Crypto winter has taught us to be suspicious of even the warmest rays of sunshine.

If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed.

But it looks like some people have some big expectations for BTC this year. We’re talking six-figure expectations.

More on that in the deep dive.

Espresso Shots

☕️ Crypto Bill Incoming 🪙 📜

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee and the House Agriculture Committee are coming together to release a legislative, crypto overhaul in the next two months.

“We have to fix this problem,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, chair of the House Financial Services Committee. “We have to provide certainty that you can bank in a safe and sound manner… This is a great example of why Congress must legislate and provide clarity.”

Lummis additionally drew comparisons between the lack of American action and the massive, European MiCA regulation that was just passed.

“We are falling way behind,” said Lummis. “These countries are telling us to catch up.”

As far as crypto regulation goes, America is so deep in the weeds that we had to bring in the House Agriculture Committee to sort it out.

☕️ The Rise of Skeeting 🙊 🤨

As Twitter becomes less stable and the blue check marks that separate celebrities from the rest of us were rendered lame and cringe practically overnight, many celebrities are leaving Twitter in favor of decentralized social media app, Bluesky.

Some of the big names that have already made the migration to Bluesky include AOC, James Gunn, Chrissy Tiegen, and Kumail Nanjiani.

Bluesky follows the AT protocol, a new, decentralized standard for social media platforms. There was a time when Twitter was interested in following the AT protocol and actually owned Bluesky and had invested about $13 million in the platform.

But Bluesky became independent before Musk took over Twitter and Musk terminated the deal with them after his takeover.

Whether "skeeting" (posting on bluesky) will become the new tweeting remains to be seen, but the growing celebrity adoption points to a changing of the guard when it comes to limited character viral content.

Many historians believe that Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz may have predicted this shift in their 2003 single, “Get Low.”

☕️ Italy Welcomes Back ChatGPT 🤖 🥰

After a national ban against ChatGPT, it appears that Italy may be welcoming the AI back with open arms following some crucial changes.

Italy was concerned about privacy protection and potential data collection related to ChatGPT’s presence in their country. The anti-ChatGPT stance was captained by the Italian Data Protection Authority (aka Garante).

But OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, communicated directly with Garante and released a series of features last Tuesday, such as the ability to disable chat history or opt out of allowing the AI to use the consumer’s data for training.

In addition to these features, OpenAI intends to have more visible privacy features across the board.

Across the nation, Italian mothers welcomed ChatGPT back with open arms, crying, “I ah-told you, my robot boy, he do nothing wrong.”

Spilling the Beans

😳 🚀 Bitcoin to 100k by End of Year? 🚀 😳

Bitcoin has gone up 65% this year.

Although Bitcoin’s bull run seems to be plateauing, there are those who think that BTC’s rise is far from over.

In fact, some of those voices are estimating that by 2024, Bitcoin will be in the six figures.

And one of those voices is Standard Chartered Bank. Why?

There are two major contributing factors.

First, because Bitcoin will undergo its fourth halving event this year.

The halving event occurs every four years to keep Bitcoin healthy. Halving means that all of the rewards given for mining Bitcoin will be reduced by half.

On paper it sounds like a bad thing, but the halving process has historically been really good for the price of Bitcoin.

Halving lowers the rate that Bitcoin can be created, thus slowing the increase of the total supply.

And again, this usually raises the price of Bitcoin.

Not only do we have the Bitcoin halving coming up this year, but confidence in Bitcoin is at an all time high while confidence in the traditional banking structure seems to be at an all time low.

“Against this backdrop,” said reputed crypto analyst Geoff Kendrick. “Bitcoin has benefited from its status as a branded safe haven, a perceived relative store of value and a means of remittance.”

It’s these two factors, the banking crisis and the next halving, that have the analysts at Standard Chartered convinced this is going to be a boom year for Bitcoin.

You can’t help but admire the objectivity of a bank… blaming the banks.

But Signature Chartered aren’t alone in this belief.

The analysts at Berenberg, an international, private bank, have published a report that similarly indicates a potential six-figure upshot in Bitcoin this year.

Now, this is all very exciting and we’re not going to pretend that we’re not rooting for Bitcoin to climb the mountain, but the question is speed.

With the failures and closures of a string of American banks, coupled with increasing levels of inflation, you might say that we’re already in the midst of a banking crisis.

For Bitcoin to reach these numbers, things are going to have to get a lot worse for the banks.

We’re all for the crypto revolution, but this sort of massive, societal restructuring has to happen at a glacial pace to avoid disaster.

Glaciers move slowly out of a necessity. If a glacier melted overnight, you’d have surging sea levels and international tsunamis.

Or if a glacier was to suddenly appear on interstate 95, it would be a very good thing in terms of global warming predictions, but the commute for thousands of Americans just turned into a literal tundra.

What we’re trying to say is that we want the price of Bitcoin to rise, but if it gets that high, that fast, we may have some serious economic problems to grapple with.

We’re okay with Bitcoin taking its sweet time and leaving some national economies intact.

When it comes to BTC prices, we’re going to leave you with the immortal words of teen rebel and Chicago icon, Ferris Bueller.

“Bitcoin moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look at the blockchain once and a while, you could miss it.”

Meme of the Day

We're not sure why they're invited, but we're glad they feel included. ❤️

Crypto 101

AT Protocol: Social media, but it runs on a decentralized or “federated” network.

What that means is rather than the entire server being hosted by one company, like Meta, the platform allows users to choose individual providers or even self-host.

This takes control of the social media experience away from the algorithms of big tech companies and puts it in the hands of the users.

As we push toward decentralized finance, it only makes sense that social media and other aspects of online life would follow.

The Last Sip

Signature Chartered and Berenberg are banks predicting that the banking crisis is going to cause Bitcoin to skyrocket. Here are three more predictions for 2023 by banks, for banks.

• Our patrons withdraw too much too quickly and most of our staff quit.

• We go under.

• Everything is on fire.

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.