Well, cryptos are crashing – again.
It’s never clear whether these violent selloffs are worth flagging because the definition of “violent” for this space is entirely different than the definition of “violent” for actual, real asset classes, but in light of recent events, it’s probably worth flagging Monday’s price action.
Here, in a nutshell, is what’s going on:
Obviously something has gone awry this morning. One thing worth noting is that today, Nordea (the largest Nordic bank) apparently sent a memo to employees to let them know they will not be allowed to trade in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This looks some semblance of serious at least for the people who will be subject to the ban. Here’s Bloomberg:
Nordea said the updated policy “includes transitional provisions for staff with existing holdings and allows for certain exceptions,” according to an email sent to Bloomberg. Employees who already own bitcoin are “permitted to keep existing holdings.” The bank initially started by imposing a ban on some bankers in its wholesale unit.
To be sure, this isn’t wholly surprising. After all, Casper von Koskull, the president and CEO of Nordea, called Bitcoin an “absurd joke” last month. Specifically, he said this:
If you somehow allow that to live without controls, then, given the billions we spend on financial regulation as a financial system, I mean, I think it’s actually a joke that you then just let something like bitcoin live. I don’t get it, it’s absurd.
Yes, it is “absurd” and while the crypto crowd wasn’t enamored with ol’ Casper’s assessment, Monday morning’s news out of Nordea is a reminder that it doesn’t really matter what the crypto crowd thinks because at the end of the day, a lot of the people who are skeptical have the power to unilaterally make decisions that could potentially rattle sentiment.
In any event, there’s probably more going on than that and it looks like the dip buyers are already stepping in, but if you pan out on the chart to last weekend, what you’ll note is that this morning’s slide puts us back to where we were when the space started to rebound from the most recent crash:
So you know, BTFD – I guess.
