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2nd February 2025 > > Tariffs, El Salvador, & DeepFake.

Updated: 6 days ago

tl;dr

Import tariffs imposed by the US is a very dangerous move for all of us. El Salvador is bullied into giving up some sovereignty to the IMF. DeepFake is proving to be a fake.


Market Snap


Market Wrap

Last week we had the DeepFake news hurting stock and cryptos. On Friday, the White House announced:


“Trump is enacting an additional 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% tariff on imports from China.”


We saw an immediate BTC sell-off from $106k to $102k. This morning that sell-off continued taking us below $100k. Stocks are down too but not so dramatically. Crypto has always been the higher beta play whilst the Asian execution desks usually amplify Friday’s stock and bond moves at times of stress. I wonder whether there might also be an element of hedging an expected stock sell-off tomorrow by using the crypto markets. I guess we will know the answer to that tomorrow morning.


Canada, Mexico, and China have all responded with their own tariffs on US exports. A full-blown trade war would be very bad for the global economy. We saw with the self-imposed closure during the illegal and illiberal overreaction to Covid that shutting down supply chains, whilst simultaneously printing money, is a guaranteed method of stoking inflation. A trade war would not be so extreme, but inflationary pressures would grow. During Covid, central banks worked in direct opposition to their own mandate by engaging in quantitative easing. There is no reason to believe that there would be any other outcome this time around.


Occasional Series – HMRC life hack

We have all experienced the horrors of trying to talk to someone at HMRC about our personal taxes. It is possible (usual?) to be held in a queue for hours, only to be cut-off. Soul destroying.


Well, I have a solution.


When you call HMRC, answer the automated system in a way that ensures you get put through to the business PAYE helpline. That helpline is fully staffed, with very low wait times. When it finally becomes clear they cannot help (a bit of harmless distraction and obfuscation leading up to this point does not go amiss), they will transfer you to the personal PAYE line (so long as the call has been just long enough to qualify as ticking the right boxes as having been solved) and, crucially, at the front of the personal PAYE queue, significantly cutting the wait time.


Marvellous.


You all owe me a beer or two for that one.


Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – El Salvador

Stung by the CCC’s recent critique on 23rd January, 2025 (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/23rd-january-2025-el-salvador-pension-funds) the IMF has reacted in the only it knows how – with a petulant display of bullying and spite.


You will recall that following the approval of a loan tranche of $1.4bn from the IMF to El Salvador, the latter materially upped its daily purchases of BTC twice in short order. Perhaps I should have kept quiet about this admittedly somewhat cheeky manoeuvre, for armed with this new knowledge, the IMF threatened to withhold the next $2bn loan tranche unless El Salvador rowed back on classifying BTC as legal tender, which it has now done.


The daily purchase of one BTC by El Salvador will continue unabated, but there is no doubt that in the many, many boardrooms of the IMF, plenty of very expensive bottles of port and champagne – paid for by us as taxpayers – have been consumed in celebration of what the senior management believes incorrectly to be a body blow against the crypto revolution.


However, for now, we must concede that in this particular game the score stands at:


IMF                                                                                              1

Liberty, freedom, democracy, privacy, and dignity             0


Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – DeepFake is falling apart

There are many unanswered questions concerning the obviously fallacious claims of the technological hardware and the associated costs behind DeepFake, claims which sent ructions through the stock markets with Nvidia down 17% at one point, and temporarily causing a crypto sell-off. My sources indicate that there was a large buyer of Nvidia ATM puts out of an eastern region of the world just before the news broke. I am not allowed to identify the buyer, but let’s just say there were not too many letters in the surname.


The bias in DeepFake is extraordinary, with only pleasant things to say about the massacre in Tiananmen square, and its refusal to countenance the independence of Taiwan.


Now, there are issues surfacing about data privacy (i.e. there isn’t any – the data is being fed to TikTok, aka the Chinese government). Italy has banned the app, South Korea is about to do the same, and the Australian government is warning its citizens to be cautious. The CCC never gives financial advice, but when it comes to life advice, don’t go anywhere near this app.


I will soon be on a fully funded fact-finding mission to China to assess the process and the scale of crypto adoption amongst those who do not hail from the political elite. Desirous as I am to keep my visa intact, I should probably self-censor on this topic going forward. I do hope none of you are Chinese spies.

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