How Israel-Iran conflict affect your pocket
JOHANNESBURG - We might wonder why a conflict in the Middle-East could affect our wallets down at the tip of Africa.
Following stocks rose and oil prices retreated as fears of a wider Middle East conflict eased even as Israel and Iran pounded each other with missiles.
The dollar dipped against the euro and pound, while safe-haven gold declined slightly.
Although, as an oil rich region, the Israel-Iran conflict, could hit motorists hard.
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Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Shrugs Off Fed, Mideast War, but Derivatives Flash Caution
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)Bitcoin BTC remains stable around $105,000 after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, as expected. It hasn't traded below the psychological threshold of $100,000 since May 8, a full 42 days ago, even though the Israel-Iran conflict — now coming up for a week — would have been expected to weigh on risky investments, crypto among them. Alongside the interest-rate decision, the Fed also signaled slower economic growth, with GDP now expected to rise just 1.4% this year, down from 1.7%, and higher inflation. The much-watched dot plot showed policymakers see fewer rate cuts through 2027 than they did in March. What seems to be underpinning the largest cryptocurrency, and crypto markets in general, is the bitcoin treasury narrative. A notable rotation appears to be underway, with an ever growing number of companies committing to buying it as a treasury asset. The total number of known publicly traded holders has increased to 129, and when private companies and sovereign entities are included, the total has reached 235. That's an increase of 27 entities in just 30 days. Geopolitical tensions remain elevated in the Middle East. Israel said it launched airstrikes on nuclear-weapons related targets near Arak and Natanz and an Iranian missile attack scored a direct hit on the Soroka Hospital in southern Israel early this morning. In response, Israel's defense minister pledged further escalation of hostilities. Brent crude rose 1% to $77.45, its highest level since January, adding upward pressure on global energy and food prices. European stock indexes and U.S. equity index futures fell. While U.S. markets are closed today for the Juneteenth holiday, crypto markets remain open 24/7. Stay alert! Crypto June 20: Proof-of-stake blockchain BlackCoin (BLK) activates SegWit on mainnet, improving security and performance. Nodes must be upgraded to release v26.2.0 before this date. Wallets from 13.2 can be used in 26.2.x. June 25: ZIGChain (ZIG) mainnet will go live. June 30: CME Group will introduce spot-quoted futures, pending regulatory approval, allowing trading in bitcoin, ether and major U.S. equity indices with contracts holdable for up to five years. Macro June 19, 3 p.m.: Argentina's National Institute of Statistics and Censuses releases Q1 employment data. Unemployment Rate Prev. 6.4% June 20, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases May producer price inflation data. PPI MoM Prev. -0.8% PPI YoY Prev. 2% Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data) June 23 (TBC): HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.12 Governance votes & calls Compound DAO is set to vote on a proposal to create the Compound Foundation, a non-profit to drive protocol growth and strategy. It calls for an 18-month plan and requests $9 million in COMP, Voting ends June 20. Arbitrum DAO is voting on a proposal to launch DRIP, an $80M incentives program targeting specific DeFi activity. Managed by a foundation-led committee, DRIP would reward users directly and allow the DAO to shut it down via vote. Voting ends June 20. ApeCoin DAO is voting on whether to sunset the decentralized autonomous organization and launch ApeCo, a new entity established by Yuga Labs with a mission to 'supercharge the APE ecosystem.' Voting ends June 24. Polkadot Community is voting on launching a non-custodial Polkadot branded payment card to 'to bridge the gap between digital assets in the Polkadot ecosystem and everyday spending.' Voting ends July 9. June 19, 9 a.m.: TON to host a Builders Call: Payments Edition. Unlocks June 30: Optimism (OP) to unlock 1.83% of its circulating supply worth $17.34 million. July 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock 1.3% of its circulating supply worth $120.99 million. July 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock 0.67% of its circulating supply worth $11.23 million. Token Launches June 26: Coinbase to delist Helium Mobile (MOBILE), Render (RNDR), Ribbon Finance (RBN) and Synapse (SYN). The CoinDesk Policy & Regulation conference (formerly known as State of Crypto) is a one-day boutique event held in Washington on Sept. 10 that allows general counsels, compliance officers and regulatory executives to meet with public officials responsible for crypto legislation and regulatory oversight. Day 2 of 2: Canadian Blockchain Consortium's 2nd Annual Policy Summit (Ottawa) Day 2 of 2: SuperAI (Singapore) Day 1 of 3: BTC Prague 2025 June 24-26: Blockworks' Permissionless IV (New York) June 25-26: Bitcoin Policy Institute's Bitcoin Policy Summit 2025 (Washington) June 26: The Injective Summit (New York) June 26-27: Istanbul Blockchain Week June 30 to July 3: Ethereum Community Conference (Cannes, France) By Shaurya Malwa Lion Group Holding (LGHL), a Nasdaq-listed trading platform, secured a $600 million facility from ATW Partners to relaunch its crypto operations and build the world's largest HYPE treasury. The treasury will be anchored by Hyperliquid (HYPE), Solana (SOL) and Sui (SUI), with HYPE positioned as the company's primary reserve asset. SOL and SUI holdings will be custodied and staked with BitGo, which will also provide institutional-grade infrastructure and compliance oversight. LGHL is exploring secondary listings in Tokyo and Singapore to broaden investor access and create Asia's first listed HYPE treasury. The company views HYPE's decentralized sequencing, Solana's consumer traction, and Sui's composability as foundational to its shift toward execution-first DeFi protocols. The first $10.6 million tranche is expected to close before Saturday, with Chardan acting as sole placement agent for the raise. Open interest (OI) across major derivatives venues remains subdued after last week's flush, according to data from Velo. Total OI currently sits at $55.3 billion, well below the June 11 peak of $65.9 billion. The broad-based pullback points to persistent de-risking, even as markets stabilise near range highs. Deribit options flows remain front-loaded into the June 27 expiry. BTC's put/call ratio has ticked up to 1.13, led by renewed put demand at $100K–$110K strikes. Call interest remains heavy above $110K, but today's flows are more balanced than earlier in the week. ETH positioning skews more bullish, with a put/call ratio of 0.75 and call flows clustering at $2,600 and $2,800. Notably, today's top-traded instruments are concentrated in near-term strikes, pointing to short-dated, tactical interest. Velo data shows funding rates have flipped moderately positive for BTC and ETH, with +0.03% and +7.5%, respectively, on Binance, and similar prints across Bybit and OKX. Altcoin signals, however, are still fragmented. AVAX remains deeply negative on Binance (–19.05%), OKX (–18.60%) and Bybit (–16.62%), and bitcoin cash (BCH) also shows extreme short pressure (–24.39% on Bybit). HYPE funding, however, surged again to +38.67% on Bybit, though this reflects isolated speculation rather than a broad sentiment shift. Liquidation maps as provided by Coinglass show a dense band of leverage hugging BTC's current price, with notable zones stacked between $103K and $106K on Binance. This positioning suggests an elevated risk of local unwinds if the price breaks out. Still BTC has now traded within a 10% band for a record 42 days— one of the tightest volatility windows. With leverage compressed and clustered near price, any breakout could be sharp, but for now, conditions remain range-bound and fragile. BTC is up 0.16% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $105,032.28 (24hrs: +0.73%) ETH is up 0.4% at $2,540.03 (24hrs: +1.76%) CoinDesk 20 is unchanged at 3,014.06 (24hrs: +1.22%) Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is down 4 bps at 2.98% BTC funding rate is at 0.0052% (5.7179% annualized) on OKX DXY is unchanged at 98.95 Gold futures are down 0.58% at $3,388.20 Silver futures are down 1.43% at $36.38 Nikkei 225 closed down 1.02% at 38,488.34 Hang Seng closed down 1.99% at 23,237.74 FTSE is down 0.27% at 8,819.87 Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.64% at 5,233.39 DJIA closed on Wednesday down 0.10% at 42,171.66 S&P 500 closed unchanged at 5,980.87 Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.13% at 19,546.27 S&P/TSX Composite closed unchanged at 26,559.85 S&P 40 Latin America closed up 0.25% at 2,622.24 U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is unchanged at 4.4% E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.36% at 5,960.00 E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.43% at 21,626.25 E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are down 0.37% at 42,034.00 BTC Dominance: 64.9 (+0.06%) Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02408 (0.04%) Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 879 EH/s Hashprice (spot): $52.87 Total Fees: 6.95 BTC / $729,711 CME Futures Open Interest: 154,500 BTC priced in gold: 30.9 oz BTC vs gold market cap: 8.75% After dropping below Monday's low and once again testing the 200-day exponential moving average (EMA), ether has managed to reclaim Monday's range. While price action remains below the monthly open, a decisive reclaim of this key level would be a constructive signal, potentially paving the way for a move back toward Monday's highs. Bulls will want to see ether continue to close above the 200-day EMA in the case of further sideways price action. Strategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $369.03 (-1.64%), +0.7% at $371.61 in pre-market Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $295.29 (+16.32%), -14.16% at $253.47 Circle (CRCL): closed at $199.59 (+33.82%), -23.24% at $153.21 Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.12 (+3.57%) MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $14.49 (-1.23%), unchanged in pre-market Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $9.94 (+2.9%), -3.62% at $9.58 Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $11.9 (+0.08%), -1.01% at $11.78 CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.18 (+3.15%), -4.03% at $8.81 CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $18.7 (+0.11%) Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $31.94 (+11.95%), -9.58% at $28.88 Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $30.14 (+0.43%), -0.73% at $29.92 Spot BTC ETFs Daily net flows: $388.3 million Cumulative net flows: $46.63 billion Total BTC holdings ~1.22 million Spot ETH ETFs Daily net flows: $11.1 million Cumulative net flows: $3.91 billion Total ETH holdings ~3.97 million Source: Farside Investors PancakeSwap now leads crypto protocols based on 24-hour fees. 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Proud Boys Say Trump Will Lose Their Support If He Goes To War With Iran
Turns out, there's a line the Proud Boys say they won't cross for President Donald Trump. The extremist group said on social media this week that it wouldn't be able to support the president if the U.S. were to become involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. 'If the United States gets directly involved in the Israel-Iran conflict, the voters that voted for Trump because there was a hope that Trump was America First can no longer support Trump,' the Proud Boys account posted to Telegram on Wednesday. 'America First does not mean war for Israel. Donald Trump, focus on the health of our nation, period. We are crumbling. We are crippled with debt with no plan for a solution. Be the President you ran as.' Trump has approved attack plans for Iran but is withholding a final order to join Israel in the strikes, The Wall Street Journal reported first this week. We were made for this moment. HuffPost will aggressively, fairly and honestly cover the Trump administration. But we need your help. . The president said Thursday that he would have a decision within two weeks on whether the American military will directly attack Iran after Israel issued strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites. Trump claimed his decision would be based on whether negotiations with Iran over the 'near future' of its nuclear program would occur. Historically, the Proud Boys have been among some of Trump's most fervent supporters. Many members endlessly promoted or repeated Trump's lies about the 2020 election being rigged, and some members carried banners bearing his name during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Trump was asked on the presidential debate stage in 2020 if he would condemn white supremacists and, in particular, Proud Boys after a summer of clashes and violence involving the group. Trump instead told Proud Boys to 'stand back and stand by.' Trump's hawkish stance toward Iran has opened a schism among some conservatives. Even some of Trump's most vocal advocates, including former Fox News mouthpiece Tucker Carlson, have suggested that Trump and the United States at large were complicit in Israel's attacks on Iran. 'Years of funding and sending weapons to Israel, which Donald Trump just bragged about on Truth Social, undeniably place the U.S. at the center of last night's events,' Carlson wrote in a newsletter last week. Trump has said he isn't 'looking to fight.' 'But if it's a choice between fighting and them having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do,' he said from the Oval Office on Wednesday, the same day the Proud Boys put out their warning on Telegram. The Proud Boys' opposition to American involvement in foreign war isn't a concept outside of their wheelhouse: Members consider themselves ultra-nationalist, so-called 'western chauvinists' who believe it is their responsibility to preserve 'western' values. As noted by the Anti-Defamation League, the group has long embraced ideologies that reject women, immigrants and members of the LGBTQ+ community, often aligning itself with white nationalist values. This emphasis on the preservation of 'traditional' American values and a rejection of the 'Deep State' often returns to criticism of the military industrial complex. Many Proud Boys are also veterans; nearly all of the Proud Boys who were charged and convicted of seditiously conspiring to stop the certification of the 2020 election when attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, served in the military except for the group's leader, Henry 'Enrique' Tarrio. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Trump Escalates His Feud With Tucker Carlson Over Israel And Iran Israeli Strikes On Iran Have Killed At Least 639 People, Rights Group Says Proud Boys' $100 Million Lawsuit Puts Trump In A Lose-Lose Position
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