20th October 2025 > > Satoshi, NYC, & Japan.

tl;dr

An early email from our Lord and Saviour Satoshi Nakamoto makes for interesting reading. Andrew Cuomo would be the right man to be Mayor of NYC, but it isn’t going to happen. Japan joins the ever-growing list of countries leaving the UK behind, crypto-wise.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

During last week’s market wobbles, I greedily put in some low-ball bids for BTC at $99k, $95k, $90k, and an egregious $80k. They do not look like they have much chance of being filled now, which is a shame. I could have been one of the very last people to buy BTC for less than six figures.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Oh my, tingles all the way down the spine

That was written in 2008.

If you do not feel the tingles too, I cannot help you.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – New York City Mayor

When we last checked (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/15th-october-2025-scammers-nyc), Zohran Mamdani was the favourite to become the next NYC Mayor with an 88% chance according to Polymarket. Today, he is now at 93%, which is deeply upsetting for all of us. He is of a radical bent, and you can be very sure he will roll back the recent crypto-positive initiatives launched by the current incumbent Eric Adams, who is finally starting to make good on the promises he made to us four years ago.

In an alternative universe, independent candidate Anrew Cuomo – who lost the primary to extremist Mamdani – would be the one at 93%, for he is the man we want to be Mayor of NYC:

We need someone like Andrew as our Prime Minister here in the UK.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Japan

The UK’s regulator, the FCA, could learn a lot from its counterparts in Japan, the FSA.

Until now, the FSA has had a frosty stance towards cryptos, effectively banning regulated banks from any involvement in the crypto industry. This is a desperately short-sighted approach, and not just because it restricts the potential to harvest crypto tax-dollars to fritter away, but also because it drives crypto activity out of the regulated sphere. We have seen something similar in the TradFi world since the GFC nearly a decade ago – regulators and central banks have forced a lot of lending activity to more leveraged borrowers out of the regulated banks, and into the shadow banking sector. Fears about that unregulated lending added to risk markets’ woes last week. It is an issue that will come back, and it will cause problems. The regulators will claim it is nothing to do with them, when in fact they are the cause of this lending being unregulated. You won’t be surprised to hear that the hapless Andrew Bailey, currently Governor of the Bank of England who remarkably is even more incompetent than his predecessor, Mark Carney, was head of the FCA after the GFC. Bailey and Carney were the driving force behind moving riskier lending into the shadow banking sector, possibly the most damaging decision someone in their respective roles could ever make. We do not deserve their kind.

According to Live Door News (https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/29807537/), the situation in Japan is about to change. My Japanese is a little rusty these days, but the gist of the article is that the FSA is meeting to discuss the benefits of aligning crypto asset regulation with that of TradFi securities. There will be capital charges naturally, but this move will likely lead to regulated banks offering custody services to retail and institutional investors, as well as crypto trading platforms. Regulated crypto custody is a necessary precondition for the institutional adoption of cryptos.

This is the type of enlightened approach that is sorely lacking in the UK, with no prospect of that changing anytime soon.