Happy Monday

Good morning everyone on this sunny Monday morning. It's a new week again and time for the Market Musings. Only this week I didn't want to talk about the market, although there is indeed a connection with the market and the new European legislation.

While everyone was focused on the attack in Moscow, the EU has again adopted a proposal for new legislation. This should come into effect in 3 years, but there is a good chance that it will be implemented much sooner. Why do I want to discuss that now? For the simple reason that it will affect almost everyone in Europe.

Combat Money Laundering

The European Union has adopted laws to combat money laundering, this was already the case but has now been further expanded. And this expansion means that the new regulations will ban all anonymous crypto payments and cash transactions above certain limits. To get specific, they prohibit cash payments over $10,000 or anonymous cash transactions over $3,000. The ban also targets self-custody wallets on mobile, desktop, or browser applications. That's right, this ban also affects MetaMask and Trust Wallet, for example.

There are exceptions, payments between people (peer-to-peer) and self-custody wallets without KYC (Know Your Customer) are not prohibited, but payments to merchants may become more difficult. In any case, it will be clear to the attentive reader that this new legislation will certainly affect ordinary citizens in crypto. I would almost think, "Gone are the glory days of crypto".

Sudden Bitcoin Drop Last Friday

This legislation has a link with the crypto market. Just minutes after it became clear that the law had been passed, Bitcoin dropped by about 2%. Fortunately, Bitcoin recovered afterwards, but it is clear that the news of the European law came as a shock.

Wait! There Is More

This is not the only negative news from Europe unfortunately, the European Central Bank has once again issued a warning. According to them, the value of Bitcoin is ZERO. And they even consider the fact that the SEC has approved the ETFs as an additional risk. This could give private investors the idea that it is safe to invest in Bitcoin. Now imagine. That would be something, wouldn't it? Private investors who think it is safe to invest in Bitcoin.

They have been kind enough to explain how they came up with their value idea. According to the European Central Bank, Bitcoins are hardly used to pay, apart from on the darknet. They are also not suitable as an investment because they do not generate income such as interest or dividends, and they cannot be used to produce anything, on the contrary, they cost a lot of energy to mine. Today, mining Bitcoin requires as much energy as consuming a country the size of Australia or Greece.

Finally, the European Central Bank gives the reason that you cannot wear Bitcoins like, for example, gold jewelry, and they are also not nice to look at, as is the case with art, for example. So there's just no value to put on it.

We're All Idiots Who Have No Clue

So, folks, we are all being seen by the European Central Bank as idiots who are not financially literate. In their opinion, we simply have no idea of what is valuable. So that you know!

In the meantime, the SEC is still assessing applications for the Ethereum ETFs, and amid this assessment, it is still unclear whether Ethereum is considered a security. I don't know how it seems to you, but I have to admit that after reading all this kind of news I had to scratch my head and think about it a little more deeply.

Unfortunately, that deeper thinking will have to wait a while, my focus this week is mainly on Myla especially now that it seems that we have come very close to saying goodbye to her. In February we had to let Lana go. We hoped to have more time with Myla, but as it looked last week, we were not given that time. Yesterday she seemed to bounce back from the slump she was in... so this week I'm focused on seeing if this is a short rebound or if her recovery continues. In the latter case, we will get a little more time, and we hope for that.

It's time for me to wrap this post up, I hope you all have a great week!