Fed’s Secret Repo Loans to Megabanks in 2020 Eclipsed 2008 Bailouts, Data Dump Shows $48 Trillion in Stealth Funding – Bitcoin News

Fed’s Secret Repo Loans to Megabanks in 2020 Eclipsed 2008 Bailouts, Data Dump Shows $48 Trillion in Stealth Funding – Bitcoin News
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Following the controversial bank bailouts and Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008, reports show in late 2019 and 2020, the U.S. Federal Reserve participated in providing trillions of dollars in secret repo loans to megabanks. At the end of March, investigative journalists, Pam and Russ Martens from Wall Street on Parade, uncovered $3.84 trillion in stealth repo loans from the Fed to the French financial institution, BNP Paribas in Q1 2020. Additional data indicates that the U.S. central bank leveraged secret repo loans to provide a whopping $48 trillion to megabanks in late 2019 and into 2020.

Reports Show the Fed Funneled Tens of Trillions to Megabanks in 2019 and 2020

While Wall Street eagerly awaits the Federal Reserve’s next benchmark rate hike decision, a number of investigative reports show the U.S. central bank participated in massive bank bailouts that are of biblical proportions. The first report stems from Wall Street on Parade’s Pam and Russ Martens, which accuses the Fed of secretly loaning the French megabank BNP Paribas $3.84 trillion in the first quarter of 2020.

The Martens’ findings highlight many more secret loans that come from a data dump derived from the New York Federal Reserve branch. The data dump showcases secret repo loans from the Fed to megabanks from September 17, 2019, to July 2, 2020. The Wall Street on Parade authors say the media has not reported on the data dump at all.

Report: Fed’s Secret Repo Loans to Megabanks in 2020 Eclipsed 2008 Bailouts, Data Dump Shows $48 Trillion in Stealth Funding
Data from the Wall Street on Parade report published on April 3, 2022, by the investigative journalists, Pam and Russ Martens.

“Mainstream media has heretofore instituted a news blackout on the names of the banks that received the repo loan bailouts and the Fed’s data releases,” the Martens expose details. “As of 4:00 p.m. today, we see no other news reports on this critical information that the American people need to see,” the authors said on March 31, 2022. As of today, April 13, 2022, there are no mainstream media outlets that have covered this news, after Bitcoin.com News searched for more information.

Pam and Russ Martens’ findings are scathing, and the data dump’s numbers almost seem unfathomable. The report states:

The Fed data released this morning shows that the trading units of six global banks received $17.66 trillion of the $28.06 trillion in term adjusted cumulative loans, or 63 percent of the total for all 25 trading houses (primary dealers) that borrowed through the Fed’s repo loan program in the first quarter of 2020.

Bailouts Given to Banks on the ‘Verge of Failure’ and Institutions Holding Mountains of ‘Risky Derivatives’

Another report published on substack.com written by “Occupy the Fed Movement” also highlights the report from Wall Street on Parade, as it explained how the “​​NY Fed quietly dumps data on tens of trillions in repo loan bailouts to Wall Street.”

The researcher notes that Wall Street wants to keep the Fed’s “$48 trillion repo bailout secret.” The Occupy the Fed author asks why the Fed did this, and notes the central bank explains it was meant to “support overnight lending liquidity.” The research adds:

The data tells a very different story. In the fall of 2019, over 60 percent of the repo loans went to just 6 trading houses: “Nomura Securities International ($3.7 trillion); J.P. Morgan Securities ($2.59 trillion); Goldman Sachs ($1.67 trillion); Barclays Capital ($1.48 trillion); Citigroup Global Markets ($1.43 trillion); and Deutsche Bank Securities ($1.39 trillion).” These firms are all massively exposed to risky derivatives, especially Japan’s Nomura. Moreover, Germany’s Deutsche Bank was literally on the verge of total failure at the time.

Famed Economist Tells Wall Street on Parade Journalists the Fed’s Secret Repos ‘Broke the Law’

In addition to the massive secret repo loans, another report highlights statements from the renowned economist Michael Hudson that says the Fed’s secret loans may have been illegal. Hudson claims there was “no liquidity crisis whatsoever,” and “emergency repo loan operations for a liquidity crisis that has yet to be credibly explained.”

The economist explains that the bailouts were supposed to be stopped by the Dodd-Frank Act, but U.S. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen helped change that. “Well, what happened, apparently, was that while the Dodd-Frank Act was being rewritten by the Congress, Janet Yellen changed the wording around and she said, ‘Well, how do we define a general liquidity crisis?’ Hudson told the Martens during a phone interview. “Well, it doesn’t mean what you and I mean by a liquidity crisis, meaning the whole economy is illiquid,” Hudson added.

The professor of economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City continued:

[Dodd-Frank] was supposed to say, ‘OK, we’re not going to let banks have their trading facilities, the gambling facilities, on derivatives and just placing bets on the financial markets – we’re not supposed to help the banks out of these problems at all.’ So I think the reason that the newspapers are going quiet on this is the Fed broke the law. And it wants to continue breaking the law.

Fed Members Split on Whether or Not US Inflation Will Be Persistent

Meanwhile, as people are awaiting the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise the benchmark bank rate a second time in 2022, a couple of Federal Reserve members are split on whether or not inflation will be a huge problem going forward and whether or not a series of rate hikes are needed.

The two split members include Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard and Richmond Fed president Thomas Barkin. Brainard told the Wall Street Journal that getting inflation down to the 2% mark is the Fed’s “most important task.” Brainard expects inflation to cool down and Barkin agrees with her.

The Richmond Fed branch president explained that corporate entities need to make supply chains resistant to any possible issues and Barkin is targeting a more conservative inflation rate of around 2.4%.

“The best short-term path for us is to move rapidly to the neutral range and then test whether pandemic-era inflation pressures are easing, and how persistent inflation has become,” Barkin told an audience at a Money Marketeers conference in New York. “If necessary, we can move further,” the Richmond Fed branch president added.

Tags in this story
Bailouts, Bank Bailouts, Barclays Capital, bnp paribas, CitiGroup, Deutsche Bank Securities, Dodd-Frank Act, famed economist, Fed’s secret loans, Goldman Sachs, investigative journalists, investigative reports, J.P. Morgan Securities, Lael Brainard, Liquidity Crisis, Mainstream media, Martens, Michael Hudson, no liquidity crisis, Nomura Securities, Occupy the Fed, Occupy the Fed Movement, Pam and Russ Martens, repo loan program, Thomas Barkin, Wall Street, Wall Street on Parade

What do you think about the reports that claim the Fed’s participated in secret bailouts that were against the law according to the economist Michael Hudson? Do you think this is something the American populace should pay attention to? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.




Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

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Hierarchical Threshold Signature Scheme — An Approach to Distinguish Signers in Threshold Signature Scheme | by Coinbase | Mar, 2022

Hierarchical Threshold Signature Scheme — An Approach to Distinguish Signers in Threshold Signature Scheme | by Coinbase | Mar, 2022
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This report updates on what AMIS, Coinbase Crypto Community Fund grant recipient, has been working on over the first part of their year-long Crypto development grant. This specifically covers their work on hierarchical threshold signature.

AMIS is a financial technology company creating bonds between traditional and decentralized worlds. We provide security and accessibility for blockchains as well as for cryptocurrencies. With us, our customers can manage blockchain technology with ease and confidence.

Distributed computing in computer science focuses on achieving the common purpose by a system having separate components, which are connecting, interacting, and conveying messages to each other. Multi-Party Computation (abbrev. MPC) makes sure the desired tasks are executed securely in a distributed system to prevent malicious entities. Many malicious entities steal the inputs of all components in the system or induce to deviate the correct results for their own purposes. Therefore, any secure protocols of MPC require the following two properties:

  • Privacy: Each party should not learn anything more than its prescribed output.
  • Correctness: Each party is guaranteed the correct output.

In the world of blockchain, the possession of private keys is the control of your assets. How do you protect your private key? A natural answer is that you entrust professional custodial service to manage private keys. However, it is easy to become the target of hackers. On the other hand, if users hold private keys, it is very likely to be stolen by adversaries due to weak awareness of information security, or some inappropriate operations.

Inspired by the practice of maintaining treasure maps, a naive idea is to divide the map into many parts and hide them in the distributed places. In this setting, the cost of attacks will increase owing to multiple spots. The next upcoming question is how to safely take these parts out for use. Since we are now in a distributed system, MPC becomes a natural option to solve the issue. This is because each component can safely and correctly execute the computational requirements guaranteed by MPC.

Threshold signature scheme (abbrev. TSS), a special application of MPC technology, dramatically decreases the risk of private key management. Most importantly, TSS does not save the private key, which is *split* into many parts called “share”, on the server and provides risk control as well as separation of duties. Meanwhile, compared to multi-signature, TSS provides the native multi-signature capability for those blockchains that lack shorter signatures and better privacy. These significant advantages make TSS suitable for implementing hot wallets without revealing private keys and providing the service in real-time.

Compared to TSS, shares in this Hierarchical Threshold Signature Scheme (abbrev. HTSS) are allowed to have different ranks. The main merit of this scheme is vertical access control such that it has “partial accountability”. Although TSS achieves joint control to disperse risk among the participants and avoid single points of failure, the importance of all shares is equal. It is impossible to distinguish which share gets involved in an unexpected signature which is because TSS only supports horizontal access control. For example, an important contract not only requires enough signatures but also needs to be signed by a manager. In the HTSS framework, assigning different ranks of each share induces that any valid signature generated includes the share of the manager. We call this library Alice. The aim of Alice is to provide an open and audited TSS Library. At the same time, we will also organize some useful cryptography libraries independently in the developing process. In addition, AMIS will continuously keep updating this library and fixing potential security issues.

By means of sharing articles in the medium and opening research papers and libraries continuously, AMIS is motivated to a progressively higher capability. More precisely, we have:

Except for academic research, AMIS also developed the following products:

In March, we will implement a new protocol of ECDSA: UC Non-Interactive, Proactive, Threshold ECDSA with Identifiable Aborts including Key Generation, Key-Refresh & AuxiliaryInformation, Three-Round Sign, and Six-Round Sign. The part that hasn’t been integrated yet is the echo protocol which provides a secure broadcast environment for each node but adds one extra round of communication.

For EdDSA, we also adopt the well-known protocol: FROST, which supports the elliptic curves: ed25519 and sr25519. However, this part has not been integrated into the master branch of Alice. Of course, the above libraries also support Hierarchical secret sharing. We hope to complete all the above-mentioned tasks in May and prepare to audit in June. Finally, I am very grateful for the support of Coinbase’s grant, so that we can continue to accomplish this project.

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Bitcoin Technical Indicators Suggest Short-Term Recovery To $41.3K

Bitcoin Technical Indicators Suggest Short-Term Recovery To $41.3K
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Bitcoin is consolidating above the $39,250 support zone against the US Dollar. BTC could recover if it manages to clear the $40,250 resistance zone.

  • Bitcoin retested the $39,250 support zone and found a strong buying interest.
  • The price is still trading below $41,000 and the 100 hourly simple moving average.
  • There is a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance near $40,250 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair (data feed from Kraken).
  • The pair could start a short-term recovery if there is a move above $40,250.

Bitcoin Price Remains Supported

Bitcoin price attempted an upside correction above the $40,000 level. BTC climbed above the $40,400 level, but the bears remained active.

It seems like the price struggled to stay above the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the key decline from the $43,416 swing high from the $39,240 low. A high was formed near $40,800 and the price started another decline. There was a break below the $40,000 level, but the bulls again defended the $39,250 zone.

It is now consolidating near the $40,000 level, but it is well below the 100 hourly simple moving average. An immediate resistance on the upside is near the $40,250 level. There is also a connecting bearish trend line forming with resistance near $40,250 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair.

A clear move above the trend line could send the price towards $40,800. The next resistance could be near $41,250. It is close to the 50% Fib retracement level of the key decline from the $43,416 swing high from the $39,240 low.

Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

If the bulls able to clear the $41,250 and $41,350 resistance levels, the price could accelerate higher. In the stated case, the price may perhaps rise towards the $41,800 resistance zone or the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Another Decline in BTC?

If bitcoin fails to clear the $40,250 resistance zone, it could continue to move down. An immediate support on the downside is near the $39,600 level.

The next major support is seen near the $39,250 level. A downside break below the $39,250 support zone could accelerate losses. In the stated case, the price could decline towards the $38,500 level or even $38,000.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD – The MACD is slowly gaining pace in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) – The RSI for BTC/USD is now just above the 50 level.

Major Support Levels – $39,600, followed by $39,250.

Major Resistance Levels – $40,250, $41,250 and $41,800.

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China-based regulatory and trade associations target NFTs in latest risk notice

China-based regulatory and trade associations target NFTs in latest risk notice
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The China Banking Association, the China Internet Finance Association and the Securities Association of China issued a joint statement warning the public about the “hidden risks” of investing in nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

In a Wednesday notice, the three associations launched initiatives aimed at encouraging innovation in the crypto and blockchain space focused on NFTs as well as “resolutely curb[ing] the tendency of NFT financialization and securitization” to reduce the risks around illicit activities. The China Banking Association said member institutions should not consider NFTs assets like securities, precious metals, and other financial products.

In addition, cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) should not be used for the pricing and settlement of NFT transactions, platforms should perform real-name authentication and follow Anti-Money Laundering requirements, and associations and firms in compliance should not invest in NFTs or provide financial support to others for doing so. Other measures in the proposed code of conduct included not providing centralized transactions and not weakening the tokens’ nonfungibility “by dividing ownership or batch creation, and carrying out token issuance financing in disguise.”

“We solemnly call on consumers to establish correct consumption concepts, enhance their awareness of self-protection, consciously resist NFT speculation and speculation, be vigilant and stay away from NFT-related illegal financial activities, and effectively safeguard their own property safety,” said the associations. “If relevant illegal activities are found, they should be reported to the relevant departments in a timely manner.”

China-based regulatory associations have previously issued warnings to the public about investments in cryptocurrencies while also calling on member institutions to abide by existing regulatory provisions regarding digital assets. The country officially banned crypto exchanges from providing services in 2017, but many individuals were able to use local bank accounts for crypto-related transactions before the People’s Bank of China started cracking down on the activity in 2021.

Related: China’s share in Bitcoin transactions declined 80% post crackdown: PBoC

Some of China’s social media websites, including WeChat, have removed NFT platforms in 2022 seemingly in anticipation of a government crackdown. However, Chinese multinational e-commerce firm Alibaba Group — one of the largest companies in the world with a $272 billion market capitalization, launched an NFT marketplace in August 2021 that allows users to sell tokens representing licenses to copyrights.