ETH Price Holds Above $3,100 With Potential Price Push Toward $3,700 Level

Bassem Naim, an official in Hamas' political wing, speaks in Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 5, 2024. AP-Yonhap

Hamas is ready to discuss "freezing or storing" its arsenal of weapons as part of its ceasefire with Israel, a senior official said Sunday, offering a possible formula to resolve one of the thorniest issues in the U.S.-brokered agreement.

Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas' decision-making political bureau, spoke as the sides prepare to move into the second and more complicated phase of the agreement.

"We are open to have a comprehensive approach in order to avoid further escalations or in order to avoid any further clashes or explosions," Naim told The Associated Press in Qatar's capital, Doha, where much of the group's leadership is located.

The deal halted a two-year Israeli offensive in Gaza, launched in response to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Asked whether the attack was a mistake, Naim defended it as an "act of defense."

Since the truce took effect in October, Hamas and Israel have carried out a series of exchanges of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. With only the remains of one hostage still held in Gaza — an Israeli policeman killed in the Oct. 7 attack — the sides are preparing to enter the second phase.

The new phase aims to lay out a future for war-battered Gaza and promises to be even more difficult — addressing such issues as the deployment of an international security force, formation of a technocratic Palestinian committee in Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory and the disarmament of Hamas. An international board, led by President Donald Trump, is to oversee implementation of the deal and reconstruction of Gaza.

The Israeli demand for Hamas to lay down its weapons promises to be especially tricky — with Israeli officials saying this is a key demand that could hold up progress in other areas. Hamas' ideology is deeply rooted in what it calls armed resistance against Israel, and its leaders have rejected calls to surrender despite over two years of war that left large parts of Gaza destroyed and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Naim said Hamas retains its "right to resist," but said the group is ready to lay down its arms as part of a process aimed at leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state. He gave few details on how this might work but suggested a long-term truce of five or 10 years for discussions to take place.

"This time has to be used seriously and in a comprehensive way," he said, adding that Hamas is "very open minded" about what to do with its weapons.

"We can talk about freezing or storing or laying down, with the Palestinian guarantees, not to use it at all during this ceasefire time or truce," he said.

It is not clear whether the offer would meet Israel's demands for full disarmament.

The ceasefire is based on a 20-point plan presented by Trump, with international "guarantor" nations, in October.

The plan, adopted by the U.N. Security Council, offered a general way forward. But it was vague on details or timelines and will require painstaking negotiations involving the U.S. and the guarantors, which include Qatar, Egypt and Turkey.

"The plan is in need of a lot of clarifications," Naim said.

One of the most immediate concerns is deployment of the international stabilization force.

Several countries, including Indonesia, have expressed a willingness to contribute troops to the force, but its exact makeup, command structure and responsibilities have not been defined. U.S. officials say they expect "boots on the ground" early next year.

One key question is whether the force will take on the issue of disarmament.

Naim said this would be unacceptable to Hamas, and the group expects the force to monitor the agreement.

"We are welcoming a U.N. force to be near the borders, supervising the ceasefire agreement, reporting about violations, preventing any kind of escalations," he said. "But we don't accept that these forces have any kind of mandates authorizing them to do or to be implemented inside the Palestinian territories."

Displaced Palestinians walk through a muddy pathway between tents set up amid destroyed buildings in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 7. AP-Yonhap

In one sign of progress, Naim said Hamas and the rival Palestinian Authority have made progress on the formation of the new technocratic committee set to run Gaza's daily affairs. He said they have agreed upon a Palestinian Cabinet minister who lives in the West Bank, but is originally from Gaza, to head the committee. He did not give the name, but Hamas officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, have identified him as Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan.

Both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of repeated violations of the deal during the first phase.

Israel has accused Hamas of dragging out the hostage returns, while Palestinian health officials say over 370 Palestinians have been killed in continued Israeli strikes since the ceasefire took effect.

Israel says its strikes have been in response to Palestinian violations, including the movement of Palestinians into the Israeli-held half of Gaza. Three soldiers have been killed in clashes with about 200 Hamas militants that Israeli and Egyptian officials say remain holed up underground in Israeli-held territory.

Naim said Hamas was "not aware" of these gunmen when the ceasefire was signed, and that communications with them were "totally cut."

"Therefore, they are not aware about what's going on now on the ground," he said.

He claimed that Israel has rejected Hamas offers to resolve the standoff and added numerous "conditions" to their surrender. Israel has not acknowledged the negotiations and says it has killed several dozens of them.

Naim said Hamas is committed to "fulfilling its obligations" and claimed that Israel has fallen short of key pledges, including not flooding Gaza with humanitarian supplies and failing to reopen the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Most of the supplies entering Gaza, he said, are goods for private merchants to sell to the few people in Gaza with money, leaving masses of poor people struggling without food or shelter.

Last week, Israel said it was ready to reopen Rafah — Gaza's main gateway to the outside world — but only for people to leave the strip. Egypt and the Palestinians fear this is a plot to expel Gaza's Palestinians and say Israel is obligated to open the crossing in both directions.

The Oct. 7 attack killed over 1,200 people and took over 250 others hostage. It is the deadliest attack in Israel's history and remains a source of great national trauma.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 70,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, displaced nearly all of Gaza's 2 million people and caused widespread damage that will take years to rebuild. It remains unclear who will pay for the reconstruction or when it will begin.

The Palestinian Health Ministry, part of Gaza's Hamas government, does not distinguish between civilians and militants, but says that roughly half of the dead were women and children.

Naim acknowledged the Palestinians have paid a heavy price for Oct. 7 but when asked if the group regrets carrying out the attack, he insisted it came in response to years of Israeli policies going back to the war surrounding Israel's establishment in 1948.

"History didn't start on Oct. 7," he said. "Oct. 7 for us, it was an act of defense. We have done our duty to raise … the voice of our people."

Source: Koreatimes

The U.S. Supreme Court is set on Monday to weigh the legality of Donald Trump's firing of a Federal Trade Commission member in a major test of presidential power that could imperil a 90-year-old legal precedent.

The court will hear arguments in the Justice Department's appeal of a lower court's decision that the Republican president exceeded his authority when he moved to dismiss Democratic FTC member Rebecca Slaughter in March before her term was set to expire.

The case gives the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, an opportunity to overturn a New Deal-era Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States that has shielded the heads of independent agencies from removal since 1935.

Independent agencies are government entities whose heads have been given tenure-protected terms by Congress to keep these offices free from political interference by presidents.

A 1914 law passed by Congress permits a president to remove FTC commissioners only for cause - such as inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office - but not for policy differences. Similar protections cover officials at more than two dozen other independent agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.

Justice Department lawyers representing Trump have advanced arguments embracing the "unitary executive" theory. This conservative legal doctrine sees the president as possessing sole authority over the executive branch, including the power to fire and replace heads of independent agencies at will, despite legal protections for these positions.

Slaughter was one of two Democratic commissioners who Trump moved to fire in March from the consumer protection and antitrust agency before her term expires in 2029. The firings drew criticism from Democratic senators and antimonopoly groups concerned that the move was designed to eliminate opposition within the agency to big corporations.

Washington-based U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in July blocked Trump's firing of Slaughter, rejecting his administration's argument that the tenure protections unlawfully encroached on presidential power. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September in a 2-1 decision kept AliKhan's ruling in place.

But the Supreme Court later in September allowed Trump's ouster of Slaughter to go into effect - an action that drew dissents from its three liberal justices - while agreeing to hear arguments in the case.

The lower courts ruled that the statutory protections shielding FTC members from being removed without cause comply with the Constitution in light of the Humphrey's Executor precedent.

The Trump administration has argued that the modern FTC "indisputably wields executive power," thus bolstering the case that its members can be fired at will by the president. Lawyers for Slaughter acknowledged that the FTC's powers have grown since the Humphrey's Executor decision. But citing Supreme Court precedent they argued that the constitutionality of removal restrictions does not hinge on the breadth of an agency's regulatory and enforcement authority.

The case tests whether the court's conservatives are willing to rein in or overturn the Humphrey's Executor decision, which rebuffed Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to fire a Federal Trade Commission member over policy differences despite tenure protections given by Congress.

In the 1935 decision, the court said restricting a president's removal of commissioners was lawful because the FTC performed tasks more closely resembling legislative and judicial functions rather than those belonging squarely to the executive branch, headed by the president.

The Constitution set up a separation of powers among the U.S. government's coequal executive, legislative and judicial branches.

The Supreme Court in recent decades narrowed the reach of Humphrey's Executor but stopped short of overturning it. In a 2020 ruling, it said Article II of the Constitution gives the president the general power to remove heads of agencies at will but that the 1935 precedent had carved out an exception that allowed for-cause removal protections for certain multi-member, expert agencies.

Slaughter's case also gives the justices an opportunity to address whether lower courts are permitted to block the removal of executive officials even if such firings are found to have been illegal.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June.

In a similar case involving presidential powers, the court will hear arguments on January 21 in Trump's attempt to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, a move without precedent that challenges the central bank's independence.

Source: Reuters

China once stood at the center of global supply chains. Yet its role in U.S. trade has been shrinking fast. A decade ago, nearly 90% of supplier volume came from China, Hong Kong, and Korea. Today that share sits closer to 50%. Trump's first tariff push triggered the shift, and companies have kept moving ever since. Now trade flows look different, and the numbers tell a clear story.

Chinese exports to the U.S. dropped almost 29% in November alone. This marked the eighth straight month of double-digit declines. Even a recent trade truce has not reversed the fall. U.S. tariffs remain much higher on Chinese goods than on many other countries, so firms keep routing shipments through third markets. As a result, China sells less directly to America, even while selling more to Southeast Asia and Europe.

Trade Corridors Move Beyond China

Trump's tariff strategy pushed companies to search for new manufacturing hubs. They found them in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Malaysia. Together these countries now take a growing share of work once done in China. Wells Fargo data shows supplier diversification nearly doubled after the first tariff wave. Today the shift has reached a tipping point.

China's exports to South Asia have jumped sharply. For example, exports to Indonesia rose over 29% this year, while shipments to Vietnam and India also surged. But this growth masks the broader trend: more goods now move through Asia before reaching the U.S. Meanwhile, Vietnam's shipments to America are up 23%, and Thailand's rose more than 9%. Each increase shows how global trade routes keep reshaping as firms avoid U.S. tariffs tied to China. These corridors may become a permanent part of the new trade landscape.

U.S. Tariffs and Cash Strains Hit Importers

The tariff fight has not only shifted trade. It has strained U.S. corporate finances. Companies rushed to front-load inventories early in 2025 before Trump's tariff expansion took effect. Now that stockpile is nearly gone. As new shipments face higher levies, cash flow tightens.

Many importers can no longer negotiate better prices because their industries run on thin margins. Retail, apparel, and generic pharmaceuticals face the hardest squeeze. As a result, firms seek new financing tools to manage rising costs. Banks such as HSBC report a sharp jump in demand for trade finance. With tariffs rising from an average of 1.5% to double digits, cash has become king. Companies now rethink payment terms and supply chain strategies as they brace for more volatility.

China's Export Pivot and Domestic Pressures

China is adjusting too—quickly and strategically. Though exports to the U.S. keep falling, China's overall outbound shipments grew nearly 6% in November. Strong demand from ASEAN nations and Europe now offsets American weakness. China also increased shipments of critical minerals such as rare earths, signaling its intent to stay central to global industry.

However, domestic challenges remain. Factory activity shrank for the eighth straight month. Imports rose only slightly, showing weak consumer demand at home. Policymakers are preparing new stimulus measures to stabilize growth around 5%. They may ease rates, widen fiscal deficits, and support struggling sectors like housing. Moreover, officials aim to boost household spending, especially as the yuan strengthens. A stronger currency lowers import costs and could help shift China away from its heavy export dependence—a long-term goal Beijing now treats as urgent.

Markets React as Trade Realigns

Markets across Asia reflect these shifting currents. Investors are parsing every hint from China's trade data and every move by the Trump administration. In recent days, China's stronger-than-expected export numbers lifted mainland markets. Yet Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped, showing uneven confidence. Japan's revised GDP figures added further uncertainty, while Australia awaited a steady hand from its central bank.

U.S. markets, however, appear calmer. Major indexes posted gains as investors weighed both domestic and global data. Still, the trade story looms over every outlook. China's slowdown in U.S.-bound shipments, the rise of new manufacturing hubs, and Trump's tariff path all shape business expectations. Global supply chains no longer revolve around one country, and companies know the map will keep changing.

In this new environment, China and the U.S. remain tied together—but through a trade web that looks far less direct than before. The next moves from Washington and Beijing will decide whether this transformation accelerates or stabilizes. For now, the world adapts, one container at a time.

Source: CryptoSlate

A Russian liquefied natural gas export facility delivered its first shipment to China since being sanctioned by the US in January, the latest sign of increased energy cooperation between Beijing and Moscow.

The Valera vessel, which loaded a shipment from Gazprom PJSC's Portovaya facility on the Baltic Sea in October, arrived at the Beihei import terminal in southern China on Monday, ship data compiled by Bloomberg shows. Both Valera and Portovaya were sanctioned by Joe Biden's administration to thwart Russia's plans to boost LNG exports.

China, which doesn't recognize the unilateral sanctions, has increasingly bought blacklisted Russian gas over the last few months, ratcheting up energy ties between the two countries. Beijing has also ignored a broader push by US President Donald Trump to halt sales of Russian oil, which will likely be a key part of trade negotiations between Washington and New Delhi this week.

Russia has two relatively small LNG export facilities on the Baltic Sea, with the Novatek PJSC-led Vysotsk plant also blacklisted by the US. Another sanctioned Russian plant, the Arctic LNG 2 site in Siberia, started delivering fuel to Beihai in late August.

In mid-October, satellite images showed a tanker that loaded at Portovaya transferring fuel into another vessel registered to a Hong Kong-based company near Malaysia. That ship, known as CCH Gas, has been sending out false location signals, and was spotted by satellites near China last month. It isn't clear where it is currently located.

Source: Bloomberg Europe

Markets are betting overwhelmingly that Fed policymakers will cut interest rates this week for a third straight meeting. Yet the bond market's reaction to those moves has been highly unusual.

Treasury yields are climbing even as the central bank lowers rates. By some measures, a disconnect like this hasn't been seen since the 1990s.

What the divergence indicates is a matter of heated debate. Opinions are all over the place, from the bullish (a sign of confidence that recession will be averted) to the more neutral (a return to pre-2008 market norms) to the favorite narrative of so-called bond vigilantes (investors are losing confidence the US will rein in the constantly swelling national debt).

But one thing is clear: The bond market isn't buying Donald Trump's idea that faster rate cuts will send bond yields sliding down and, in turn, slash the rates on mortgages, credit cards and other types of loans.

With Trump soon able to replace Chair Jerome Powell with his own nominee, there's also the risk that the Fed squanders its credibility by caving to political pressure to ease policy more aggressively — which could backfire by fanning already elevated inflation and pushing yields higher.

"Trump 2.0 is all about getting long-term yields down," said Steven Barrow, head of G10 strategy at Standard Bank in London. "Putting a political figure at the Fed will not get bond yields down."

The Fed started pulling its benchmark rate down in September 2024 and has since cut it by 1.5 percentage points. Traders see another quarter point cut Wednesday and are pricing in two more such moves next year, which would bring its rate to around 3%.

Yet Treasury yields haven't come down at all. Ten-year yields have risen nearly half a percentage point to 4.1% since the Fed started easing policy and 30-year yields are up over 0.8 percentage point. —Ye Xie and Michael MacKenzie

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is expected to push through another quarter-point interest-rate cut this week despite unease among fellow policymakers that inflation remains too high. Elsewhere, central bank decisions from Australia to Switzerland to Brazil will draw attention from investors.

Source: Bloomberg Europe

Bitcoin is testing a key Fibonacci retracement support level, raising concerns of a potential drop to $76,000 if the level breaks, according to analysts monitoring market conditions.

The implications are significant for Bitcoin and related large-cap cryptocurrencies due to correlation, potentially affecting broader market conditions and investor sentiment.

Bitcoin is currently trading near a key Fibonacci retracement support as analysts warn of potential declines. Traders closely watch this technical level, which they say could lead to BTC nearing its April 2025 lows around $76,000 if it breaks down.

Key market figures include Bitcoin spot and derivatives traders on major platforms like Binance and CME. Daan Crypto Trades specifically highlights the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement zone as crucial, with a potential breakdown towards $76,000 if it fails.

The immediate concern is heightened selling pressure if Bitcoin loses its support level, further propelled by low weekend trading volumes. Market watchers note this could trigger a cascade of liquidations due to significant leveraged positions. Concerns extend to ETF outflows and reduced institutional demand, which are crucial factors influencing whether the current Fibonacci support will hold or break, potentially impacting broader market sentiment and risk appetites.

Daan Crypto Trades, Crypto Derivatives Trader, Twitter/X – "The 0.382 Fibonacci retracement zone is the line bulls must defend, and a breakdown could send BTC back to April levels near $76,000": source

Besides Bitcoin, assets like Ethereum and Chainlink could experience correlated impacts due to market sentiment. Analysts observe support in the $83–84k band, with risks rising if Bitcoin falls below the 0.382 Fibonacci level. With the potential for accelerated bearish momentum, tracking on-chain metrics offers insights. Historical trends indicate that failure to maintain key support levels often results in swift moves to subsequent Fibonacci bands, intensified by leverage and liquidity dynamics.

Source: CryptoSlate