 Well, Digital Asset News, my name is Rob, and today just like a thumbnail and title suggests, we just saw that the PPI numbers came in and inflation is actually down. So why are the markets tumbling? So we're gonna take a look at that right now. So let's just jump right in. So first things first, this just came out about an hour ago or so. PPI numbers, the producer price index came in and it was 0.5% lower than expected. And this compared to the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.1% decrease. And it decreased by half a point. So congratulations, the Fed's doing its job, inflation is going down, everybody should be happy. Now again, the PPI was the producer price index, what the producers have to pay for their specific goods and services and things like that. That is the precursor to the consumer price index of what they have to pay are actually us. So a sharp drop in energy prices helped bring the headline inflation ring down for the month. PPI's final demand plunged 7.9%. Retail sales fell 1.1%, which is slightly more than the 1% forecast. So that's pretty good. And actually, if we take a look at friend of the show, Trueflation, there's a link in the description for the website, it's 100% free, you can check this out. What I like about Trueflation is it's real-time data. It pulls in real-world data using an Oracle called Chainlink, which is a cryptocurrency or digital asset. And it pulls this great amount of information, food and non-alcohol beverages, housing, transportation, utilities, health and so on and so forth. And when the Fed was telling us that inflation was only 9% or whatever they said, it was, it was transitory, we could see what Trueflation was not accurate. And we can just see now, because it's such real-time data, that yeah, inflation is going down quite precipitously and looking pretty good here in the States. Now, unfortunately for our friends across the pond, the UK, it's not looking too good, especially with, of course, utilities, but hopefully things rectify themselves. So the PPI is looking good. This is on top of, we just saw, we can go to the CPI, January 12th came out and said, hey, look, went down to 6.5%. That's down from 7.1% in November. Consumer saw deflation during the monthly largely due to plummeting gas prices. And this is from Mark Zandy, Chief Economist at Moody's. He goes, I don't think people will be talking about inflation this time next year, which is pretty optimistic, but that's what I want to hear. So inflation is going down, looks like the Fed's doing its job. So the market should be happy, right? Well, now, S&P 500 is at 1.05%. NASDAQ is down 0.84%. And of course, the crypto markets are also down because I think there's a little bit more correlation than what people tend to believe. I think there's a lot more institutional investors and people from Wall Street gambling over here, but that's just my personal opinion. So that's what we got. So why is this happening? Well, it kind of goes like this. People who are into stocks and Wall Street and institutions or whoever you are, you're investing into the market, rather that traditional market, and you're probably dabbling into the crypto. In traditional markets, there's this thing called earnings. And earnings reports come out and what they want to see is how strong different companies are. And as we can see, things like this will spook the market. As Microsoft, which just came out today, is laying off 10,000 employees. Microsoft's, pretty big company. And if they're not doing well, nobody's doing well. Also Facebook, they just had some massive layoffs themselves, Twitter had massive layoffs. And other companies throughout the world, we'll see in also the United States, are laying off a ton of employees. And that is not good because that gives everybody the jitters, especially on Wall Street. And of course, other places. Now you have to understand, when we see these types of layoffs, then that doesn't bode well for the stock market. Yes, the Fed did its job. Yes, inflation's going down. Unfortunately, it's affecting everything. And it'll be a bumpy ride for quite some time. On top of this, you also have to take a look at some other macro factors. Housing. So this was a report from a venture consulting. And it says KB Homes, a large home builder reported a 68% cancellation rate. What does that mean? That means when you go out there and you're looking for a house, you go, I wanna put a contract on this, this house is mine. Let me put some down payment on that. You go through the whole process and then when it's time to actually pony up, you're like, you know what, I'm not gonna do it. There was a 68% cancellation rate. That is pretty high. How high is that? Well, it says right here. This cancellation rate of 68% is larger than the 2008 crash. Back then builders like DR Horton picked at a 50% cancellation rate. And we already blew past that in late 2022. So looking at housing, kind of take a look at what's going on with the macro environment, not so great. And on top of that, don't forget about the debt. So the US debt ceiling nears and a friend of the show, Janet Yellen, I believe watches, warned the federal government would reach its statutory debt limits of 31.4 trillion on January 19th. Today is the 18th, 31.4 trillion. And states, we're talking about the USA, which is the world's largest economy with the deepest financial markets and controls the global reserve currency. And we have almost $32 trillion in debt. Yellen said she's gonna implement extraordinary measures to reach an agreement before a shutdown of the government is necessary. This includes a limit to the new debt that can be issued, meaning let's just raise the ceiling, which will reduce the supply US treasuries, push up the prices and lower the bond yields. That's actually good because lower yields imply an easier monetary environment, which is good for risk assets, such as crypto, Bitcoin and digital assets. And just to make that a visualization, here's a US debt clock. I'll also link that in the description, you can check it out. But that 31.4, we already hit it, baby. So today is the 18th, we're just a little bit early. So USA, here we go. And that's of course, taking a look at the different national debt through China, Japan, Germany, UK and India. And of course the public debt to GDP ratio. Look at that, 94% USA, not as bad as Japan, 296%. So that's what we have as far as the macro event. What does this mean? Well, look, I know it's a little bit scary to think about, but in the last part that we talked about, there's actually a little wiggle room for some risk on assets, such as digital assets. And let's get into that. So yesterday, actually the last two days or so, we've been talking about avalanche. And before we go on, let me just make something 100% crystal clear. People ask me, Rob, why are you talking about avalanche so much you never talk about it? Well, there's two reasons. First of all, I own it and I'm super biased. I usually only talk about the things that I own or I'm going to get ready to buy, that is for sure. So if you're a coin, I don't know what it is, tomato coin or something, went into a deal with Elon Musk and Tesla, I'd probably be talking about tomato coin all day long. So there is no illusions. I own avalanche and I am super biased. All right. So this article that we talked about a couple of days ago, well, first we talked about the Amazon partnership, which is pretty cool. Then we also talked about the Shopify partnership with the NFTs. I'll link those videos in the description. You can check those out. And then there was a comment from avant-garde Hanja nailed it. And he said, Rob, don't forget over the last two months that avalanche also had a partnership with Alibaba, the third largest cloud provider. Alibaba is kind of like the Amazon of the Asian world and especially in China. He says, KRKK, financial giant, 480 billion assets on his balance sheet. I couldn't find them, so sure. Then he talked about Amazon Plus, which we talked about. And then another one called Tog EV car manufacturer. I think that they're out of Turkey and they're really not a big player that I can see so far right now. But this one was interesting. I didn't know about, first of all, I didn't know about the Alibaba one, but the GRI, which is the Japanese gaming business. And of course, this is the avalanche and Alibaba partnership. You can check that out. But GRI, which I never heard of before because I'm in America, don't really get to much exposure to that. GRI is not a small time player. Net sales of 74 or 75 billion, operating income of almost 12 billion, 12 billion. Net sales of 20 billion, 3.8 billion, this is in yen, not in dollars. And then of course, we take a look. So not a small time player, right? We're gonna say that's doing pretty good. And when I took a look at this, this happened two months ago. I don't think anybody talked about it because no one really cared about it. I guess I didn't, that's for sure. But things just kind of snowball. And I wanna make something also crystal clear. Pay attention to those crypto projects that are building in the bear because they will crush it in the bull. So taking a look at this, what are they doing? So BLRD, a subsidiary of the Japanese gaming house and internet media company GRI and Ava Labs, Avalanche, former strategic partnership aimed at accelerating BLRD's growth and blockchain as it plans to launch its first web three game in 2023. BLRD's multi-decade history of gaming leadership and clearly this is in the first ever mobile social game, Fishing Star. And they're highlights of, they have 30 million active monthly users across its game. Let me say that one more time. 30 million across its games. Web three is gonna be the next big thing. Blockchain gaming, it's a pretty good idea. They work with top gaming companies, Square Onix, Sega, Konami, Bandai. And they got millions of downloads, popular IP and mobile gaming, such as One Punch Man, I don't know what that is, but okay. Avalabs will help spur BLRD's growth in the blockchain gaming, frying technical, marketing, business and ecosystem support. So again, this is looking pretty promising for Avalanche. However, be aware that we took a look at the tokenomics yesterday, not the best. Just gonna let you, just gonna put it out there. So don't go out there and be like, oh, I'm just gonna dump a bunch of, buy a bunch of Avalanche because this guy on YouTube talked about it. It's a big mistake. So look, not your dad, I can tell you what you do. This is not financial advice. Watch all the videos because like I said, some of those things were Avalanche, not the greatest. So let me know what you think about that in the comments section. And then also, I just wanted to briefly touch this. I think this is how it should be done. Coinbase asks Japan customers to withdraw holdings as it halts operations. So instead of them just kind of like rug pulling everybody and going, hey, you can't pull your funds out, FTX. Voyager. Celsius. They're like, hey, we're a legit company. You need to take your funds out. So this is what's going on. Coinbase asks customers in Japan to withdraw crypto and fiat holdings by February 16th, as it halts operation to conduct a complete review of its business in the country. Meaning we're not granting much traction here. We're probably gonna pull out. After February 16th, you can, the holdings will go to Japanese yen and you can get it through a legal affairs bureau, blah, blah, blah. So I just thought it was interesting about how, that's how it should be done. We're gonna shut down, take your funds out. We don't wanna screw you guys, move forward. And lastly, lastly, as a reminder, we're coming up to the end of the month for the sweat coin challenge. So again, sweat coin, download the app, it's free. Tokens are free. And the people that have the most steps are gonna win some pretty cool prizes, right? A ledger, a token metrics, coin ledger. And also coin ledger, that thing that's sticking above my head. The tax season is coming up. You know, you can sign up for this thing for free and you can just do a cost analysis. Now, when you generate a port, it costs money. But this is what I use twice in two years in a row for all my crypto taxes. It tells me all the things that I did, API integration to all the different, even DeFi, your MetaMask wallet, all the centralized crap exchanges that are out there. It'll do that, give you your, this is how much your cost basis is, this is how much you're gonna cost or the paying taxes, ship every CPA is done. Anyhow, the winner is gonna get a coin ledger or the winner for first place. But we got winners for second place, third, fourth, fifth, all the way to number 30. And if you wanna see how you're doing, first of all, you wanna sign up, use my link, of course, for this part here, links in the description. But if you wanna sign up, sign up and use your username, just click here, out of the competition. And if you wanna see who's winning, let's just click here. And this is a little concerning at first. See these number of steps, 795,000 for hard core analysis. I did the math, it was like 50,000 steps a day, right? That's a lot of steps. That's like 2,000 steps are roughly a mile. This person is walking 25 miles a day. And then the next one is Jersey Boy down here. And you can take a look at all this. So I asked a quick question. I was like, hey, is this right? Because if you're walking 25 miles a day, that's a lot. And apparently so. So someone said, yeah, I walked nearly 20 miles a day as a waiter. And I was like, no kidding. And then DBLGog says, I'm a bartender. I walked almost 17 miles this past Saturday and it was a slow night. I'm like, man, I gotta get a job as a bartender. And then I'm gonna link this one as well. You can look through it. But a lot of people were like, yeah, I've done that before. I've done these things. But some people were like, that'll never happen. So I reached out to hardcore analysis. I'm like, my man, how are you doing that? And he got back to me and said this. He said, look, I work for Health Canada. So it probably doesn't work that hard. Just kidding. I'm just kidding, Canadians. I have a treadmill desk at home. I work from home. I walk about 30 to 60 minutes an hour at 3.5 to four miles per hour. If you walk for eight hours a day, okay, that makes sense actually. I usually hit around 30 to 40,000 tests before the end of the work day. And I've been walking extra to try to win the competition. Let me know if you need more details. And I was like, yeah, that's true. Because every time I go walk, my dog, it's about 8,000, 10,000 steps. And that's just in like an hour. So we have a pretty good pace. And then I was just thinking to myself, man, maybe I should get one of these desks that you, you know, I have a desk that sprays us up. Maybe I could lose some more weight, get in shape, all the good stuff. Anyhow, that's it for today. I have to drone on, but that's it for today. So look, if you like the content, give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing. I've been talking about, it's very time-sensitive, but that's it for today's video. So thank you for stopping by, and I do appreciate you. And I'll see you on the next one.