Hodlers, Cryptophiles, and all the next gen believers in non-fiat money, we are mad for all y'all, the flame of the torch we carry for your Austrian economic arses will never go out!  Got nothing but love for ya baby!!!  Sending out shots in the arm, ice in the shorts, whatever it takes to answer the bell for the next round of the great fiat wars of the 21st century. Yes, there's blood on the streets n it's up to our ankles, but  the children of your children's children will thank  y'all- except they will actually just take it for granted that of course y'all did the right thing. 

Zooming in, it's funny.  Last FT Weekend had a grand total of zero crypto.  This Weekend - surprise surprise, the old guard has us on the ropes so the FT piles on with a bloody fistful of stories!!  Dig deep for what remains of a sense of humor,  rally round and let's sally forth to take our pounding with our big boy (and girl) pants on,  and kick back hard where we can. 

For some perspective, let's start with the 1.7 BILLION dollar loss seen BY A SINGLE COMPANY on June 15th.  OMG that's so sad.  Oh wait, that was the damage done to the market cap of South Korea's Hybe when the boy band BTS announced plans to do solo albums, ar ar ar.  No, really. 

Starting again, this time in crypto with the lofty, gimlet eye of Lex, we find the first in a brutal batch of headlines.  TLDR: Hodlers love BTC as a hedge vs. inflation. But rising energy costs hurt miners, even as rising interest rates "crumple" BTC. Hurting miners crank up efforts/hash rates to fight back, but that's a red queen's race (no, not the Braindance Cyberpunk one.)  JP Morgan thinks that high hash rates imply miners are about to capitulate as they did in 2018 and 2020, exiting the market.  In closing (dear reader know we love City aphorisms, yay!!)  Price floors can crumble, "beware of catching falling knives. " The real story - wow Lex, touche?  yesterday the FT trumpeted a 4% drop in hash rates as doomsday, today HIGH hash rates prove Armageddon is around the corner.  Lose lose, ya got us boxed there big guy huh!!??  Checkmate, all over.  Nah.  What Lexie don't say - the hash rate red queen's race (where one must run ever faster just to stay in the same place) is BY DESIGN, genius baked into BTC.   Bitcoin is jest fine with not too many miners or boatloads.

A big yawn.  Moving on, we got ground to cover.  Next, Brendan weighs in.  The story:   Mashinsky quotes Volcker - "banks are not your friends." But Alex is suffering from a very banky problem, a bank run!!   The hubris of Celsius is funny. Banks do s-ck, preying on the poor with fees, minimum balances, etc, so 20% of the USA is unbanked, but that's because the returns on being a good bank are "terrible" and ripping off the underclass is profitable.  Crypto doesn't matter, because only 12% have any, and only 2% ever used crypto for purchases.  BNPL is used by 10% of the people,  it's better than bank overdrafts. Crypto is NOT the solution.

The REAL story: the hubris of "the Machine" is NOT the hubris of BTC, pal.  It's still bleeding edge early in the fiat wars, buddy, let's watch those stats change.  TBF, we have never used modern BNPL because for many decades, numerous versions of buy now pay later have been a classic, famously evil trap whenever touched.   Maybe they are magically better this time around,  but boy howdy we doubt it.   Bottom line - really, that's all ya got, FT??  BNPL is a bigger better innovation that BTC?  Let's look back on that and laugh in a few years. 

On the same page, we got Coinbase taking steady mortar and small-arms fire.  TLDR: A "most senior exec" at Coinbase refuses to rule out further cuts!!!  Rehash of same story - Coinbase cuts under 20% of staff,  Crypto.com & Gemini cut too,  BTC  and ETH and Coinbase stock number go down, that's about it. 

The real story:  Rehash with a nice chart.  First off, did the FT ever interview a wall street firm announcing cuts and demand that they rule out any further cuts?  We all know damn well that answer. 

Dear readers also know we kinda hate Crypto.com and the Wrinkledfloss twins already/anyway, so there's that.  Plus layoffs are healthy, what's the Godfather quote about going to the mattresses ??? Plus we think the FT heard us b-tching about the junior level quotes, so they got the CPO, the chief policy officer Faryar to quote this time. Maybe skip this petty rant, we know we are old & in the way, but WTF is a CPO???  In our misguided and underpaid career, (surely nothing to do with our stinky attitude and utter lack of political skills)  we've been forced to go into the corner office to 'splain fintech issues to many a fine great gray carpet ape, including CEOs, CAOs, CSOs and COOs.  Sometimes they threatened to wrap golf clubs around our neck.  We once got a CFO we liked fired when we thought we were helping him by finding a million USD in lost recurring revenue.  We have worked with awesome CTOs to fight bad CIOs, and worked for the (and as a) CMO.  But we don't know nuthin bout no chief Policy officer,  sounds like a glorified PR dude to us.  Sorry, that just shows our blind spot.  Anyway, hidden in the tail of the story, to his credit Faryar repeats B(illy Joe ?) Armstrong's feelings, telling unhappy employees wall street chestnut #37.2 - don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.  Hidden in the very LAST sentence?  Sammy Fried at FTX is not planning ANY layoffs.  Hidden on the cutting room floor?  CZ / big number one Binance is HIRING ~50%.  Bigger yawn, filling space. 

OK, NEXT !!! a great big story - Singapore's Three Arrows is dead.  TLDR:  TA can't meet margin calls. Celsius and Babel locked up. BlockFi and Genesis liquidated their investments in TA.  Finblox is 2/3 locked up.  TA mistimed the supercycle and the fund dropped from 10BN to 4BN.  TA held Luna, Terra, Axie Infinity, and Avalanche (stinky) chitcoins (down 90%.)  Plus TA was doing weird chit where they thought they were arbing Grayscale's 30% discount versus Grayscale's BTC holdings by borrowing BTC to give to Grayscale for stock they then tried to sell or hold or something. The REAL story - actually this is pretty dang good reporting.  Thanks, FT Kadim and Josh. We did not know Babel had locked up.  We did not even remember Finblox, who was backed by Three  Arrows and  Sequoia Capitial (WTF Sequoia, we had always liked/trusted y'alls thinking??)  but since Finblox was offering 90% annual yields on loaned crypto, it's OK to say sayonara & adiós to that bad blood.  TA's billion dollar Grayscale position tanked 50%.  Grayscale won't even allow  BTC withdrawals.   AND, ya know we are here for the belly laughs and this story delivers.  Three Arrows exited stage left like 100% GANGSTERS.  Spitting in the face of death, Three Arrows' Zhu's final words?  "Crypto will still thrive and change the world every day."  Ya gotta love it, that's the spirit my Singapore people. Too bad Zhu did not make it to shout "shoulda killed me LAST year..."   Still, we do have a couple of dogs that did not bark.  One is Tiger (Legatus) Capital (Julian Roberson) shuttering down this week after 13 years due to "tough conditions."  Hard to see exactly through the shell companies but Tiger had between 1 and 20 billion AUM pretty recently.  Just saying,  not for nothing, the FT gave them only a fifty word obit.  Also not mentioned while they beat on crypto - Softbank this quarter lost 27 Billion USD after doing the same for decades as far as we can tell, but is still chugging away for unknown reasons (full backing of the Japanese fed?) 

Still with us?   Let's whip through a quick Wall Street/City traditional favorite, the  character assassination!!! Yay, always a crowd pleaser.   The previous  (basically exact same) FT story about Celsius's CEO filled us with righteous hate for Alex.  The rehash seems strongish at first. Alex got 1.7MM clients to agree to "unbank themselves."  This -sshole told the FT just last year that he ran "one of the least risky businesses regulators have ever seen.”  That b-stard claimed all was well THREE DAYS before Celsius locked up and  kicked off the cascading redemption cycles that have ruined so many lives.   The FT quotes anonymous John who has six figures stuck in Celsius, and an actor in LA with 20K stuck.  The REAL story? Who knows WTF will happen, but it looks like investors will get pennies on the dollar years from now in bankruptcy court.  We feel BTC won't fully recover until we know. Talk about total hubris - some Celsius rep in Reddit had the absolute chutzpah to say "know that if your crypto in Celsius was earning interest before we locked up, it is still earning interest today." And the fish stinks from the head.   Dear readers remember Alex refused offers of help from Nexo.  All in all, it's hard to heap enough hate on this mate at this time.  Yet, oddly, the FT does fail to nail his coffin shut.  Alex is "an Energizer bunny,"  "the machine." He holds 35 patents.  Alex b-tched at Coinbase for giving "more money to Wall Street investors than to their customers."  He's a "maverick" who lists his failed ventures on his personal website - it's still up, looks a little like caveat emptor full disclosure, who's the fool here then? Our personal favorite - Alex did a video where he dons a hoodie, shouts “one branch at a time” & tries to rip the Chase bank logo down from their (snotty, private banking) branch on uptown Manhattan’s Park Ave.  Overall, our hate for AM subsided maybe 5-10% - FAIL, FT, that's a big fail.   BAD smear/hit job.  NO BISCUIT!!!

Tired yet?  We are!! but, c'mon, let’s be the strongest finishers in da GAME baby!   The FT hates crypto OK but still they put it on the cover of FT money to hook readers.  What's the story?  TLDR  Merryn gives a trigger warning that she is gonna chit on crypto, then fills three of four columns raining doom on the stock market.  Merryn lucidly and logically says we should have seen the stock market crash coming.  Easy money always leads to inflation and capital going astray.   Warren Buffet doesn’t like it when total market cap > GDP.  Mean reversion always happens, and US stocks are still ~40% over a 15 year median based on book value, yield, p/e ratios, etc etc.  All the markets in the world look overvalued right now.  Crashes come often, but sticking with stocks after most crashes breaks even in ~three years.  Whereas a flight to cash  took ~5 years to recover, though going to cash after the 2001 crash left one STILL underwater today.   All true, we waded thru, plz finally tell us about crypto.  She sayeth - NONE of the above is true about crypto, we have no history. There is NO value in crypto that can be priced rationally.  Bitcoin has failed as a store of value, it is not a hedge against rampaging inflation, nor equity markets. Crypto is not better for moving money except for tax dodgers, money launderers and folks in war zones.  BTC is not environmentally friendly and is hard to use.  WORSE than tulip bulbs, which can be eaten like onions!! All BTC ever had was one run against crazy money printing. She values it at an expected minimum of Zero.  Told ja the FT really really wants to say zero lol!!!

The real story:  well, TBF, this is a week when we all feel the beatdown, those pool cues breaking on our backs.  All in all, Merryn wins the FT bonus for the best and most ambitious kill shot on crypto lately, we just gotta absorb those body blows to some extent. 

Nah, scr-w it, let's spit back instead. Wait M, if NONE of the stock stuff is true for crypto, "None of it” - does that mean Raoul Pol is right, we live in an exponential age where it IS no longer about mean reversion??

We hope the FT bonus was enough to lose your credibility over, but we bet it was just a boozeup or three.  Bitcoin has NOT failed as a store of value compared to many, nay MOST of the world's fiat currencies.  In wall street slang, Merryn baby, yer using the wrong metric.  Saying crypto moves no better than fiat shows that our gal has NEVER ONCE in her privileged life had to receive, or even send, Western Union emergency funds.  By her definition, Canada is a war zone since truckers vs Moosealini could be supported by BTC, but NOT fiat.  Perhaps her traditional finance brain cannot comprehend the power and promise of distributed smart contracts enabled by ETH and competitors - the defi market is still around TWELVE FIGURES in size.  Even if she can't see a future other than zero as a store of value, maybe somehow she could still see just a tad of residual value somewhere in a  hundred billion dollars.  Count on yer  fingers if need  be.  Anyone holding a diversified portfolio of crypto for even five years is still doing just awesome. 

We thought that no one had the lady bits (or stupidity/insanity) to claim  BTC would go to ZERO anymore.  Not since the CME fired up and started skimming their vig off their two billion dollars in open interest (which is only 20% of the world wide market, still led by OKX. ) But we guess ya proved us wrong, Merryn.  Despite that no serious person working at the CME, nor all the CPO's who led the serious US gummint folks to approve BTC futures would say or think that.      Yes, governments can suppress the price of gold, price discovery is dead, they can control many markets including BTC to a very large extent, but ZERO ??   Not gonna happen, baby, not now.  In closing, let us say peace out to all the homies hurting over liquidations.  And on behalf of Three Arrow's Zhu speaking for crypto, FT, what we are talking about here:

love, 

Dave