Welcome back Publish0x crypto army, we cherish every breath you take, we love you, we adore y'alls allegiance to cypher protected sound money for the people!! And we LOVE the Publish0x along with all y'all. Forever. Forever ever? Yes, no matter WHAT crypto you like!!!! - well, wait, ok, dear readers know we hate CBDCs.
Comparative religion is awesome, the commonality of humanity's struggle to take us to a higher ground. As a starry eyed punk on a merit/work scholarship set free in a huge library, we found and espoused Agapism, h-ll we still can't believe it's not more popular. Agape is the greek/new testament word for love. Agapism believes in love uber alles, a moral compass pointing to the most loving path as the best way forward. Kind of the opposite of the Financial Times' feelings for crypto, and our thoughts for CBDCs. But we mean it man, we love all y'all and Sammy Bankman-Fried too, may we all be strong during these years of the great fiat wars, in economics, agitprop, and empires.
With crypto currently bleeding from the ears, the FT has oh so bravely moved to maximum fixed wing carpet bombing on crypto from oh so far above. As another 0xen exclusive for Wed. 22, let's whip through all the latest missives. It is NOT all quiet on the western front.
The FT is filled with glee as Terra employees are not allowed to flee! The story - that's about it, plus rehash blah blah Terra, Luna, BTC go down hard. The FT's crack team picked up a tweet from Danny trying to fly to NYC, it's "outrageous" being treated as a "potential criminal." Hidden in the tail, a bit of news. A US court is enforcing SEC subpoena's on D'oh. The SEC is also after Mirror, a Terra blockchain that offered US stock tracker coins. And in Cali, a class action suit on D'oh is foul with his claims of USDT "stability."
The inside story: The oh so proper FT still won't go with the k-pop flow and name check the Grim Reapers. We note with Korean pride the Korean investor lawsuit ( led by the "Fat Man," unnamed by the FT) specifically mentioned the words "flawed algorithmic coins". For once, the usually shameless FT didn't loft another lie to smear Tether wahoooo!!! Don't get excited, it's not like the FT mentioned algos vs. fully backed stablecoins other than the Seoul quote. Danny bwah, wall street chestnut 42.3, cry me a river, ya lie with dogs ya get up with fleas!! & personally we walk on legal eggshells in countries outside the US cause it turns out that whole western innocent until proven guilty thing is a fairly recent local invention.
Next up: Proshares launches BITI to fight with BITO. TLDR: The dudes that launched the first US long BTC futures ETF (BITO) just launched a short ETF, BITI. Canada and Europe already had short BTC ETFs and more are coming in the US. Just like the long ETFs, fees are high (1%) and costs of rolling the contracts are high, but they are the only permitted BTC vehicles for many funds. The REAL story: the above, plus gloating that BTC is down, and therefore an (unlikely) perfectly timed entrance into a BTC short fund gave ~120% return.
The big story: FTX loans BlockFi a quarter billion. TLDR: That, plus last week Sam lent Voyager Digital a half billion. The FT thinks this makes Sammy the de facto central bank of crypto. Rehash troubles: stablecoin Terra, Luna, BTC, exchange layoffs, Three Arrows. Last year Sammy bailed out, then acquired, the Liquidity exchange. Earlier this year, Binance bailed out Sky Mavis/Axie infinity.
The real story: Comrades, let's be grateful for small victories in the fiat tradfi agitprop wars. The FT concedes a couple inches of no-man's land by not lying about Tether again, tho they still won't say algo stablecoin when talking Terra. They abandoned another trench by implying FTX and Binance are not JUST not laying off people but seem to have more money than God. Subliminal hate once again from the FT: Search recent pics - Bloomberg, NBC/CNBC, Yahoo finance, Foxnews and many others show Sammy posing in a suit and tie in front of Congress, but the FT focuses on his knobby knees and short pants in a giant half page pic floating over a perfectly cropped graph of BTC's dive. The big dawg, tho, is another dog that didn't bark. The FT spits on crypto here, saying crypto prides itself on being independent of central banks - yet now Sam is bailing everyone out. We might agree as far as Voyager is concerned, not clear they deserved a bailout. Voyager is a crypto broker, not an exchange. Which means they, like broker Robin Hood, can do things like selling information about orders or even front running. In fact Voyager is currently facing legal issues about those sort of undisclosed fees. But we bet, as with acquiring Liquid, Sammy saw some real financial reasons to help, unlike blanket Fed bailouts. Regardless, zoom out for some major hypocrisy. Total up all of Sammy's loans, what, under a billion, yeah? Look two inches down the page where Evergrande is facing delisting on the Hong Kong exchange. What's the total debt of Evergrande? 300 billion, which makes Sam's loans look like pocket change, especially over three companies. Now China is not being OBVIOUS about THAT bailout, e.g. no funds go where foreign investors might get any, but according to Reuters, the bailout is there. We don't care, the only way Evergrand ever got that f-cked up is by the full backing of the gummint.
Lex, on the last page. TLDR: Lex flat out calls it, crypto pain is Tradfi's gain. "Anti-authoritarian crypto fans are finding out where power really lies." Korea banned Terra employees from fleeing. Sighs of relief from Tradfi. Pressure is off to build CBDCs. Regulators will have an easier go. A rehash of Terra pulling an Amber Heard & dropping 45 billion. D'oh Kwon claims innocence, but the taxman & lawsuits are coming like D-day, tho lawsuits are on weak legal ground. Rehash Celsius and BTC number go down. Tradfi sings & dances at "crypto woes." Investors were happy to bank unregulated gains, but now they want regulated recompense. It should now be easy to "carve regulated territory from the crypto badlands."
What's the real story? Lex's gloating is pretty smug, but he's kinda right, time to take our lumps. Starkly, he's right it is tradfi vs. crypto (we refuse to capitalize tradfi unless Lex capitalizes Crypto lol.) The Grim Reapers are cool, who knows what Korean laws D'oh broke, and the taxman nailed Al Capone. We are d-mn glad to hear the pressure is off to develop CBDCs, but that's not really true. What Lex's inner self REALLY meant to say is the pressure is off for central banks to BUY BTC!!! Some regulation is a an OK idea: Joe Camel can't sell ciggies to kids, & no one can question vaccine stats on YouTube, but youtuber allows blatant, even hallucinatory crypto lies (send us a BTC, we'll send ya two back!) Tho frankly, we see lots of NON CRYPTO blatant scams advertised (and executed) on the regular coming from the UK. Dear readers know as an ex NYC yank it's a shock to see the "tradfi" scuzz coming freely out of London; high undisclosed fees, ridiculous lottos & insurance scams etc. posing as funds, clickbait phone charge frauds, etc. with little/no protection. It must be cheap as chips to pull an investment firm license in Little Britain. And our frens on the fabu Publish0x that bought TerraUSD STILL say "no bailouts in Crypto" god bless em!!! Actually, we take it back, sc-w ya Lex, busting D'oh's Ponzi scheme has absolutely ZERO to do with the hard decentralized money of BTC duking it out with the giant international fiat printing Cantillon tradfi SCAM!!!
In the words of our beloved Flavor Flav - "Yyeeeeeaaaaaaaahhhhhh boyeeeeeeeee!!!
Peace out
Dave