I keep wanting to say that we are entering the fourth quarter of the year, but the truth is, we still have one more month to go. Correct me if I am wrong, but September is usually a pretty rocky road for the crypto world. In fact, in the US we haven't even been into September for 12 hours yet and the FUD machine is already doing its work.
We saw the sudden rise of Bitcoin to $28K on the news that Grayscale won their court case against the SEC. Only to see it drop back down to the $25K range on the news that the SEC is going to drag their feet even longer on deciding if ETF's are going to be allowed.
Or something like that anyway. At this point it's like the price of oil.
They could say a giraffe sneezed over in Africa and that would be enough to send the crypto markets soaring or falling in epic fashion.
Personally, this feels like another attempt at consolidation by the big players before we get to the halving next year. It probably won't be the last one either. Call me naive, but I never really realized how much market manipulation existed (in all spaces) until I started dealing with crypto.
It is time again for another Finance Friday/Friday Finance. This is a series I started where I talk about random bits of financial stuff that I have seen, gathered, or experienced during the week. I hope as a reader you find it informational, entertaining, or both. I also hope it can generate some good discussion and edify the Leo community.
HPUD
In case you haven't heard, it's HPUD day today. I am sure you have already seen countless posts come across your feed about how much each of your fellow Hivians is powering up. I have a relatively decent one this month. I have been lucky enough to be getting some decent rewards lately. I know opportunities like this are fleeting, so I have been moving as much of my HBD rewards as I can into Hive so I can grow my account while I am in the midst of the upvote gods favor.
There we go, for this months #hpud I powered up just over 1300 Hive. Pretty much all of that 1300 Hive comes from posting rewards over the past month. More specifically HBD rewards from my posts that I have swapped into Hive on the market.
I know I could just choose for my rewards to be 100% if I am just going to power it up anyway, but I like having that flexibility in case I decide I want to throw some more HBD into savings. Which is why I keep it at 50/50.
My goal is to hopefully hit 75K HP by the end of the year. If my content keeps getting recognized the way it has, I think that might actually be do-able. Otherwise, it could take me a good year to get there.
Copper
I saw an article the other day that I found quite interesting. It was from "Fortune" magazine and it was talking about how the historic price surge of oil in 2008 will look like "child's play" compared to the copper boom they are expecting in 2025. I've seen articles in the past where they have pointed out that the graph's of crytpo often follow the same path as copper. I don't know how accurate that is, but I always find correlations like that interesting.
The basic premise is, investors are growing weary of the traditional commodities and often return to copper as an investment in those situations.
As part of the Silver/Gold stacker community, I thought this was interesting enough to put out there. Sure, copper isn't silver or gold, but it is still a precious metal that is used for a lot of things. I could run a handful of hours up north and clear out the gift shops at all of the abandoned copper mines in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I'd kind of rather invest in some stock though.
Which leads me to two questions.
First, if you looked at the article, do you agree with their assessment? Second, are there any good copper stocks that investors can buy? I already own a couple silver stocks, but I have never seen any obvious copper stocks. I'm hoping my Silver/Gold community can help me out here!
Energy Woes
As we all know, energy prices are up across the board. Personally, my energy bill has been quite a bit higher lately, but I don't know if that is mostly because of inflation or because there is something wrong with our clothes dryer and we have to run it twice for every load.
Either way, people are feeling the pinch and it sucks pretty bad.
I just got an email from my power company the other day letting me know that I would no longer be able to auto-pay my bill with my credit card. Trust me, I know credit cards are pretty evil, but I earn points for every purchase I make on my credit card. Since I pay off my balance fully every month, it only makes sense to earn those points for purchases I am going to be making anyway.
From what I gather, the power company can no longer afford the 3% processing fee for credit card transactions. To auto pay our bill now we have to tie either a checking or savings account to our energy account. You can make a one time payment via credit card, but they are passing along the 3% fee to you.
It's amazing how many larger businesses are starting to feel the pinch. I can understand the mom and pop convenience store down the road or the local taco joint I like passing along the processing charge, but it isn't like the power company is hurting.
This just feels a bit petty to me on their behalf. Maybe I am wrong though. If that is the case what can we expect next? Walmart charging us 3% for using a credit card?
Perhaps my anger is misdirected? Should I be more upset at the power company, or the card processing companies that charge so much and make it impossible for the end businesses to cover the costs?
I don't know, what do you think? Have you started to see more and more businesses unable to cover those costs? Even larger ones like a company that serves a large region of the country?
Let's talk about it in the comments!
That's all I have for you today. Let's make September great and have a happy Hive Power Up Day!
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