The Small Guys Rebel Against Their Big-Brother Hedge Funds

What the GameStop stock market chaos can teach crypto and why the Bank of International Settlements is pitching CBDCs instead of crypto. Also the privacy concerns around China’s digital yuan.

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In this episode, Anna Baydakova, Tanzeel Akhtar and Danny Nelson discuss what the GameStop (GME) stock market chaos can teach crypto, why the Bank of International Settlements is pitching central bank digital currencies (CBDC) instead of crypto, and the privacy concerns around China’s digital yuan.

The big story for the week involves the Reddit-based trading community called WallStreetBets that has been causing equities to behave like cryptocurrencies – very volatile. WallStreetBets have wreaked chaos in traditional markets after pumping GameStop stock up by nearly 900% in five days to around $380. Hedge fund Melvin Capital Management suffered heavy losses by betting against video game retailer GameStop.

Does crypto fix this?

The digital yuan was front-and-center in yesterday’s CBDC survey by the BIS, better known as the bank for central banks. Researchers there said 20% of the global population will likely be using general purpose digital fiat in the next three years. What they didn’t say was the identity of the country with 18% of the global population…. China!

In the meantime, security researchers started paying attention to potential risks of the digital yuan for the users outside of China. The Center for New American Security issued a report on how the Chinese Communist Party might get access to the financial data of people worldwide including, potentially, Americans who will be using the Chinese system in the future.

Would you use something like that, and do you care about privacy of your transactions?

Stories mentioned in this episode:

CoinDesk: GameStop Investing Craze ‘Proof of Concept’ for Bitcoin Success, Says Scaramucci
CoinDesk: GameStop-Style Revolts Spread, Drawing Attention of White House, Nasdaq; TD Ameritrade Restricts Trading
Reddit: An Open Letter to Melvin Capital, CNBC, Boomers, and WSB
CoinDesk: BIS Chief Blasts Bitcoin’s Viability, Prompting Blowback From Advocates
BIS Plans Platform for Testing Central Bank Digital Currencies in Cross-Border Payments /policy/2021/01/22/bis-plans-platform-for-testing-central-bank-digital-currencies-in-cross-border-payments/
CoinDesk: Geopolitics at Stake in US Response to China’s Digital Yuan: Report
Center for New American Security: China’s Digital Currency. Adding Financial Data to Digital Authoritarianism
CoinDesk: WEF Davos: Bank of England Governor Insists Digital Payments (but Not Crypto) Are Sticking Around
CoinDesk: WEF Davos: Silver Lake Co-Founder Tells Davos Cash Is Used Far More in Crime Than Bitcoin
Colombia, Estonia Upload the Bitcoin White Paper to Their Governmental Websites /markets/2021/01/26/colombia-estonia-upload-the-bitcoin-white-paper-to-their-governmental-websites/

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HOSTS

Dan Ilett

Dan Ilett writes on tech, money and energy. He advises business on digital strategy and technology messaging for large deals. He is founder of Erbut - an advisory company - and Greenbang - a smart technology research company.

Tanzeel Akhtar

Tanzeel Akhtar has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes Africa, Financial Times, The Street, Citywire, Investing.com, Euromoney, Yahoo! Finance, Benzinga, Kitco News, African Business Magazine, Hedge Week, Campden Family Office, Modern Investor, Spear's Wealth Management Magazine, Global Investor, ETF.com, ETF Stream, CIO UK, Funds Global Asia, Portfolio Institutional, Interactive Investor, Bitcoin Magazine, CryptoNews.com, Bitcoin.com, The Local, The Next Web, Mining Journal, Money Marketing, Marketing Week and more. Tanzeel trained as a foreign correspondent at the University of Helsinki, Finland and newspaper journalist at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She holds a BA (Honours) in English Literature from the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and completed a semester abroad as an ERASMUS student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is NCTJ Qualified - Media Law, Public Administration and passed the Shorthand 100WPM with distinction. She does not currently hold value in any digital currencies or projects.

Anna Baydakova

Anna writes about blockchain projects and regulation with a special focus on Eastern Europe and Russia. She is especially excited about stories on privacy, cybercrime, sanctions policies and censorship resistance of decentralized technologies.
She graduated from the Saint Petersburg State University and the Higher School of Economics in Russia and got her Master's degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City.
She joined CoinDesk after years of writing for various Russian media, including the leading political outlet Novaya Gazeta.
Anna owns BTC and an NFT of sentimental value.

Danny Nelson

Danny was CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Danny Bradbury

Danny Bradbury has been a professional writer since 1989, and has worked freelance since 1994. He covers technology for publications such as the Guardian.

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