know, it's a rug pool. What are you doing? And then it pumped, you know, 400% over three days. And you're like, oh gosh. So yeah, be careful out there, guys. That's all I can say. Exactly. Marcel, are you getting into Luna? Are you still clear from this token here? Well, as Joe said, it's really hard to track what's happening to those, it became a meme coin. There's no development. There's no DeFi backing it. Back on the days, there was something. There were investors, there were companies, there were developers. Now it's just a meme coin trying to save itself from doom. But it's not going to work for sure. Yeah, I think we're all on the same page. They're steer clear. Nothing special. People don't care about the deflation like we talked about earlier. All right, next and final last headline. Big news across the NFT space this week, folks. Starbucks making a big announcement. Starbucks announced new NFT experience for coffee members. We're starting to see this a lot in the NFT space. Big companies getting in the game. And one of the big takeaways that I saw from this was that they obviously launched on Matic Polygon. So you see a lot of projects. Disney is also going to be using Matic to develop their metaverse in NFTs. So what is all this hype about? Well, Starbucks is going to be launching Starbucks Odyssey, which is a collectible digital stamp for its ownership verified on the blockchain, which will include a point value based on its rarity. So as more stamps are collected, members points will increase, unlocking access to unique experiences. So I guess it includes virtual drinks, trips to their head brewing in Costa Rica, things like that. Is this going to be a growing trend, in your opinion, where big name companies are getting into NFT metaverse space by launching these NFTs? Marcel, I'll start with you here. Well, I think we've seen that with the other second life, the game, the PC game, which was the first version of a metaverse like 10 or 15 years ago. And every company in the world wanted to be in there, either to market or just to present itself as a tech company. And it's the same trend repeating all over again. That's not saying that the metaverse will fail, but you've got to understand that those companies investing up, even if it's a hundred million dollars for Disney or for Adidas or for whatever, for them, it's just a marketing expense. So even for them, even if the metaverse experience doesn't lay out, it's a nothing burger. But for us, for the investors, you've got to really think it through ahead of, oh, okay, so I'm going to put 50% of my position on this NFT or this central land or this token. Just think about it for a second before doing that suicide move. Very good. And Joe, what is your take in big takeaways from the Starbucks launching their NFTs? Yeah, it's funny, right? It looks or reads like an article headline from 2021. I thought that bandwagon had been and gone. Starbucks desperately trying to be relevant. You can imagine them all going into their office into their meeting room with their big venti lattes or whatever. And we're like, right, guys, what can we do to sell some coffees this week? Should we do something in the metaverse? Should we do like an NFT token thing? And before you know it, Starbucks is suddenly on everyone's radar again and people are like, oh my God, Starbucks is going into the metaverse. This is very cynical of me, of course. But you've got to wonder, how serious are they about these projects? Do they really think that they're going to be buying up real estate in the metaverse to put Starbucks at the best corners are going to be like Starbucks? Are you going to get your Starbucks in the metaverse as well? Or do you really think that people are going to be trading these Starbucks NFTs in the next couple of six months to a year? I think it's a quirky news story that might have been interesting as part of the last bull cycle, but the fact that they're doing it now, I'm like, why? What's going on here? So yeah, I think it could be a bit of a hype story and not much more to it. Exactly. And I mean, you saw it make headlines this week. And I think from Starbucks' perspective too, they're looking at how can we capture the next generation of coffee drinkers? Well, let's target a younger demographic who's involved with crypto, the younger demographic. Same thing that tobacco companies did with their fruity flavors of tobacco. I think it is an angle for them to reach a much younger demographic and to win the heart, souls, and minds of those young folks so that they're aware of the brand. It's a brand awareness stunt. Whether this membership actually is fruitful for the end user, we're going to find out. We see it, you know, we hear about airlines, for example, Etihad and Delta Airlines working on membership programs for NFTs. Those are yet to be launched. But these membership style NFTs, I think are going to become a growing trend, especially with a lot of the traditional companies in the space. So that was our headlines for this week. I know we are going deep today on a lot of these headlines. But next, I want to move into... We have a crypto tip for you guys this week. So I want to jump into this next. So let's go ahead, Danila, and jump into some crypto tips. All right, trade. Do not gamble, folks. One thing that is common between trading, gambling is the uncertainty of the outcome. In both the playing fields, one makes a bet and waits for an outcome. However, what separates a trader from a gambler is risk management. What this means is buying digital currencies without assessing the risk is equivalent to gambling. With crypto being an epitome of volatility, then certainly increases manifold than any stable security. Thus, it is even more important for crypto traders to have a robust risk management plan in place. It seems sensible for a trader to use stop-loss orders and just risk an amount he or she is comfortable with losing on a trade. That was your crypto tip for this week. Make sure you have a plan and make sure you are willing to risk what you can afford. Right? Guys, we have guys and gals and people across the globe. We have a special video today to show. I know Joe was the star of this one where he got to actually use the Lightning Network. So I want our audience to watch this and then we're going to get the first person take from the man himself here on this video. So let's go ahead and run through this. I want to do a little test using the power of the Lightning Network. Would you be able to charge me for a beer and then leave the QR code on the screen? I'll take a picture, I'll send it to Twitter and hopefully some lovely person around the world will buy my beer with Bitcoin. Why not? Yeah. Yeah? That's doable. You can give me a cheap beer though because it's a bear market. Two pounds of beer? Two pounds? Yeah. Deal. Yeah? Deal. I'll give you a nice tip later, but only in Bitcoin. Great. Two pounds? Yeah. Here we go, two pounds of beer. Oh wow, that was quick. I was going to explain it, but it was too fast. So the Lightning Code is up on here. I'm going to take a picture. This is a QR code that in theory anyone in the world can scan. Bang. Okay, use photo and pop this up on the interwebs. Tweet was sent. Anyone fancy buying me another beer with Bitcoin? Hashtag beer market. A whole lot of that. I've got a timer on now. Yeah. Please. Oh no. What do you think Vlad? Is it going to work? I don't know. 26. It's paid! It's paid! 26. Yes! All night, all night. All night. You want another one? Yeah, of course it's okay. The power of the Lightning Network. All right. That was awesome. Got to actually see the Lightning Network in action and had a person pay for your beer via Twitter. All right. Walk us through this. How did this come about? What was your experience actually using the Lightning Network? And then how did you get somebody on Twitter to pay for your beer? I know, right? That's the most marvelous thing about it all. Like a free beer. Well, yeah. I've just realized in interacting with people, working with people, you know, just being around Bitcoin in the Lightning Network, that a lot of people understand what Bitcoin is and understand the importance of this store of value narrative. You know, when you talk to people about Bitcoin, they're like a Gold 2.0. It's something you just hodl. You know, the hodl meme is really strong and people forget that it's a currency that you can use and you can buy things with. And with the Lightning Network as well, which is a layer 2 technology which is built on top of Bitcoin, it's basically the dream of Satoshi's peer-to-peer network that has no third party or intermediaries to make your transaction. So I've been trying to find creative ways of demonstrating that in the wild, you know, IRL, as they say. So yeah, while I was in London at the weekend, I found a bar that accepted Bitcoin and they didn't just accept Bitcoin base chain, they also accepted Bitcoin on the Lightning Network, which is really, really easy to do, by the way. Most wallet apps nowadays have a Bitcoin base chain QR code and a Bitcoin Lightning Network QR code whenever you open up the Wallet app. And so yeah, I went in there and his name is Vlad and he owns a coffee shop called Capuchin, which is in Richmond in Southwest London. I think it's polite to show him as he did allow me to do this test in his coffee shop. And so yeah, as the video demonstrates, I took a picture of the receipt for the QR code, which I could have scanned there and then or I can take a picture of, send it to Twitter and see if someone will buy me a beer. And the guy that bought the beer for me, and this is actually coming out soon in a coin telegraph video, so don't forget to subscribe to find out more later. But basically, I won't reveal too much, but I will say that he was sat in Spain at the time. So a guy in Spain bought me a beer in London in about two seconds flat, because he literally just saw it at the top of my Twitter feed, scanned the QR code and sent the money over the Lightning Network, and that confirmed on the payment term in London. And the reason why he did it was to demonstrate something to his London that I'll leave out of today's video, but I will explain in a later video another time. And I've forgotten the third part to your question, Benton. Was it, how does it work? What was it? How, well like, what was your experience, like so the experience of using Lightning Network was like super easy. The guy found your QR code just on Twitter feed. Was it somebody you knew, or was it just like a random crypto Twitter person? So yeah, it's funny because it's not the... I've done this a few times now to varying degrees of success. Actually, no, all 100% success rate, but I've done it so many times that people are like, oh, you're clearly doing this to like scan or to lie about the fact that the Lightning Network works. And so I was in Gibraltar recently doing some reporting for a Cointelegraph piece about how some major chains in Europe, one's called Costa Coffee, which if you've ever been to the UK, you'll have seen a Costa Coffee, Clinton cards, Hotel Chocolat, a few other chains. They all accept Bitcoin over the Lightning Network in this place called Gibraltar, which is a small overseas territory in Southern Spain, but it's basically British. Anyway, I did a few more of these videos there to demonstrate the fact that I wasn't lying about it. People do genuinely just randomly like to pay for stuff on the internet by scanning these QR codes. So I've made it into something of a habit now. Whenever I have a purchase of two or three pounds, I'll just upload the QR codes to Twitter. And people, for some reason, they don't mind buying me stuff. Go ahead, Marcel, sorry. Good. I have a technical question. Let's assume I have 0.10 Bitcoins at my wallet, which is Lightning Network K4. Does it need to convert it before to standard Bitcoin on-chain Bitcoins to Lightning? And how does the wallet convert it? Is there associated cost? How long does it take to happen? Ah, great question. Yeah, so Lightning is Layer 2. So in order for your Bitcoin to get onto that Layer 2, then either you receive it straight away into like a Layer 2 wallet, or you send it from Layer 1 to Layer 2. The way that the Lightning Network works is imagine you walk into a bar and you open up a bar tab with the bartender. You've basically gone from your wallet to a bar tab. And you've basically said, we're going to trust that we're going to transact with each other. I'm going to rack up a bill here of six, seven coffees or beers or whatever it might be. And then we're going to settle at the end of the day. And then it goes back into your pocket and that's back into base chain. So for example, today, I mean, do you want to send me some, I can send you some Sats right now over the video if you'd like, or we could do it live during the video. Like I could put up a QR code of like a thousand Sats, which is like 0.1 cents or something and someone could scan it and they could pay it and you could see it in action. Like, do you have a Lightning-enabled wallet? But your wallet needs to convert it first. Oh, no, that would stay. Yeah, that's yes. There's two things though. So firstly, if you have Bitcoin on base chain, for example, like are you in a trust wallet or a blue wallet or what app are you on there? Are we doing this? I have Moon Wallet. Moon Wallet. Moon Wallet has both lightning and, yeah, it has Bitcoin and it has. There's oxen wallets here today, folks. Why? So tap the Lightning tab at the top. Yeah, cool. Yeah, so I can scan that and I can send you money. Do you want me to show you that? Yeah, do it. Go for it, guys. In the meantime, while you guys are doing this, we have a question from Sky. They say, hi, I'm new to this. Do I buy ETH2 or regular ETH? And is it too late to buy it? If not, which one should I buy as per ETH? So if you guys can multitask, are you waiting to post-merge? I'll send you 690 cents. There's no ETH2.0. It doesn't exist. It's the same coin that you have right now. It's going to be automatically converted, whether it's sitting on an exchange or your wallet. You don't have to do anything to convert to ETH2.0. So don't worry about that. I'm just like that. Did it get for them? Okay, so did you receive the stats, Marcel? Marcel, you were paid 690 cents. Is that it? Yep. Wow. Folks, it's so easy. The marketing network happened right here live on the show. This is the first for a market poor, isn't it? You also heard Marcel. There is no ETH2 or regular ETH yet. So if you're interested in getting ETH, it's going to be dependent upon the exchange. You hold it on your wallet, you hold it on the exchange. And then you will be gifted the new ETH. Let's see here. Yeah, and remember that not every exchange is going to grant the proof-of-work coin right away. And most of them want the list for trading the proof-of-work coins. So if you want to make sure that you're going to be able to sell these four coins, make sure to select either a wallet that is going to be a cable of handling the proof-of-work chain or pick an exchange that already said, we're going to support the proof-of-work, you're going to be able to sell your fork tokens over here. So make sure to understand that. Very good. All right. That's why we got your back, folks. You got questions about the merge? Marcel and Joe got you. All right. I know we got some big highlights to talk about markets, bro. This week we got three coins that we're watching, two newsquakes and one vortex score. So let's go ahead and jump into some markets, bro, tokens to keep on your radar. First token that we watched this week was audio. And what happened? Well, newsquake alert happened, and those are automated alerts that instantly notified users when market moving events happen. So newsquakes continue to deliver those solid gains on the gains train, all aboard. For instance, on September 6th, the newsquake shared Coinbase's announcement that it would list audio and ocean. So audio, we saw have a nice solid 11% gain. The newsquake alert went out, and audio's price was at around $0.26. Price soon then climbed to $0.29 with that 11.5% rise. That is awesome. The next newsquake alert that you saw there in the little snippet is ocean. And ocean was trading at $0.16 when the news of the listing dropped not long thereafter. The news, the price rose $0.18 an increase of 15%. So when you see those listings, Coinbase, that is a market moving event. And that's why you have those newsquake alerts turned on your phone on the MarketsPro app. All right, the next coin that we watched this week was dig. And what happened? Well, the vortex score lit up this week. Coin's vortex score is comparison between its current market and social conditions of those in the past. Scores of 80 or above are considered confidently, but it was conversely a low vortex score, below 30 indicates historically bearish. This one was 50. So frequent top performer dig, I think it was like the third time we've covered dig because of how well it's been performing on vortex scores and newsquakes. It saw some major price movements fall strong vortex scores. Green scores began to light up on 7th. When the asset was trading at $4,270, a few days, that price rose to $484,898. Well, tongue twister there. It's a 15% gain. And folks, that was our vortex score on MarketsPro segment for the week. And I also want to let folks watching know at home, we're giving away $50 today to the Cointelegraph Store. Thank you all for tuning in to the MarketsPro segment. So if you haven't dropped your Twitter handle here in chat, go ahead and do so now. We're giving away $50 to the Cointelegraph Store. We got all the crypto swag, all the t-shirts, all the hats that you could ask for. And like and subscribe. Cointelegraph, we're always putting out all the best crypto content in the crypto space. So make sure you like and subscribe to YouTube channel. We got sats over here. Joe's got sats for this. All right. I want some closing thoughts. I want some closing thoughts today. And then we're going to pick for it the $50 giveaway. Why don't we kick things off here with Marcel? Get some closing thoughts. What kind of life advice, crypto advice, any kind of advice you want to give out to the audience here today? Okay, Ben. So my advice is if you think that a CPI moving from 8.1% to 8.6% or 9.1% should be deciding if Ethereum is worth $1.6,000 or $2,000, or if Bitcoin is worth $20,000 or $22,000, you're a lunatic. This shouldn't be existed. Your buying assets that have been made, have been designed to withstand 20 years, 50 years, especially Bitcoin, which hasn't changed its issuing mechanism since inception. But okay, even if you like Ethereum, if you like changing things as they go, but don't change your opinion or don't sell your stake just because of a different CPI print. Just keep on doing. If you believe on the asset, keep on buying and forget about what's happening in the world. Great advice. And not a literal lunatic that we talked about earlier in the show, but actually not there, let's say. All right, Joe, any closing thoughts for today or any advice that you'd like to share with our audience? Fire up after Marcel's speech there. Just makes me want to buy some more Bitcoin. Yeah, I mean, we're in dark times, but there's definitely a reason to be hopeful. Don't forget that the reason why Satoshi Nakamoto built Bitcoin was a direct response to the financial crisis in 2008. It was the Genesis Block was printed or minted even on January 3rd, 2009, and the headline to the Times newspaper back then was Chancellor on the Brink of Second Bailout of the Banks. This is the time where Bitcoin will either succeed and we'll finally have global money. This is the point where it will win or it goes to zero and all our careers are worthless. So I know what I want to happen here and I'm hopeful and I think we've picked the right horse, let's say, but stay humble, stack Sat's, spend Sat's, importantly as well, because we're never going to get worldwide adoption without spending some Sat's and creating some circular economies. And yeah, look after your health and your wealth. It's not very nice out there at the moment, so be kind to people and be grateful for what you got to. So that went a bit philosophical at the end there, didn't it? There we go. We went deep. We go deep here on the market board. So thank you guys for sharing your thoughts. And like I always say, dollar-cost average down, dollar-cost average on the way up. I want to pick our winner, though, for the $50 Cointelegraph Store giveaway here. It looks like Ron again was in the chat today, dropped his Twitter handle in there. Ron underscored again, 9205. You are our $50 Cointelegraph Store swag winner, winner winner chicken dinner. All right, folks, we appreciate everybody for tuning in for Around the Globe. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Cointelegraph here on YouTube. We'll see you next Tuesday at 12 p.m. Eastern. Until next time, thanks, folks. Cheers, guys.