15th August 2025 > > Price action, scams, & WULF.

tl;dr

Never, ever forget that every single penny spent by the government is fully justified and deserved, as we have been promised. The WattsApp scams just keep on coming – I get them on a daily basis now. WULF sees a timely boost.

Market Snap 

Market Wrap

Well, that was rather surprising bit of price action yesterday. The new ATH at $124.5k was followed by a rapid sell-off, killing lots of the leveraged children (perpetual futures funding rates dropped close to zero) from which we have not recovered. The trigger was an unexpectedly high PPI reading compounded by an interview with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Fox Business who stated that the US would not actively buy BTC to add to its reserves. Though he rowed back on that comment later in the day, the damage was done.

Completely ignorant of the irony of doing so, the techies were out immediately flogging their snake oil to the highest bidder. Captain Faibik wrote:

“This combination suggests the top might be in and a bearish rally could be around the corner.”

Love that. “A bearish rally”. That is about the most nonsensical comment anyone could ever make.

Occasional Series – The best Fringe one-liner 2025

“The oldest profession is actually the DJ. They’ve been around since records began.”

Kevin O’Brien.

Occasional Series – Taxpayers’ money is always well spent

A quango you will never have heard of, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), has moved offices from Moorgate to Canary Wharf. It takes a whole six minutes on the Elizabeth Line to get from Moorgate to Canary Wharf.

Staff at the FRC are being offered additional ex-gratia monthly payments that are not subject to income tax or N.I. to help them “adjust” to the new office commute, for those employees who actually bother to go to the office (*).

Sounds perfectly reasonable and fair to me.

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In entirely unrelated news, the Office for Value for Money (you cannot make this up), is now being closed after just one year, having cost taxpayers a total of £598,474 to date. That figure does not include redundancy payments, nor their pension entitlements.

The list of achievements by the OVM is rather less than the combined productivity of my two goldfish on a typical day.

Again, I have to say, it all sounds perfectly reasonable and fair to me.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – The old WattsApp scam

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – BTC miners

BTC mining stocks have long been a core part of a crypto-focussed stock portfolio, giving access to the inevitable rise in the price of BTC with the added advantage of using tax-free wrappers such as 401(k) plans, ISAs, and pensions.

WULF (TeraWulf Inc.) announced yesterday it had inked a deal to provide computing power to Google for A.I. purposes, nothing to do with cryptos. The stock jumped over 60% on the day.

Take the wins every time. Well done, everybody.

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(*) It is rumoured that the same additional payments will also be made to the WFH laggards, as they should not suffer financial discrimination compared to those folk who actually bother to get out of bed for work on a morning.