Bitcoin rallies - have inflation fears been priced in?

GB Market Commentary 09/09/2022

by Marcus Sotiriou

Bitcoin rallies back above $20,000 as optimism surrounding next weeks inflation report emerges. Gasoline prices have been reported to be negative two months in a row - down 8% in July and then down 13% in August. This, coupled with the breakdown in respondents in the ISM report last week showing slower delivery times, could result in another decline in U.S. CPI year-over-year on September 13th.

Government intervention in the crypto market is a key talking point at the moment among investors, as we are still yet to have the clarity that we need for the crypto industry to thrive. Nevertheless, many governments are now recognising the benefits of NFTs.

The European Union (EU), in particular, is now working on a project that involves non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to fight counterfeiting and forgery of physical goods for 2023, as a result of several meetings and blockchain hackathons. This system has been proposed by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, after 5 years of work, with the aim of creating digital twins of products to trace their path across supply lines.

Intellectual property (IP) holders will create digital tokens that represent physical goods in order to prove that a group of produced goods are authentic, as you cannot forge an NFT. As products are transported through different checkpoints, this will allow supply chains to be tracked and therefore give IP holders confidence that products which reach the stores are authentic.

Furthermore, the Japanese government rewarded local authorities with NFTs, being one of the first countries to do so. This was to recognise the local authorities who excelled in a digitisation competition. The NFTs awarded used the Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) technology, which are non-transferable but can be used to as a digital certification.

These government implementations are an incredible step for the crypto industry. Even though blockchain technology is already being used for supply chain tracking, it is yet to be used on the scale of the European Union.