Your Weekend Reading: The Week Cryptocurrency Chaos Struck
Get caught up.
Monitors display Coinbase and Bitcoin signage during the company’s initial public offering at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York last year.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
It’s been a tumultuous year for investors so far, but for those with a stake in crypto, winter may already be here. A massive sell-off driven by the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin wiped $270 billion of wealth from the market in days. Policymakers are reupping their calls for regulation while strategists say the digital chaos is denting sentiment across assets. “A failure of TerraUSD should cause you more worry about your dollars, ETFs and the traditional financial system than about crypto,” Aaron Brown writes in Bloomberg Opinion.
Elon Musk’s Twitter soap opera took yet another self-inflicted turn as the Tesla co-founder claimed his $44 billion offer was “on hold” then followed up by saying he’s “still committed” to the deal. Is this Elon being Elon, or is the richest person on Earth getting the jitters? If you asked Bloomberg Opinion’s Timothy O’Brien, he would say it’s probably “all about the money.”
Almost 11 weeks into Russia’s botched war on Ukraine, the European Union is weighing more arms financing for Kyiv while the US wants to send new models of a dive-bombing drone. Finland and Sweden are moving closer to joining NATO, though Turkey may be an obstacle, while gas prices surged more than 10% in Europe after the Kremlin reduced supplies to Germany.