2024.12 - Looting

IMHO

The US Government's latest spending bill just passed "just in time to avoid government shutdown". Whew, really dodged a bullet there, the heroic action came with a modest price tag of $1.2 Trillion

I find several things about the bill extraordinary:

• The sheer size of it, as measured both in pages and dollars.
• The obscenity theatrics of the approval (10 hours to review 1000+ pages)
• The fact this is "business as usual"

A few reminders for context:

• the debt ceiling is suspended/uncapped throughout 2024
• The current plan —which assumes the Fed is on track for a "soft landing"— is on pace for a $3 Trillion deficit this year

Why is the government engaged in this insane spending acceleration?

"The last official act of any government is to loot the treasury" —George Washington

If it feels like the word looting is "too much" you may find the next chart interesting. There has always been wide inequality between most people and the super-rich (top 0.1%), but the gap has been widening significantly.

The shocker: the trend is tightly related to government money printing.

This is a real live example of the "Cantillion Effect" in action. If you've never heard of the Cantilliojn Effect before, here's a handy explainer:

Why is everyone not complaining about this? Distraction.

Hat-tip to Travis Kling for bringing the Cloward Piven strategy to my attention While it felt intuitively obvious this was happening, I was not aware of it being a formal strategy. Funny timing on the Wikipedia edit, eh?

Here's what my personal AI had to say about Colward-Piven:

"The Cloward-Piven strategy, also known as the overload strategy, is a political tactic that seeks to overwhelm and disrupt existing social and political systems by creating chaos and crisis. It was developed in the 1960s by two American sociologists, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

The basic idea behind the strategy is to create a situation of "crisis" or "overload" that forces the existing system to respond with drastic measures. This can be achieved through various means such as organizing protests, strikes, sit-ins, and other forms of civil disobedience. The goal is to make it difficult for the authorities to maintain order and control, which can lead to reforms or even revolutionary change."

In other words, much of the fabricated outrage they are trying to suck people into is essentially a distraction so you won't notice they are picking your pockets and more insidiously, they are looting your children's pockets by destroying the foundations for a healthy money.

They know the math won't add up. They know they won't pay. They're betting they'll be gone by the time the bill is presented. Opt out of being robbed.

Bitcoin News

Stacking Goals

Will any one corporation ever stack as much as Microstrategy did?

ETFs don't count IMO as they don't represent a single entity stacking, they are merely buying on behalf of clients.

No Outflows

Speaking of ETFs apparently the new nine held strong through the dip (except of course GBTC which keeps bleeding).

Party Mix

Samourai is in the process of decentralizing its Whirlpool coinjoins, this will be a very good thing —improved privacy for your holdings through mixing.

Cross

Crossborder remittances —a huge market— is a tricky one to crack, but the Bitcoin Company is making great strides for those who want to use BTC rails for remittances.

Cool Hands

Mr. 100 was grateful for the dip and bought agressively (17x his usual)

Krypto News

"Crypto" can be lethal to your portfolio

Dead Canary

The Ethereum Foundation removed the "Warrant Canary" from its website.

A warrant canary is a statement like "We have not been contacted by a government in a way that forbids us from disclosing said contact". Since a subpoena usually includes some type of confidentiality / gag order which prevents the party in question from discussing the government action, "canaries" are used as a flag to say "we've been subpoenaed but can't talk about it"

Don Do

Do Kown (of Terra/Luna infamy) was escorted out of prison in true capo fashion. He is trying to avoid being extradited to South Kore

Fiat News

Fine

The stockmarket may go higher, but it's not looking healthy.

Them Apples

Apple is being accused of abusing its monopoly powers.

I'm not saying they're wrong, some of their shennanigans are pretty insane.

But I am saying lawmakers play dirty and benefit from insider info.

You can trade liks an insider too! (this is not financial advice). Apparently there's now an app where you can mimic politician's trades :-D

Mine

Speaking of abusing monopoly power, the US is now using seized assets from Russia for its own purposes, I don't see this strengthening the case for the USD as a neutral reserve asset.

NGU

Canada's bankruptcies are rising sharply.

Rest assured the government will find someone to blame as it keeps pushing for ever more control over its citizens money. Wrong-think will not go unpunished.

Dystopian News

Threats

The dependency of the US defense industry on its Chinese suppliers will inevitably be reflected

Kinda

There was a lot of noise this week about the EU banning self-custodial wallets. This law has been a long time coming but the details are a bit more nuanced than an outright ban.

Yes, they are limiting the transactions between centralized services and self-custodial wallets but, as Austin Campbell points out below, the details of implementation across the EU will be key.

Secure?

China's recent action shows distrust in the security of US microchips.

and recent revelations about Apple's M-series chips being vulnerable to certain attacks serve as a reminder that security should not be taken for granted.

The possibility of chips being "backdoored" by the government is not zero.

Price News

Wat Dip?

The recent pullback in Bitcoin's price doesn't even qualify as a "proper" dip. If you are frightened by recent volatility you need to strengthen your conviction significantly.

Bitcoin Surfing

Bitcoin almost touched the Board ($61k) last week before jumping back up past the previous ATH ($69k)

Dip Fishing

After a quick dip all the way past the $62.5k level, Bitcoin resumed its regular programming on Monday, climbing past $70k, congratulations if you caught the dip!

Calm Chart

March looks on track to close Green.