God bless each & every one of y'alls cryptophile selves. We LOVE you.   Schmaltz with us girls n boys for a precious second! It's all about love.  Even y'all atheists, if ya wanna help people in the street, then y'all are surfing in the warm frothy sunshiny love of the judeo christian worldview.  We STILL love ya even if y'all are believing "everyone's where they wanna be " when stepping over bums, some religions work that way, it's OK.   Because just by reading this, y'all are all loving humanity as we move to freedom from fiat abuse.  If here,  we thank each of us and the impeccable Publish0x  for giving this cherished time together.  Dragging the Overton window of the FT (kicking and screaming ) up the Sisyphean hill of crypto to look out over the fallen Cantillon abusers. 

The FT WEEKEND !   Crypto stays with the big boys on the World Indices table, we bet they won't drop it again lol!! 

We mark DAY SIX of the FT's blackout on Nexo acquiring Vauld.  It's funny - the WSJ has moved PAST Antoni acquiring Vauld!  Now Antoni has Ibankers to help Nexo shop for MORE companies.    Sammy Fried passed on  Celsius as Alex the Machine's stinky accounting "lost" a couple billion, now Patch says Alex cashed $44MM personally while mortals were locked out.  Contrariwise,  Vauld's young CEO says Nexo's deal term sheet protects Vauld deposits. Seems like news FT! 

Weekend catch-up repeats the push to make mutual funds into mutualcoins!!    Yaayyy!!

The nasty FT prints a letter saying crypto is " only a hedge against common sense."  Oh hardy har har.  We are sure JJ is worth so much more than Sammy Fried.  Satoshi's wallet is spare change, huh JJ?? One FU eds, as both crypto letters printed are negative. 

Dear readers know we love articles about crypto that are NOT about crypto!  Here's a different one - artists are pissed about how the art world makes money for themselves but not for the artist.  Famous clashes ensue.  One collector loses a case  for flipping art too soon and has to pay an art house six figures extra,  but still nothing to the artist.   Hey FT, didja know now some NFT's enforce that the artist gets paid every d-mn time the art flips?  Yeah, you KNOW, yer just not saying!! 

Here's an article hiding in the Intellect section of the FT Weekend, Notes from the cutting edge  oooh ooh so highbrow we love it!  Oh no - it's phygital.  Icky.  Cyberpunk authors gave us cool words like "cyberspace" (Gibson) and metaverse (Stevenson), borg, edgerunner, flatlining , steampunk etc. A brit advertising exec gave us "Phygital," a meme on the fail god willing. 

No sites with "crypto " in their name touch this word, bless them.  Phygital IS  all over wearemarketing.com, mytotalretail.com, sbshoppingbasket.com, every picture tells a story don't it.  Is it so wrong to express our hatred for the blob with the double beanie??  Probably, cuz we use disco pop song love as well. 

TLDR, rehash of  crypto woes, down "trillions.”  The FT ran "The Next Web" in Amsterdam last month. The FT expected no one to "champion crypto," no "hardcore believers" left to HODL.  They were surprised to hear of crypto's "long term value" and positive attitude about downturns = "now is the time to build." NFT's are part of the "optimistic notion" of decentralized Web3 and did $41 billion last year. 

Sandra, the CEO of the loftily named Global Blockchain Business Council, says "I hate this word" but then says it: phygital.  Phygital = metaverse = kids growing up online. To Sandra, phygital is the t-shirt you get when you buy one for your designer avatar. Also the name of an NFT exchange about to launch 3D NFTs.  The FT asks the classic FT (mis)leading question "worried cuz crash? " Phygital Julian says "Not in the slightest." FTX Amy says it's a "long cycle, may take years."  Some momentum in sports NFTS, but OpenSea's volume is down 85%. People attending TNW "in real life" seemed happy.  But this only makes the FT think, despite NFT evangelizing, owning digital assets does not seem that compelling outside the crypto bubble. 

The REAL story:  The Next Web company was fun for many years, link below to "Tech's biggest f-ck ups" in 2017.  TNW calls out Google and Uber for sexist gender gaps etc.  This is a chucklefest indeed, since Wiki says The Next Web "came under fire" in 2017 for having, y'all guessed it!  Gender pay gaps, presenter gender gaps, plus "misleading statements" (??) and not disclosing pay for play (which we hate.)  The FT bought The Next Web in 2019.  

Use that "trillions down" line while you can boys, won't last. We ARE really happy that the FT found true crypto fans at TNW.  We combed thru eighty-odd speakers, unless Oatley is now a coin, there was  ONE lonely crypto speaker. TBF it was Mr Polkadot, Gavin Woods, but think banks, E&Y, IBM, microsoft, Google, yawn for cutting edge. 

OK now spidey sense is tingling over Amy from Global Blockchain Business Council. We distrust companies with "Global" in the name, having worked at a few, and HATE the "Council" word.  And GBBC sounds too much like CBDC to us.  Dear readers KNOW the FT loves to elevate crypto haters at companies that sound pro-crypto.  Bingo, the GBBC  mission is to "engage regulators."  Not spread crypto love, just get paid to regulate. They launched at Davos and HQ is in Washington, D.C. Are they one of us??   No crypto powerhouses can be seen aboard on Linked in, we distrust but can't verify. 

Overall, Judges  give .6 FU  for the negative spin and leading bias, .6 FU for talking & bashing crypto in a not leading edge not crypto convention that still wants crypto eyeballs in print.   .6 FU cause the "optimistic notion" of web3 DeFi exchanges actually did a TRILLION BUCKS in volume last year, and .6 to Amy for saying the execrable "phygital."   Total of 2.4 FU's!  NO BEANIE CAP!!! 

A big spread with Sammy Fried!  TLDR:  Memestonk & crypto volumes went to the moon. Now, down volumes leave crypto and stock brokerages eying each other's lunch. FTX is about to offer stocks, Robin Hood already offers crypto.  Sammy owns ~8% of RobinHood. Interactive Brokers, Bitpanda & Public.com do both crypto and stocks, as soon will Fidelity, Schwab, Virtu & Citadel. Bitpanda says stockbroker's systems look all 2017 lol.  Economics for brokers are weird, depending on interest on funds, plus often selling order flow (cough Robinhood)  for frontrunning by the big boys.  FTX says they will NOT do that. 

Sammy is shopping around!!   Sammy says "thousands of mobile brokers are nothing but a mobile app to payment for order flow. "  Schwab mostly only makes money on interest.  A snotty oversized quote from Interactive Brokers  founder Thomas " Other brokers will go into crypto soon as well, provided that crypto is still a thing."  

The REAL Story :  here we see the FT trumpet "Crypto"  to draw eyes to a story that is really about big changes coming for stockbrokers.  We know ya wanna date us, FT.   Thomas from IB is a massive innovator who hacked the Quotron (lol, we used to work on the Quotron Redev Team, QRT) & forced the Amex and CBOE to allow computers on the floor.  IB offers crypto for nearly a year now, that quote was just a throwaway figure of speech the FT pounced on to suit their narrative.  Judges really want to give  half an FU for using crypto as a lead to a stockbroker story, and half a FU for highlighting Thomas seemingly hinting that crypto might go away.  But perhaps only the headline editors put this neggy crypto spin on, hard to blame Madison & Josh.  Still, say half an FU for the nothingburger on crypto. 

FT Money has a greatest hits retour of Bitcoin.

TLDR: David went through the FT's archive & runs through many fun facts about the rise & fall & etc of BTC.  Cool early Japanese focus. Lots of possible history. Closing paragraphs say BTC was fueled by small investors, now crashed by regulators, market correlation, and "risks of the sector" spooking HODLRS. Repeat of the Katie Long View quote that BTC is "possibly even the most speculative (asset) of all time." Regulators promise to be "unrelentingly hard." It remains largely unclear how rules around crypto will work in practice. Joined up thinking and regulators could help crypto build trust and stability. 

The REAL story: 

We certainly can argue with much of their reporting details.  FT does not mention US regs killing LIbra.  They mention the Chinese banning of BTC but do not highlight the crash starting THAT DAY.  The FT mentions the ETF launch, but dear readers know this is ONLY a ETF FUTURES, not spot, launch, which clubbed btc like a baby seal in our opinion.   Gold price action has been widely known to be nerfed by the central banks, no discussion of this vis a vis BTC.  

 The "speculative " hack is getting really old.  As of this writing, fiatmarketcap lists over a hundred world currencies. BTC even after this "crash" still dogs all but 24 of those fiats.  It's not just speculative, it is technically awesome, the finest, hardest, most portable durable accepted divisible fungible LIMITED SUPPLY money ever EVER made, the maths and distributed design are genius and clearly ($#*#(*&$ !!!! have intrinsic value.  

In the last paragraph tho, David spits the truth - "largely unclear" how regs will really bite.  China banned BTC does anyone believe NO chinese hold BTC?  Overall, judges give only a little FU dust.  Good job David. 

Peace out, love to the fams, safe home, love from the fun factory

Dave