12th August 2024 > > Operation Choke Point 2.0.

tl;dr

I am slightly ashamed to admit this, but after all these years, it finally happened to me. I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. All this time I have been missing out, and now I know just how good it feels, and how lucky you have been to have had this experience in your lives. I couldn’t be happier.

Operation Choke Point 2.0 is back in full swing. Tomorrow we will look at Choke Point 3.0, for there are some tensions between the two of them, though they are as equally malign as each other.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

A disappointing start to the week, probably due to profit-taking after a 20% gain in just a few days. But we are not as disappointed as the poor chap who fat-fingered a transaction fee of $90k when moving just $2k of ETH:

Curious Cryptos’ meme corner

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – My very first time …

I am so pleased. It finally happened to me for the very first time.

Come on, you know what I am talking about.

I got “that” email, you know, the sextortion one, with a word document attached:

Just for fun, here is my slightly redacted reply (not for the bleeding hearts. If you are one of those, please look away): 

I know, I know, I am just encouraging the ferals to spam my email address, but I do feel better about the world now.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Operation Choke Point 2.0

The original Operation Choke Point ended in ignominy for both the United States Department of Justice (shades of 1984 with that naming convention) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, with some loss of prestige and reputation to some of the political elite wielding their power at the time.

But it proved such an effective tool at subjugating types of businesses that though entirely legal, were frowned upon by some of the great and good, it was no surprise to see it resurrected in an attempt to stifle the crypto revolution. A combination of the bank regulators and the SEC acted in concert to stop crypto firms gaining access to the traditional banking world, with some success it has to be said. A relatively detailed analysis from February 2023 is worth reading, though it is a little on the politically partisan side, bias which should be ignored:

https://www.piratewires.com/p/crypto-choke-point

It seems that this illegal and illiberal practice is still ongoing. Tyler Winklevoss explains:

“Today, the Fed confirmed that Operation Choke Point 2.0 remains in full swing, provided valuable insight into how it works, and verified that the Harris crypto "reset" is a scam. The Fed revealed all of this in a 13-page enforcement action it issued this morning against crypto-friendly bank Customers Bancorp Inc.”

This enforcement action contains the following two key statements:

“… Bancorp has pursued a business strategy that involves offering banking services to digital asset customers …”

“Effective immediately, the Organization shall provide the Reserve Bank with written notice thirty days prior to engaging in:

(a)    any new strategic initiative, product, service, or relationship with third parties related to the digital asset strategy;”

The document is here:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/files/enf20240808a1.pdf

As Tyler makes plain, no specific irregularities have been publicly identified, though the Fed claims otherwise. What the bureaucrats are doing here is to take control of a private business, force it to rewrite its internal policies as an act of coercion, and determine with whom or what it can or cannot provide its services to in the future.

This dystopian world is exactly the motivation for the crypto revolution, and proves its necessity beyond all doubt.