***Qrafty smiling the biggest smile*** Aloha, crypto curious! I am Qrafty - the crypto lovin’ honey badger 🦡 !

Welcome to Coinqraft – the daily crypto newsletter for busy but curious people who don’t have time for the crypto drama!🌟

🦡   Qrafty has fresh bits from the crypto jungle, so let’s dive in: 📰 🌟

1. BRICK Rose 131%

2. CPI Up, USD Up, BTC Down

3. CBDCs Aren’t Far Away

Bonus: Orange Juice Has Had A Massive Run Lately

Mastercard Finished Wrapped CBDC Trial

Imagine you're shopping online, but you want to use different kinds of digital money on different websites. Right now, it's a bit tricky because most sites prefer certain types of digital money, which can be a bit risky.

Now, there's this cool idea. They're thinking of taking official digital money, like digital dollars or euros, and turning them into a special type of digital money that can work on any website. Why? Because they can control it better and make sure only KYC’ed entities use it. They call it 'wrapped' Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

For example, let's say you're interested in buying an NFT on Ethereum. You want to use your official digital money for this purchase.

So, what happens is, the system locks up the exact amount of your official digital money on the CBDC platform. It then creates an equivalent amount of 'wrapped' CBDC tokens on Ethereum. This is like turning your regular money into a special form that works perfectly on Ethereum.

To make sure everything is safe and legit, they make sure that the wallets of both the buyer and the seller, as well as the smart contract on the marketplace, are all approved and checked. This basically enables KYC and AML measures even on Ethereum.

While the concept of 'wrapped' Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has potential benefits, it's important to consider human nature and political perversion.

Of course, Qrafty thought what are some concerns and potential "dark sides" associated with this approach:

• Increased surveillance: because who doesn't want their every financial move tracked like a reality TV show? Privacy is so last season! CBDC transactions could will be tracked and monitored more easily by governments and financial authorities.

• Exploitation and control over transactions: who needs financial autonomy anyway? Let's allow governments to decide what we can and can't spend our money on. Governments could potentially will restrict or monitor certain transactions, limiting your financial freedom if you don’t play nice. They will also implement policies that prevent or censor specific uses of CBDC. This means that governments will use it to control or manipulate (not only your) economic behavior.

• Risk of centralization: who needs a diverse, decentralized financial system when we can just hand all the power to one entity? Monopolies are all the rage, baby! CBDC’s could will be controlled by a central authority, giving them significant power over the financial system.

• Vulnerability to cyberattacks: Just think about the idea that your currency can be hacked. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less. Your digital cash can be hacked and taken from you. Yes, state actors can do that, not just random hackers.

• Exclusion of unbanked populations: those without access to the necessary technology or infrastructure might be excluded from participating in the CBDC system. Hello there, digital aristocracy! Time for the plebs to know their place, right? They ngmi.

• Dependence on technology: a fully digital financial system could leave individuals vulnerable in the event of technological failures, outages, or even cyber warfare.

• Loss of anonymity: unlike cash, which can be used anonymously, digital transactions are linked to identifiable information. CBDC will eliminate the option for truly anonymous transactions.

• Potential for negative interest rates: governments can implement negative interest rates more easily with a digital currency. Yup, see your money evaporate before your eyes without doing anything, because politicians say so.

But hey, if all of the above sounds legit to you, by all means we should welcome our new digital overlords.

🙃 Qrafty hopes that today’s main story brought brave badgery value to you! Now it’s time for a break, you deserve a bit of fun! 😇 👇️

In case you didn’t know, orange juice has been on a massive price increase lately

CPI is out: Bitcoin Down, USD Up

The new data on inflation (which is when the prices of goods and services go up) was higher than what experts had expected.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is a measure of how well big companies in the U.S. are doing, went down by about 173 points. This means the value of those companies' stocks went down by a little over half a percent.

• The S&P 500, which looks at the performance of 500 large companies, went down by about 27 points, or a little over half a percent.

• The Nasdaq, which includes a lot of technology-related companies, went down by about 85 points, or a little over half a percent as well.

The inflation data showed that prices had gone up by 0.4% in one month and 3.7% in the year leading up to October 1. This means that the Fed might keep interest rates higher for longer.

In the currency market (where different countries' money is bought and sold), the U.S. Dollar became stronger compared to other currencies. The Euro went down in value by about 0.85%, and the Japanese Yen went down by about 0.47%.

Reddit's Fortnite Crypto Token BRICK Rises 131%

It looks like Redditors have watched “Dumb Money“ and enjoyed it. Something pretty wild happened with the BRICK crypto reward token from Reddit's Fortnite community. It shot up in value by 131% in just one day! It started at around $0.075, went all the way up to about $0.173, but now it's settled at roughly $0.125. That's still a 35% boost in the past 24 hours.

What's interesting is, nobody's entirely sure why this happened. There weren't any big announcements or changes in the Fortnite community on Reddit, and even the game itself didn't make any major moves. And get this, BRICK isn't officially tied to Fortnite or its creator, Epic Games. It's kind of like a token created by the Reddit folks, for the Reddit folks. And bought by the Reddit folks, from the Reddit folks, to increase its value? Qrafty is just asking.

One theory is that the price swings might be because there aren't a ton of BRICK tokens floating around. The whole market for it is just worth about $15.6 million, and in the last day, only a bit over $1 million worth of BRICK was traded. So, even a small group of people buying or selling could make a big splash in its price. Most of the trading action apparently went down on Kraken. Or maybe someone saw the low volume and decided to do a little P&D on the side. Qrafty can only guess…

Microsoft owes $29 billion in unpaid taxes

The IRS just sent Microsoft a love letter - well, more like a bill - for a amount equal to $28.9 billion in back taxes, aside from penalties and a cherry on top in the form of interest. How kind of them to remember!

Apparently, the tech giant had a little adventure with tax havens for its U.S. earnings between 2004 and 2013. The real punchline is that back in 2020, ProPublica and Fortune spilled the beans, revealing that Microsoft had a little Caribbean adventure and shuffled "at least $39 billion in U.S. profits" over to Puerto Rico in a bid to dodge those pesky taxes. KPMG played fairy godmother and made sure their tax rate was practically a big, fat zero. But if you forget to declare that pair of sox you bought, all tax hell breaks loose, mkay?

But, hold your applause, because Microsoft is giving the IRS a chance to reconsider. They're saying, "Hey, let's chat about this, shall we?" If they can't come to terms, they're all ready to have a friendly chat in court. Such gracious hosts, really!

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Tomorrow, that elusive horizon where yesterday's procrastinations finally become today's priorities, always just a snooze button away!

Qrafty’s Thought Of The Day

Other Stories

Coinbase spot trading volume down by… a lot

Spot trading volumes for the exchange stood at $76 billion in Q3 2023, a 52% drop from last year's position. Half of the total volumes wiped out… If we remove the wash trading from that, it’s actually a 10% decrease max. Get it? 🤣 

Another day, another liar sued

The former CEO of Voyager is facing a double whammy from the CFTC and FTC. They're accusing the company of pulling a fast one on customers by not being entirely truthful about how secure their assets were.

Tornado Cash still going strong

Well, would you look at that! Despite those stern US sanctions, Tornado Cash seems to be dancing around them like a pro, per a report from Arkham. They've had a cool $77.35 million making its way through their Ethereum Mainnet contracts in the last month. Clearly, they're taking those sanctions super seriously!

Stars Arena recovered

Stars Arena said it recovered nearly all of the crypto stolen from the exploit and gave 10% bounty to the hacker responsible for the theft. To Qrafty, this smells like a PR stunt and deceit.

Market Whispers

Let's be compassionate today and not judge Bitcoin too hard. Considering the big green daily candle USD made today (because of the higher then expected inflation, of course), Bitcoin held pretty well the support at $26.5k - $26.6k.

If it manages to push above October open, $26,950 then $28k will be revisited. Some might say even $29k, but let's get to $28k first and make a support there and then will become excited about $29k and even $30k.

To the downside, same scenario as discussed previously, losing $26.5k opens the path to $25k.

Qrafty ends channeling his inner trader.

Today is NATIONAL SAVINGS DAY!

That’s all from Qrafty 🦡 for today! Qrafty thanks you and wishes you to live each moment as if you are listening to the music you love most!

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