Monthly Archives: January 2023

Wanted: bassists

Posted on by

If you are a bass player and you don’t sing or help with songwriting, then you need to shut up & play bass. If you want to handle management, booking duties, etc, that’s fine– but since you don’t write songs, you are NOT qualified to be the bandleader and therefore you are NOT allowed to dictate every creative decision by leveraging your position of advantage. That fucks up a band every time. There are a million guitar players out there & a zillion singers too, with a more limited pool of good drummers, but quality bass players are very hard to find. Many of the best bassists let this instrumental scarcity go to their heads, by taking the attitude that if they don’t get their way, they’ll simply take their bass & go home– leaving the band stranded. One of the biggest problems in rock music today is there aren’t enough bassists who are team players.

I’ve learned over the years that many of the top bassists do corporate gigs for a living, including tribute acts & such that play six nights a week and twice on Sundays. Any left-handed bassist is wanted for Beatles tribute bands, etc. That’s where the steady money is, as compared to forming a band and trying to be something new. My biggest criticism of professional bass players is that they are too rigid as a rule, which limits them. You can’t be a great band without a solid bass player, and you can’t be a serious bassist if you don’t work well with others.

…………<><><><><><><><><>………..

Bankrupt crypto bank Silvergate gets $4.3B US taxpayer bailout

Posted on by

It was reported last week that Silvergate Bank, the bankrupt crypto lender with FDIC affiliation (a rarity in the industry), received a $4.3B bailout from the San Francisco-based Federal Home Loan Bank, following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, according to the firm’s Q4, 2022 filings.

US taxpayers, without their consent, have just bailed out this bankrupt crypto bank– and it barely made the news. Silvergate was the first, of what is to be many bailouts for crypto. As much as the crypto community howls about “de-fi, privacy & freedom”; it needs a bailout even more. Industry players have been angling for this since the FTX collapse.

To review, Silvergate provided banking services to crypto exchanges & investors, with ~90% of its deposits from crypto. Silvergate’s 10 biggest depositors, include bankrupt firms such as: Coinbase, Paxos, Crypto.com, Gemini, Kraken, Bitstamp & Circle. As a result of the FTX collapse in November, Silvergate was bankrupt, as it held worthless deposits for both FTX & Alameda Research.

Market manipulation is what is driving the current bitcoin bounce. This, along with venture capital, is what is sustaining the crypto industry on life support. Market manipulation through wash trading, and other pump & dump tactics are the rule in crypto. Wash trading is when a firm trades with itself to artificially boost prices, to give the illusion of liquidity & generate interest from investors. A recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that wash trades accounted for 50-70% of all crypto transactions, suggesting most trades on these platforms are fraudulent.

For example: bitcoin’s price had been languishing at ~$17K for weeks, but as of last week it has slowly been going up. Bitcoin currently sits at over $21K, and no one can explain why, as investors are leaving the industry in droves, lay-offs are everywhere, and hardly a day goes by without some news of another crypto firm, exchange, bank, etc, having liquidity issues. So where is all this money coming from? As it turns out, it’s now coming from the taxpayers.

Update: Sat 21 Jan 2023 5:50 AM CST

Silvergate Bank ($4.3B), Signature Bank ($11.3B), Provident Bancorp ($80M), and Ally Financial ($7.2B) have been bailed out by the Federal Home Loan Banks program, which is ostensibly meant to fund home loans. This is surely the tip of the iceberg as there are many others we don’t know about– yet. US taxpayers support FHLB financing, as their bonds are implicitly backed by Congress, which would not allow a default, hence their AAA rating from Moody. Should one of these crypto-friendly banks fail, FDIC accounts would be second in line, after the FHLB, in claims resolution. Banks always get bailed out first. Bloggers are the only ones reporting this story, as the corporate media is maintaining silence on this massive & secret crypto bailout scheme.

…………..<><><><><><><>………….

Is Sam Bankman-Fried now an agent of US Intelligence?

Posted on by

The conspiracy theory that SBF is now an agent of US intelligence is supported by the facts and his actions since pleading “not guilty” in a Manhattan courtroom. The DOJ normally takes no prisoners in its prosecutions, unless a secret deal has been reached.

From a historical perspective, the DOJ investigations of Donald Trump have been as restrained a legal action as you will ever see, because he’s so connected to right-wing militias (which intelligence agencies view as an asset), but the DOJ still went after him to some extent for his malfeasance. SBF has the same criminal credentials, but with even more value to US intelligence, so he’s been treated with kid gloves by the DOJ & the corporate media because they’re all tied-in to the CIA Democrats.

The dictatorship of finance capital can be clearly observed in crypto. SBF & Co. have surely made secret deals, as they are being integrated into US intelligence to help move dark money to Ukraine, etc. Thus, none of the defrauded customers will see a penny of the $5B in assets the US government has claimed to have recovered (so far) in the FTX fallout.

Republicans have now setup a new committee to bail out this distressed “asset class” known as crypto, and as a result of this activity, bitcoin has moved up by ~$2K in the past few days.

………..<><><><><><>……….

Roger Goodell cancels Bill-Bengals MNF game: A true Hollywood story

Posted on by

After Roger Goodell conferred with the top Vegas bookies & ESPN fantasy leagues for three difficult days, it was decided by the owners of football to be in their best interest to cancel the Bills-Bengals game. According to NFL records & the Black Hand, it never happened.

The NFL had cancel this game, but they REALLY didn’t want to. League officials & executives needed to confer behind-the-scenes with bookmakers & the biggest fantasy leagues for council on what to do, which is why it took three long days for the NFL to make it’s final decision, when it really had no choice from the start.

The fantasy leagues are a particularly sticky situation, because those are hardcore football fans who invested 4+ months in drafting, building & cheering their teams. The Bills-Bengals game was to be the final MNF contest of the season, and it’s the Super Bowl in most fantasy leagues. If this event had happened during a typical Sunday afternoon game, it wouldn’t have been as harmful to NFL interests. But it happened on Monday night, when the entire sports world is tuned-in, and not just any Monday night, but the biggest MNF game of the season.

Instead of being a nationwide football festival, the plug was pulled & the excitement killed. Most sports fans understand the situation and don’t blame the players, or cry foul, but there are interests that want to make sure this NEVER happens again. Docking wages for leaving the field would probably be bad optics for the NFL, so look for the owners to get together after the post-season and establish a “protocol” to prevent players from mutually leaving the field before a game is finished. Owners consider what happened as an unauthorized work stoppage, and that is strictly prohibited by the powers-that-be. This could become a CBA grievance if the owners take too much of a hard-line stance.

So how did Roger Goodell arrive at his judgement, three days after an on-field medical event stopped the Bills-Bengals MNF game, with the players refusing to resume the contest? First, the NFL Commissioner had to take heavy flak from all the East coast dweebs screaming in his ear about sponsors, ratings, fantasy leagues, etc– imagine a scene from Network (1976) and apply it here. After absorbing all this abuse, Goodell then had to fly to Las Vegas and stay at the Flamingo to take a meeting with Ace Rothstein & Nicky Santoro. After that, he had to hustle over to the Tropicana to see Moe Greene, and you know what that means— Don Barzini. Roger Goodell had to earn his paycheck this week.

Nicky Santoro: Hey commish, what happened?! I got all these betting slips and I don’t know what to do with them. I’m thinkin’ I’ll keep all the money. What do you think, Sam?

Ace Rothstein: You’re the muscle end Nicky, I just tell you the point spread.

Nicky Santoro: So commish, a player feints on the field, he’s taken-off, and the game just ENDS?!! Since when do we do THAT?!! Are we gonna put pink dresses on them next? [Lots of expletives…] I’m feeling like a chump for holding all these markers. The game was two nights ago!! [Lots of expletives…] I’m just trying to run a respectable bookmaking business here, I gotta pay the winners & collect from the losers to get my vig, you understand? How can I pay when there’s no game?!! [More expletives…] Since I’ve been holding this money for so long, I’d almost feel like a chump to return it. I’m thinking I’ll keep the money. What do you think, Sam?

…………<><><><><><><><>…………….

 

Crypto mining report

Posted on by

Mining bitcoin became less profitable in 2022 as hashrate (the electrical cost of mining bitcoin) increased, while bitcoin tumbled from an all-time high of $69K in November 2021 to under $17K at present. Crypto is being propped-up with everything the US financial system has left. There are a lot of billionaires & multi-millionaires who are VERY upset at the prospect of losing a massive chunk of the portfolio invested in crypto.

In 2022, the stock prices of the five biggest public crypto miners by hashrate: Core Scientific ($CORZ), Riot Blockchain ($RIOT), Bitfarms ($BITF), Iris Energy ($IREN), and CleanSpark ($CLSK) traded down 99%, 85%, 91%, 92% and 79%, according to CoinDesk. What’s going on in the crypto industry is a massive restructuring, with a few big fish eating all the little fish. New rationalizations are needed to reassure venture capitalists in their support for the flagging crypto industry. If investors stop giving crypto money, then it’s lights out– literally.

Miners are hardcore crypto fanatics, so they tried to hold onto the bitcoin they mined, often electing to finance operations with low-interest debt, venture capital, blank check companies, etc. Perhaps pitch the idea on Shark Tank, which coincidentally appeared around the same time as bitcoin. The point is that bitcoin mining companies, who are in the business of mining bitcoin, weren’t making the BIG money in crypto.

Miners were contracted to make money for whales, who financed the mining of bitcoin. For instance, if Elon Musk contracted a massive amount of bitcoin to be mined from various bitcoin mining companies, the bitcoin would be delivered to him while he paid the consortium of miners for the service, presumably in bitcoin. This would support the industry as long as the price of crypto went up and money was cheap from the Federal Reserve.

Elon Musk’s financial Waterloo was his commitment to buy Twitter for $44B last spring. When his bitcoin empire crashed, soon after his takeover announcement, he began to back-off on buying Twitter. By summer, when Twitter shareholders threatened to sue & win in court, Musk was beaten. Elon Musk was heralded as the wealthiest man in the world by Forbes, with a value of $264B as of 2021. So here’s a modern economic question: Why couldn’t Elon Musk just buy Twitter for $44B, and be secure w/ $200+B remaining in personal wealth? Answer: Because his wealth was never real. It was mostly inflated crypto, and you can’t buy a publicly-traded company with bitcoin. Forbes is a central player in this fictitious accounting.

Elon Musk’s choices to finance his Twitter acquisition were to A) liquidate bitcoin; or B) liquidate Tesla. Tesla is WAY overvalued, and Musk knows this better than anyone, so him selling huge shares of his flagship electric car company tells the story there. If bitcoin recovers, Elon Musk is king again. If crypto goes to zero (which it must), then Musk is dust. When the stock value of Tesla collapses, as it must, Elon Musk won’t have any real money left. The more Tesla stock Musk sells, the sooner this will happen.

As poorly as Musk has run Tesla, his short reign as Twitter CEO has been qualitatively worse. Maybe Twitter was worth only a quarter of what Musk paid for it, say $10B. But that’s still an asset, and the second-largest social media platform on the internet. At least manage it decently for awhile, then take it public again, or sell it & eat the loss. That would be a rational business strategy after making a big mistake. But instead, Musk destroyed Twitter through a series of tirades, boneheaded ideas & tantrums. Now, Twitter isn’t worth $2B. These new-age millennial entrepreneurs have trouble producing value in the real world. They always need more money.

Turning to the unending crypto saga of Sam Bankman-Fried, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas has taken custody of FTX deposits valued at more than $3.5B as of November 12, according to a media release published last week. The November 12 date is significant, because the murky, murky $383M FTX hack, live-streamed in this video, happened during the evening of November 11, while SBF was in Bahamian custody. So where is the money?

The government of the Bahamas is in complete control of $3.5B in crypto, which the US government wants for itself. Bankruptcy trials take a long time, and this is largely a jurisdictional battle for the spoils which is to be hashed-out by lawyers, financial officials, opportunists, etc, on both sides until all the money is divvied-up to the right people. This is how governments steal for themselves in the name of their people & democracy.

The crypto community is facing an existential crisis. The vast majority, who have worked to build this industry, in mining, computer programming, sales & promotion, etc, have been shucked & jived by modern-day shysters. Calls in the fake media for regulation are a smokescreen, as crypto will never be regulated by US Congress. A few years back, during the Trump administration, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was compelled to testify before the US Senate for a regulatory hearing. The most memorable moment was when a crusty septuagenarian senator asked Zuckerberg how Facebook made money? The Facebook CEO smiled to himself & replied, removing as much condescension from his voice as possible, “We sell ads, sir.”

That’s typical of the level of fundamental cluelessness in elite politics. Crypto with its blockchains, decentralized finance, off-shore shell companies, etc, is much more complex than the nuts & bolts of social media. Not only is regulation unwanted by the industry (and Republicans), it’s unthinkable because no one in bourgeois politics has a clue how to deal with this mess. No politician wants to be seen as “impeding the free market,” and no politician wants to get dragged into these crypto scandals any further. You know it’s really bad when you see corrupt politicians insisting there are returning FTX money.

Calls for “regulation” in articles discussing crypto should be always interpreted as “bailout.” Eventually this crypto bubble will burst, and unlike the sub-prime crisis of 2007-08, there are no assets to recoup here. Millions of homes with defaulted mortgages were transferred into bank ownership in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. This was done to make bankers & hedge fund investors (who caused the meltdown) whole again. They were too big to fail. But the soon-to-come crypto crash will leave nothing to be recouped, because it’s been a fake asset from the start. US & Bahamian regulators are fighting over custody of $3.5B in fake money, and who winds up with it is beside the point because it’s worthless.

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried is out on bond, living with his parents who are co-conspirators in the $32B FTX/Alameda swindle. The effectively altruistic boy genius came up with a better way to mine crypto. Instead of having a series of supercomputers mining the crypto by solving complex mathematical equations, SBF just made up his proprietary FTT tokens out of thin air. This saved energy costs, and the expense of contracting crypto miners. This way, SBF made super-profits! Crypto skeptics point to Binance’s native BNB token, and ask if Changpeng Zhao created them by the same process.

Sam Bankman-Fried has surely violated the terms of his bail by moving large amounts of crypto from hidden Alameda wallets after his release on bond last week. SBF denies this, of course, as his parents are there to punish him if he does anything wrong again. The problem with crypto isn’t SBF, per se, it’s capitalism & the flawed idea that you can create value from nothing.

Update: Wed Jan 4, ~8:45AM CST

SBF was allowed to be free on bond, and violate those terms by moving large amounts of crypto out of Alameda wallets to unknown accounts. Unknown to the public that is. The US government knows where the crypto is, because undoubtedly they have been monitoring his computer, but they aren’t revealing anything they know to the public which is normal. SBF is acting as a personal tutor for US intelligence agencies, etc, in how to move crypto. Notice how names are always redacted when his legal team requests it, etc. Since when has such a swindler been allowed such clout in a DOJ prosecution case? Normally, targets of the DOJ receive no mercy, unless they plead guilty– or cut a secret deal. SBF pled not guilty, yesterday, as expected. SBF should now be considered as an agent of the US state. It’s the only way he can save himself.

Final thoughts: Thu 05 Jan 2023 6:43 AM CST

The crypto community is learning the hard way, that BIGGER interests (such as the US-provoked war in Ukraine) override any claims of crypto theft. The most logical explanation for SBF’s ‘not guilty’ plea is that he made a secret deal with US intelligence to save himself. These demoralized libertarians are in WAY over their heads here.

Crypto believers have hyped bitcoin with an impressive amount of enthusiasm & bravado, but never answered any fundamental questions posed to them over the years. They display a staggering level of naivety & ignorance in the fields of economics & politics. And yet, in their collective moment of stunned disbelief over the reality of how quickly dreams can evaporate, they maintain they are correct. The Federal Reserve & US Intelligence are the primary forces keeping crypto alive. Crypto is a money-laundering tool, that’s it’s only use value.

Any talk of SBF being an asset of US intelligence will now be branded as “conspiracy theory” in the fake media.That’s the Big Lie playbook they run on the public. This conspiracy theory is backed by the facts and the events as they are unfolding, which strongly implies that it is correct. US Intelligence always lies & evades to minimize exposure of an asset, especially a big fish like SBF, who is teaching them new & better ways to move crypto. This helps Joe Biden work with Republicans in funneling funds to the neo-Nazis in Kiev in the name of fighting Russian aggression which keeps us safe from terrorism.

…………<><><><><><><>………..