20th July 2024 > > IT issues & US politics.

tl;dr

Cryptos prove their resilience as TradFi struggles with some IT issues. US politics again, and not for the last time.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Despite shorts being liquidated in size, they keep coming back for more. I am enjoying their pain.

Occasional Series – Wowzer

https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1814222192151867840

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Price prediction

Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3, in response to BTC breaching $60k to the upside, has this to say:

“Say goodbye to sub $0.06mm BTC forever.”

Go on Samson!

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Microsoft and CrowdStrike

Banks were closed, 911 services were shut down in several states, planes couldn’t fly, large retailers could only take cash, the LSE had trouble settling trades, and plenty of other problems all caused by the inherent unreliability of the few lines of code at the heart of MS-DOS.

Meanwhile, cryptos remained completely unscathed in terms of both functionality and price. The former was expected, the latter was surprising even to me.

The case for accelerating the integration of the decentralised world into the centralised world has never been made so convincingly as it has been now.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – US politics

The CCC has often expressed scepticism about Trump’s sudden pro-crypto pivot. I believe the prospect of swaying the votes of 50mm or so Americans who own cryptos, and the fat rewards from various Trump-driven NFT collections, carry far more weight with Trump than the fundamental ethos behind cryptos of freedom from government sponsored coercion and control. It is easy to imagine that Trump would be as keen on a CBDC as Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Convicted Criminal Christine Lagarde, Russia, China, North Korea, et al.

Well, it turns out that Trump was as quick to pivot away from cryptos when it suited him to do so.

At the Republican Convention that rubber-stamped Trump’s candidacy for the Presidential Election, Trump resorted to one of his favourite themes. In a wide-ranging criticism of El Salvador and Nayib Bukele Trump made stuff up: “he is sending all of his criminals, his drug dealers, his people that are in jail, he is sending them all to the United States.”

Nayib is the driving force behind a massive drop in the murder rate in one of the most violent countries in the world (56% lower in 2022 and 70% lower in 2023) as well as being the inspiration for making BTC legal tender in El Salvador, with an official policy of buying 1 BTC per day. If only I could do the same.

In Nashville next week, Trump is scheduled to appear at the 2024 Bitcoin conference. One can only assume that he will repeat his previous claims that he will encourage the crypto industry in the US, whilst also being rude about Gensler and Warren, an activity which is rightly the sole preserve of the CCC.

Wild rumours of copying El Salvador by adding BTC to the Fed’s reserves are very wide of the mark.

…

Whilst on the subject of Warren, the Winklevoss twins – famed for their involvement in Real Bedford F.C. (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/14th-april-2024-real-bedford-f-c) – have donated $1mm to the campaign of John Deaton who is challenging Warren for the Senate seat of Massachusetts in November.

Tyler calls it right on X:

“Elizabeth Warren is one of the single greatest threats to American prosperity. When it comes to crypto, she is public enemy number one. She’s the chief architect and driver of the Biden Administration’s war on crypto. She wages this unlawful war by weaponizing government agencies to attack our industry through a combination of debanking, bad faith enforcement actions, and other abuses of power.”

The ever-growing use of debanking of individuals or groups (starting with Choke Point 1.0 that inspired Justin Trudeau’s single-handed assault on freedom) on any grounds other than legal is frighteningly illiberal.

Tyler is also rude about Warren, but the CCC will let him do so just this once without prior permission:

“Unfortunately, Elizabeth Warren’s reign of terror is not limited to the crypto industry. She fundamentally believes that free markets are bad and should be regulated into oblivion, that businesses are evil and the cause of most societal problems, and those who start them and lead them are villains. This cartoonish world view is the kind only an out of touch, elite university professor can hold, which is exactly what Elizabeth Warren is.”

…

What bugs me the most is the hypocrisy.