11th February 2022 > > Blackrock loves cryptos!

Market Snap (at time of writing)

Market Wrap

The UK economy had the best year ever in 2021 since WWII. GDP expanded by 7.5% putting the UK at the top of the G-7 league.

I thought there was a recent event that was assumed to guarantee that the UK economy would be in dire straits compared to anywhere else in the developed world. I cannot quite recall what that event was, but it looks to me that the fears were - how shall I put this - overdone perhaps?

Moving on.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Blackrock

The world’s biggest asset manager Blackrock has over 10 TRILLION of assets under management (AUM).

Let us remind ourselves once again what a TRILLION dollars actually looks like:

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

To describe Blackrock, formed in 1988, as one of the most successful and innovative companies of all time would be an understatement. Every single meeting I had with them was very tough, but very professional. There are some smart cookies driving their business forward.

Blackrock has a significant stake in MicroStrategy (MS) at 16.3% last time I checked, which shows strong support for Michael Saylor’s conviction about BTC. Michael you will recall is the CEO of MS.

Blackrock is now intent on further developing its own crypto space with:

“… client support trading and then with their own credit facility.”

This will be done through the in-house trading platform Aladdin.

Be in no doubt – this will be one of the most robust, intuitive, and user-friendly platforms ever created for buying, storing, and selling cryptos.

…

The major crypto exchanges will be all over this initiative, to provide liquidity to Blackrock, and to enhance their own product offering.

To date, Binance and their immature, childish CEO, Changpeng Zhao, have deliberately gone out of their way to avoid compliance and regulatory requirements, mostly by refusing to have a head office anywhere in the world. In my opinion, this approach is not sustainable even in the medium term, but the execs at Binance continue to refuse to listen to me.

I would be most surprised if Blackrock would even consider using them as a liquidity provider in these circumstances. Developments like this will ensure that Binance either grows up or fades into obscurity.

…

As a thought experiment, if 5% of Blackrock’s AUM were to be converted into BTC, that would give a price for BTC at $70k.

Very nice.

Reserve Treasury Protocols (before they all go to zero)

Reminder – Olympus and Wonderland are, to the best of my knowledge, live viable projects. XEUS, FORT and JADE turned out to be scams, though they are still live scams. Scams are not uncommon in these Wild West fringes of Decentralised Finance (DeFi).

Point of order – a staunch and loyal supporter of the CCC has asked that I make clear that it is only my belief that JADE is a scam. The project is still very much alive, and there is a wide body of opinion that does not concur with my view. I am very happy to make this point – the CCC believes that consenting adults are allowed to have different opinions on a wide range of topics.

Photon appears to have won the prize for being the most extraordinary scam. In under 18 hours it went to zero. And as far as I can tell – and I am no blockchain analytics expert – they walked away with less than $30k.

It is very upsetting we have scumbags like that around.

Open positions:

Closed positions: