Introducing our new weekly series, Morning Cup – your triple shot of financial news to kick off your day. Brought to you by our friends at PDAX.
In global news
The US Federal Reserve opted to keep interest rates unchanged at 5.5% for their September policy meeting, and signaled one more hike before the year ends. This is all part of their “higher-for-longer” policy to help cool inflation.
All 3 major stock indices — the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq — fell 1 percent by the end of last week.
And the US Federal Open Market Committee raised the country’s economic growth projection at 2.1 percent. That’s a notable upgrade from the 1 percent projection they noted last June, steering away from indications of a recession.
Locally
ADB cuts the economic growth projection for the PHhillipines down to 5.7 percent from 6 percent in April. This was due to increasing inflation taking a toll on consumer spending.
The Bangko Sentral posted that the country’s Balance of Payments remains at a deficit of 57 million dollars in August, mainly due to the govt’s foreign debt payments
And Unionbank received its virtual asset service provider license from the BSP. This makes it the first universal bank in the country to offer direct buying and selling of Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies.
And in crypto news
The US SEC warns that it will be going after other crypto exchanges and Defi projects (apart from Coinbase and Binance) for violating securities law. Meanwhile their House of Representatives approved a crypto-related bill that will prevent any central bank digital currency for the country.
Citigroup pilots a tokenization service for cash management and trade finance for institutional clients using blockchain technology and smart contracts, perhaps paving the way for even more implementation of these technologies across the global traditional banking sector.
And Bitcoin falls back to 26,000 dollar level on Fed’s hawkish stance on interest rates.
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