Tag Archives: Bitcoin

Crypto crooks congregate & conspire in the White House

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The Trump ‘crypto summit’, the first event of its kind was held this afternoon at the White House. Trump led the press conference afterwards, leaning on crypto czar David Sacks for legitimacy or whatever. Crypto kingpin & bitcoin whale Elon Musk has been conspicuously absent & silent on Trump’s new crypto policy since it was publicly announced with great fanfare last week.

Trump started the public live-streamed part of the ‘crypto summit’ by going completely off subject in mumbling about the World Cup which is to be held in North America in 2026. Apparently the idea of the World Cup being a shared host event among Canada, the US & Mexico was to be overlooked, as was the fact that the World Cup is the largest foreign visa event in the world which happens every four years and people love & demand that diversity. The inherent message of sportsmanship & international brotherhood cuts across Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign, so it was omitted.

A new World Cup trophy has been constructed with Trump’s approval, and frankly it is an abomination in comparision to the standard set by Jules Rimet. The Jules Rimet Cup was the first FIFA World Cup trophy, used from 1930 to 1970, named after Jules Rimet the third president of FIFA. It was stolen under murky circumstances and its whereabouts are still unknown. Documentary movies have been dedicated to this fascinating sports story with political intrigue throughout its history. In this context, Trump explained to the current FIFA kingpin how much better his new trophy is.

Apparently FIFA was part of the ‘crypto summit’ so Trump actually didn’t go off message, but it was an extended diversion and how was the viewer to know? How many people know bitcoin & FIFA well enough to figure out this corruption when it is presented in front of them? And then, how many of will speak & publish publicly against this corruption when it is safer & more profitable to stay silent? The entire corporate media line on crypto right now is complacence.

Anyway, this new FIFA World Cup trophy is designed to easily become a memecoin, so look for FIFA commercial tie-ins with bitcoin & crypto during World Cup 2026. That was the opening crypto message from Trump, and it was very clunky & bizarre to witness. Trump then called upon people sitting around him to thank him for his leadership & genius, which they all did.

It barely lasted an hour, told the public nothing, and no questions were allowed from the media afterwards as the livestream was ended. How much bitcoin & crypto does Elon Musk hold? How does establishing a ‘federal bitcoin reserve’ from the confiscated digital wallets of indicted & convicted criminals create a viable sector for economic growth? Is this the first step towards making bitcoin redeemable in US dollars? How much does Elon Musk stand to gain in all this?

Politically & economically, there are major concerns about a ‘bitcoin reserve’, both on the right and the left. Bitcoin is a Libertarian Ponzi scheme that has been embraced by Trump. Even with all this political support from the highest office, bitcoin is barely hanging on and that is a reflection of the true opposition to crypto that Trump-Musk seek to silence– meaning the vast majority.

Since FTX & SBF became widely known in November 2022, what was remaining of the crypto buzz has worn off. FTX was endorsed by Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, Naomi Osaka, Larry David, etc, and was still semi-legit up until the FTX collapse. But tolerance for crypto is no longer a public sentiment. Everyone sitting around Trump at the ‘crypto summit’ was hyping FTX, until November 2022. So what does that say about crypto industry expertise?

Trump even admitted near the end of his ‘crypto summit’ that he doesn’t know what will happen with bitcoin, turning to the camera, “Do you? We’ll just see how far it goes… and do everything we can to see that it is a big success,” etc. Trump claims the US Treasury would benefit from a ‘bitcoin reserve’ gained from the digital wallets of convicted pornographers, drug cartels, sex traffickers, gun runners, etc. The idea is: the more bitcoin reserves the US government builds, the stronger we’ll be as a country and it will Make America Great Again…

It is public awareness that Trump-Musk are attempting to swindle the US Treasury into elevating bitcoin and other named cryptocurrencies largely owned & controlled by Elon Musk & David Sacks. As I discussed last week here & here, stablecoins (crypto pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio) are being pointed to by industry leaders that gathered around with Trump as a gateway into crypto becoming fiat currency & US legal tender. That is the objective of Trump-Musk-Sacks in this ‘crypto reserve’ scheme.

As predicted here last week, the Gemini twins, Tyler & Cameron Winklevos, met with Trump at the ‘crypto summit’ and spoke to him fawningly & with great excitement. Trump referred to Tyler & Cameron Winklevos as “high-IQ individuals”, both of whom Trump just saved from a SEC criminal indictment of the crypto fraud Gemini, which is owned by these two high-IQ individuals. Everyone seated at the ‘crypto summit’ table appeared happy & pleased.

Among the masses, crypto has the support of no more than 5% of the population. Crypto is split more broadly among the ruling class, with perhaps up to a third in support of bitcoin. In objective terms, what this ‘crypto summit’ left out were the voices of over 95% of the population and that is why this isn’t going to get very far politically. In many ways this ‘crypto front’ emboldened by Trump’s public embrace is an ambitious and far reaching projection of presidential privilege into dictatorial power. It reveals the extent of Elon Musk’s influence on Trump which is immense.

Elon Musk is so influential in crypto that his name was NEVER mentioned by any of the high-IQ speakers in front of the media– before, during and after the ‘crypto summit’. Elon Musk is unquestionably the Black Hand controlling Trump policy on crypto and just about everything else.

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The Trump-Musk ‘crypto strategic reserve’ swindle

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Trump announced late Sunday (3/2/25) that he wants to establish a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency. This will be done in the name of economic growth & national security for America.

It’s quite remarkable how Elon Musk’s name isn’t mentioned by Trump or in any of the press articles recently published on Trump’s crypto summit or his plans for a “strategic reserve” of crypto. The acronym of DOGE was taken from Elon Musk’s proprietary crypto coin [!], yet the lapdog corporate media pretend they don’t know Elon Musk is by far the largest holder of crypto in the cyberworld.

Liberals grumble about conflict of interest, etc, but don’t connect it here as it’s happening. The bourgeois press, including its liberal wing, are now reporting much more favorably on crypto, which was surely a Trump edict to the corporate press. Cryptocurrency is fake money, created largely by Elon Musk’s “magical money computers” which is now being floated as a “strategic reserve currency” more valuable than gold [!] due to its uncanny ability to always rise in price.

Of course, all this “value” was created by manipulation of Ponzi scheming supercomputers, but that is to be overlooked. The crypto industry is extremely wasteful as far as electricity consumption goes, thus crypto is a Libertarian environmental disaster that is vulnerable to energy price spikes and other real-world economic forces. Crypto has no store of value, and is only priced in relation to other fiat currencies, mostly the US dollar. Its only use value is to conceal illicit transactions, making it useful to pornographers, criminals & state intelligence agencies.

Crypto depends entirely on near-zero interest rates and a constant inflow of new money. The federal funds rate is currently 4.33% and projected to stay in that range. This is the biggest obstacle to another crypto boom. Trump can’t dictate to (or fire) Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, at least until next spring which makes that his biggest institutional impediment in Trump’s bid to establish a presidential dictatorship and a US “crypto reserve.”

Trump’s “reserve of crypto” could only come from the biggest crypto whale anywhere: Elon Musk. This “strategic reserve” plan is simply a swindle by Trump-Musk to bilk the US taxpayers into buying hundreds-of-billions of dollars in worthless crypto from Elon Musk. This is how Musk plans to cash out his worthless crypto empire and turn it into billions of US dollars, and he’s being enabled do it with presidential complicity & immunity. If Trump-Musk are allowed to do this, the US dollar will become grossly devalued, and fewer workers will be able to afford the inflated cost-of-living expenses, etc. The Trump tariffs are already creating this effect.

Trump & Musk have executive power, which they abuse at will, but the bond market is infinitely bigger than either of them. The bond market runs the world because it owns the world, especially the US government. That $36T in federal debt is owed to ultra-wealthy bondholders who demand redemption. These debts are owed to the Black Hand and can’t be cancelled, for if they were, the very foundation of modern capitalism would come crashing down. If that happened, a reorganization of the global economy would be required, meaning an international socialist revolution. This is why federal debt must be re-paid, no matter how much it hurts the working masses & youth.

The billionaire bond market is split on crypto. As I’ve explained in earlier cryptocurrency articles, particularly in my SEC v Grayscale reporting, there is a ‘Warren Buffet faction’ of capitalism that recognizes crypto as a fraud and wants it banned. Their argument is that crypto is too unstable to be an institutional pillar in monetary economics and has the potential to bankrupt the entire system. That analysis is fundamentally correct. But the Elon Musk pro-crypto faction opposed this thinking and has won out for the moment.

Typical Yahoo pointed comments on Trump’s ‘crypto strategic reserve’ plan, which the corporate press is too complacent to seriously criticize include:

— How you going to justify making crypto holders rich with tax dollars?
— Trump steals our money to buy fake tokens. Typical.
— We have witnessed why cryptocurrencies are far too volatile for any country to establish a reserve of any consequence. For BTC to go from almost $110k to the upper $70s and then bounce back to about $91k in a handful of days is just ridiculous. [This happened in the past week]

— So the plan is to invest real money into fake money… What could go wrong?!

Conclusion: It’s time to take these Nazis by the throat and make them cough up all their personal & financial information, including exactly what & how much crypto Elon Musk owns. You don’t get to declare an answer and insist it is correct without showing proof. The teacher downgrades lazy students for that in school, or at least they used to. Trump & Musk can’t be bothered with such meticulous work & proofs, they were never good that sort of stuff. These conmen sell you dreams– from Riviera casinos in Gaza to the colonization of Mars. None are economically, scientifically or materially possible but they keep selling and too many keep buying because they see no hope anywhere else.

The Trump-Musk koolade is starting to wear off for his working class voting base. The right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys are still solid, but young working men & women with high school & college degrees that need good jobs & fulfilling career opportunities are already feeling bitter disappointment in Trump. This creates a political vacuum for the SEP/WSWS to grow in numbers & political force, by offering a leftist solution to war, inequality, genocide & dictatorship.

The Democratic Party koolade is weak piss that has been rejected by the masses. Bernie Sanders is still trying to corral the left, but all he gets are upper-middle class philistines who want to record some camera-phone soundbites then post to social media. Celebrity worship meets vicarious activism for fake left Democrats. Their strategy is to reach out to Republicans disaffected with Trump’s oversteps, particularly his cutting off US military aid to Ukraine after the Trump-Zelensky shouting match in the Oval Office last Friday. That Ukrainian military aid cut-off announcement was made official by Trump yesterday. Media pundits pontificated whether Ukraine military aid could be ended by Trump, or if it needed Congressional approval, etc… and while these scarecrows babbled about that, Trump went ahead and did it. Fait accompli.

The pace at which humanity is being hurled towards WW3 has quickened. Only a politically conscious mass movement of workers linked internationally can stop imperialist fascism from destroying us all. We need a global sitdown strike organized & led by the most class conscious rank-and-file workers to bring capitalism to its knees & slay the dragon. It is a dialectical process, meaning the seeds of revolution are sown in all this capitalist madness, so make sure to take an increased class consciousness & seriousness in your words & actions as this movement towards world revolution culminates. This is a chance for the youth & workers of the world to unite & express their historical voice, so tell your friends & don’t miss it.

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The Trump-Musk White House crypto summit

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Elon Musk recently stated on a Joe Rogan podcast that Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. Will anyone from the press ask Elon Musk before, during or after this upcoming crypto summit how bitcoin, NFT’s & the rest of cryptocurrency aren’t a Ponzi scheme?

The new Trump administration has already dropped SEC lawsuits against crypto frauds Coinbase & Metamask, while killing SEC investigations into Robinhood, Gemini & Open Sea. Many of these pardoned criminals will be welcomed at the first White House “crypto summit” to be held this Friday, March 7.

Trump-Musk talk big about “fighting fraud, waste & abuse” by cutting Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid, and that’s why Elon Musk needs access to every American’s information, etc. But Elon Musk is the world’s biggest holder of Bitcoin, the most overvalued of all the cryptocurrencies. That’s a serious conflict-of-interest in allowing the largest crypto tycoon to dictate government spending & monetary policy.

Crypto is fake money, worthless to its ethereal essence. You still can’t buy a Big Mac with it and for good reason, but Trump-Musk are seeking to change that. These fascist crypto fanatics have no real imagination or ingenuity, so they want to make bitcoin and other select crypto currencies (surely controlled by Musk), into US legal tender. That is a MAJOR shift in White House economic policy, and it wasn’t even discussed on this Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC.

The FTX collapse in November 2022 and the criminal exposure of its ‘genius boy wonder’ Sam-Bankman Fried proved to most of the world that crypto is a fraud. It was the most damaging event that hit the crypto industry since in the onset of the COVID pandemic, along with the raising of interest rates.

By December 2008, the Fed had lowered the Fed funds rate from 5.25% in September 2007 to near zero. Rates were kept near zero until they were increased back to ~5% during the Biden administration. The entire crypto boom, from inception to today has been fueled by low interest rate speculation and political favoritism, now in the form of Trump-Musk.

When the Supreme Court ruled on the SEC v Grayscale case in August 2023, crypto became sanctified as a valid tradable commodity that can be backed by the US government if an industry crisis occurs. This has set the stage for Trump’s crypto con as US President.

Elon Musk is also the whale for most of the other leading crypto industry staples including Dogecoin and probably stablecoins such as Ether, Etherium, etc. Only Musk knows all the answers here, but no one will ask him and demand a serious answer.

All this crypto is worthless, so Musk’s true worth is probably negative with all his debt, but no one is allowed to audit him or ask him such questions. Fascists don’t allow themselves to be insulted like that, and that’s why they surround themselves with yes-people & armed security loyalists. That’s how fascism works, with collaborative help from the imperialists (CIA Democrats) which extends through the corporate media.

Bernie Sanders did appear on Meet the Press the Sunday as the Democratic Party has rolled him out again to bellow his fake left anti-oligarchy message to anyone who will listen. Bernie is set to tour Wisconsin & Michigan this week, holding rallies in districts where Republicans unexpectedly beat Biden-Harris in 2024. In Wisconsin, this meant skipping working class Milwaukee for a UW venue in Kenosha & then moving on to wealthier areas west of Madison. This is where liberal leader Bernie Sanders believes he can be most effective.

Trump has pledged to make the U.S. the “crypto-capital” of the world. The Trump family now has various crypto ventures in the works and others that are delivering revenue. Eric Trump delivered a keynote address at Bitcoin Mena 2024 in Abu Dhabi, stating “You’re going to have the most pro-crypto president in the history of America.” In response to the deluded Trump-Musk crypto faction, historical materialists reply, “The history of America is infinitely more significant and of weight than the advent of bitcoin ~2010.”

This is where the “American economy” is heading: more Trump tax cuts for the ruling oligarchy, more anti-immigration propaganda & enforcement– all paid for through massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid.

Trump’s heated argument with Zelensky in the White House on Friday has CIA Democrats & EU imperialists in crisis. Trump is being criticized for telling the truth to Zelensky publicly, where everyone saw it. Trump told Zelensky that he is losing the war (which he is) and can’t last for a week without US support (he can’t). This exposure of such truths to the American & working people everywhere infuriates CIA Democrats who privately advocate hostility towards Russia above all else. “Humanitarian intervention” & “defending democratic rights” was always a lie and now is worn out propaganda to the Trump administration.

This Trump shift in Executive priority on US foreign policy has evoked a virulently hostile reaction in the corporate press, particularly from the liberals. Trump doesn’t see Russia as an enemy, he prefers to launch a world war against China instead. Not seeing Putin as the primary enemy is an unforgivable betrayal to strategic CIA imperialists. The Democrats insist on unending war with Russia, and that is the difference between the CIA Democrats and the Trump fascists. It’s his racial hatred of Asians that fuels Trump’s foreign policy shift, and he did this during his first administration so it’s no surprise. Of course, all this is covered up in the media, who want to claim they are being blindsided and that US foreign policy is being wrecked & compromised by Trump.

The idea for Trump is to keep attacking immigrants & Palestinians as neither have an army to defend themselves against imperialism and a fascist police state while no bourgeois politician will defend them. Defending the democratic rights of Palestinians in Gaza would be “antisemitism” according to the Orwellian semantic inversion of the US corporate-government propaganda machine. This messaging keeps the coming world war distant to most Americans, so people aren’t completely discontent. The message is: Things will get worse as far as jobs & inflation goes, but Trump will magically make it better in the end. Just continue to believe in our fuhrer.

It should go without saying that fascism needs to be exposed for its inherent evils & then ruthlessly opposed through its defeat, but unfortunately it still needs to be stated & repeated. NBC’s Meet the (Lying) Press is filled with collaborationists, fascist sympathizers, and fake leftists who are the most dangerous enemies of the working class. It requires total war from organized & disciplined working masses internationally to defeat fascism which has now developed into an international phenomenon of the bourgeoisie.

Musk accuses the US government of having “magical money computers” that has led to its $36T debt. This debt, mostly owed to billionaire bondholders has ballooned since the 2008 federal bailout of the banks & financial system. This bailout for the rich gave rise to bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency created by magical money computers into instant wealth.

He started with Tesla & SpaceX, but crypto is how Elon Musk became the richest person on the planet and able to overpay for Twitter & buy his way into the White House. Musk calls government fraud “sheer madness” that must stop, without showing the American people any proof, as he continues his semantic inversions, big lies & distortions of facts, particularly in terms of the value of the US dollar based on an economy that produces goods & services and collects taxes on its GDP, versus the crypto Ponzi scheme of which Elon Musk sits atop the pyramid.

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Sam Bankman-Fried trial update: Where’s the money?

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The SBF trial finished last week with the boy wonder himself testifying, as his attorney Mark Cohen comfortably led the defendant through a benign & naive narrative they are trying to spin to the judge & jury. Below is a courtroom sketch of Mark Cohen, the completely incompetent, ineffective & overpaid defense lawyer for SBF, as depicted by CoinDesk courtroom artist/reporter Nik De.

The SBF trial was paused Monday through Wednesday last week (Oct 23-25), because Mark Cohen was testifying with lots of press, cameras, reporters, etc, in another Manhattan courtroom– specifically in the Donald Trump v. New York fraud trial. That is a civil trial in its punishment & compensation phase, as Donald Trump has already been found guilty of fraud.

DOJ prosecution cross-examination in the criminal trial of SBF is expected to begin Monday (tomorrow), with the trial possibly ending next week, allowing the jury to deliberate a verdict. If convicted, the judge is going to come down hard on SBF, with an appeal highly unlikely to change anything, meaning SBF will need a Presidential pardon to get out of jail. SBF spread a LOT of money around into dark places and Trump loves NFTs, so it could happen. The other murky, unanswered question is, “Did SBF already cut a secret deal?” Its answer is unknowable to the public, but known in inner ruling circles.

Trump pardoned dozens of criminals (pic above) at the end of his Presidency simply because they paid his under-the-table extortion money, or they pledged their undying loyalty to the Donald.

Over $8 billion in customer funds is still missing from the FTX/Alameda fraud. Everyone in crypto assumes SBF has the stolen crypto stashed away in hidden wallet(s) somewhere in dark cyberspace. SBF was allowed plenty of time to do that– as FTX collapsed last November, as he was extradited back to the US from the Bahamas, and surely after he was allowed more-than-generous bail terms by a lenient Manhattan judge who let SBF stay with his parents in Palo Alto, California and work online, even after repeated violations of his bail terms.

Obviously US intelligence was monitoring & scrutinizing SBF’s online activities, but none of this (or its findings & conclusions) have ever been revealed to the public. What was SBF doing online during those months he was out on bail?

Without question, SBF moved massive crypto transfers from the time he was held by the Bahamian police, up until his bail being revoked after he published the personal diary of key DOJ witness (& former girlfriend) Caroline Ellison, who was SBF’s partner in crime. She pleaded guilty, as did a few others at FTX/Alameda, so their prison sentences will be much lighter. But the question still remains, “Where’s the money, SBF?”

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Financial establishment rules in favor of Grayscale in SEC lawsuit

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I’ve characterized this Grayscale vs SEC legal battle on social media in the past weeks as Musk (crypto) vs Buffett (traditional finance), which is an oversimplification. The CIA is also big on bitcoin, and that matters.

Bitcoin is used to funnel funds to ISIS militias (formerly Al Qaeda) in Syria & Iraq for the purpose of regime change in Damascus & Tehran, etc. Since the US-German intelligence-backed Maidan coup of 2013-14, large amounts of crypto have been funneled to leading fascists in Kiev. Those were the ‘greater forces’ in play at Jackson Hole last week, which keeps crypto alive– for now.

Every major bank CEO & financial player at Jackson Hole was consulted & listened to while this legal ruling was being decided. It was intentionally kept airtight from the corporate media, which is why you heard no reporting or analysis from any of them the entire time. Rising interest rates & working class interventions loom large over crypto’s long-term future.

If this was a ‘landmark legal decision’ (and it is), then why was there no serious reporting when policy was being debated during these past weeks? It’s because the ruling elites wanted to conspire in complete privacy on this highly sensitive matter. Elite class forces were battling one another to influence this legal ruling, and the corporate media smokescreened it, keeping the public ignorant– until they were told exactly what to say earlier today.

Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, departs from court in New York, US, on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022. Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bail package after making his first US court appearance to face fraud charges over the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he co-founded. Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg

A bitcoin exchange trade fund (ETF) has now been US government approved, that’s what all this means. The crypto industry plan is to have a centralized bitcoin exchange, where different wallet holders, blockchains, bridges, etc, can buy/sell bitcoin & convert into dollars, etc; and (eventually) add ‘ether’ & a few top stablecoins to this exchange. That’s the crypto vision. It’s no longer ‘de-fi’, which divides a segment of crypto purists. That’s the latest in crypto news & analysis.

This essay below was published concurrently in response to the Vatican supporting Russian tsarism.

Tsarist Russia was a brutal absolute autocracy, dating back to the mid-9th century. Historically, Napoleon couldn’t conquer Russia, so it remained a backwards, in-bred monarchy, in an era when the rest of Napoleonic Europe formed into bourgeois representative republics, or what we now call nation states. Germany was the last of these 19th century powers, formed in 1871 through wars, revolutions, and finally counter-revolution– like all the rest.

All the tsars were hated by the peasants throughout its history, from Russia/Ukraine, all the way to Siberia, where dissidents (industrial workers, revolutionists, etc) were exiled as criminals. This eventually led to the Russian Revolution of October 1917, when the Bolshevik Party galvanized workers in St. Petersburg, the industrial capital of Russia, and led a workers’ revolution which turned a broken 3rd-rate world power (about to be carved-up by imperialism after WW1), and transformed it into a powerful workers’ state!

It also ended the Great War, as each imperialist nation ceased its European-theater hostilities, and turned their militarism on the newly-formed Soviet government in Moscow, along with a propaganda & police campaign targeting perceived revolutionary threats in their own countries– see J Edgar Hoover. US imperialism (& the rest) aided the Whites who were led by tsarist generals, admirals, fascist Black Hundreds & other terrorist/anarchist scum. Trotsky formed and commanded the Red Army, the fighting force of the oppressed workers & peasants, which defeated the tsars reactionary forces backed by imperialism. The political leaders of the Russian Revolution were Lenin & Trotsky, who after this bloody Civil War from 1918-22, were politically isolated and eventually killed by reactionary forces in the apparatus– led by Joseph Stalin.

That is a brief history of the formation & early political degeneration of the USSR. The Vatican unapologetically endorses Russian tsarism because BOTH are remnants of feudalism & the Middle Ages, which makes for sticky politics in 2023.

The intention of Lenin & Trotsky was for this to be the FIRST workers revolution, followed by others in Europe– particularly Germany with its powerful working class & industrial might. Revolutionists, Karl Liebknecht & Rosa Luxemburg, were murdered by Wiemar secret police immediately after WW1, while Adolf Hitler was enabled– even after his failed coup attempt in November 1923. Hitler scribed his racist anti-socialist manifest Mein Kampf in prison, and then on release for good behavior, established the Nazi Party which terrorized Europe, exterminated 6 million Jews, and attempted to annihilate the Soviet Union in WW2. This wasn’t just one madman who got out of control. Hitler, like Trump, is historically cultivated by powerful reactionary forces to do its dirty work in defense of capitalist inequality in times when liberal reforms aren’t possible.

Lenin died in January 1924. It was always Trotsky’s suspicion (which he could never prove), that Stalin poisoned him. Trotsky formed his internationalist Left Opposition in 1923, to counter Stalin’s reactionary ‘socialism in one country’ theory he presented as gospel in 1924– after Lenin’s death. Stalin was better than Trotsky at forming murky alliances with reactionary politicians, since that’s who he was. Bourgeois subterfuge & laying traps was how Stalin hijacked the Bolshevik Party and defeated Trotsky to attain complete political leadership of the Communist Party. Many of the best Bolsheviks had died in the Russian civil war, and by 1929 with his Left Opposition politically isolated by a reactionary bureaucratic apparatus, Trotsky was exiled by Stalin. Trotsky would never return to the Soviet Union. He was murdered by an agent of Stalin (with help from J Edgar Hoover FBI agent, Sylvia Ageloff) in Mexico City in August 1940 at the outset of WW2 in Europe.

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Crypto security & securities

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According to The Hash on Coindesk, the next generation of crypto users want wallets that are easier-to-use & safer. Of course, this is impossible.

The risks of self-custody crypto wallets are user-error & hacks. The risk of crypto storage on a centralized exchange is FTX, etc. Do you feel lucky with Binance? The Hash recommends multi-signature cold wallets as best practice for crypto storage. To get into crypto, you need to be tech-savvy and know exactly what you are doing in every area, otherwise you’re a pigeon.

The SEC just announced their long-awaited lawsuit against Binance for (among other things) selling unregistered securities. Is crypto a security, as the SEC alleges? First, a few definitions. Commodities are basic goods produced by human labor which can be bought, traded or exchanged– such as grain, cotton, oil or gold. Securities are corporate wagers on yields & returns, such as stocks, bonds, derivatives, etc.

Crypto is a security with no legitimate use value, as it is a money laundering tool. Intelligence agencies & dictators around the world use crypto to fund their illicit activities, which gives bitcoin its hidden (but powerful) political support.

Warren Buffett represents a faction of US capitalism that sees the danger in crypto, defining it as, “rat poison squared.” Crypto is the most unstable ‘asset class’ because it really isn’t an asset. Venture capitalists poured into this Ponzi scheme for years, and then lost a bundle when FTX/Alameda collapsed last November. The entire crypto industry has essentially been on a knife’s edge since the Terra/Luna collapse of May 2022.

US banks have shut their doors to crypto since Silvergate, Signature & Silicon Valley Bank went under earlier this year, in the wake of the FTX bankruptcy. It is now widely recognized that the entire crypto market, from bitcoin to stable coins, is a fraud. That’s what the world learned in 2022, and it has created a permanent state-of-crisis for the entire crypto industry and the greater financial system.

There are ‘responsible’ old-guard capitalists such as Warren Buffett who advocate banning crypto entirely, and then there is Elon Musk who represents the new-age era of crypto billionaires. How everything works out politically (under capitalism) is that they both remain influential billionaires, while the rest of the world works harder to maintain this fiction.

That is the deeper meaning of all the anti-crypto rhetoric coming from Washington & the SEC these days, and then the hysterical responses from crypto fanatics. If your cyber-widget is listed on exchanges and its price goes up & down (causing people to make & lose money), while providing no use value to the greater population, then it’s a security.

There is no way the US government will protect people from crypto fraud, since its corporate-police-military-intelligence apparatus is so intimately tied into it. It is the working people of the world who must put an end to this crypto fraud. Crypto offers false hope, and is simply another capitalist gambling addiction. It’s message is: “Fuck the world & everything in it. Get as much for yourself by any means.” Does that sound like a future people want? These crypto libertarians just don’t care.

Bitcoin remains at ~$27K, despite the ‘crypto winter’. Crypto winter means it’s now very difficult to find new investors (suckers) of any wallet size. Bitcoin is being propped-up with hidden finance capital, because it is the most recognized crypto brand, with etherium & tether (top ‘stablecoin’) next on that list. These are the ‘assets’ which provides the CIA the means to funnel funds to fascists in Kiev, Al Qaeda in Syria, etc.

The recent US ‘debt ceiling’ debate was a politically stage-managed affair to force the working population to pay for all this militarization & fictionalization of the US economy. Permanent wars of aggression globally are the order of the day, with crypto/big bank bailouts as needed, and US workers & taxpayers are to foot the bill. The question becomes: At what point will the workers & youth revolt and what form will that take politically?

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Crypto contagion triggers global banking crisis

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To those who say crypto was just a bystander in this now global banking collapse, they are lying. Crypto is entirely fake, and was the trigger for this banking meltdown. Crypto has been in meltdown mode since Terra/Luna last May, then FTX last November. Banks that were heavily involved in crypto are now the first to go under, which has set off an industry panic and crisis of confidence in big banking.

The greater issue of the insolvency of the big banks, who all hold devalued treasury bonds, has been caused by the same policy that crashed crypto– a decade of free money followed by a sharp interest rate rise by the Federal Reserve. There is a connection there.

The EU (and everyone else) follow from the US Fed, since dollars are the international exchange currency and have been since the end of WW2. But increasingly, dollar dominance is being called into question by many different interests, particularly the government of China, hence the constant US propaganda campaign to demonize China & embolden fascist racist filth.

What we are witnessing now is a complete breakdown of the post-war monetary system. The Bretton Woods system of US dominance was established in 1945, by the winners. Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard in 1971, because Fort Knox was running out of gold to convert into dollars at $35/ounce. Since then, all currencies float against the US dollar. All international settlements, particularly oil, are done in dollars. This is what makes the US dollar almighty.

Stagflation of the 1970’s, then Fed chairman Paul Volcker’s interest rate hikes in the 1980’s, which reached nearly 20%, enriched banks. Big corporations even started their own lines of credit cards to cash in for themselves. It was the best of times to be rich, as Reagan/Bush are revered for their conservatism on issues like global warming, and their enthusiasm for corporate & banking deregulation, etc.

In 1987, the first stock market crash in America’s post-war era (which took every bourgeois economist by surprise) established the “Fed put”, which ensured a taxpayer bailout for any bank or corporation deemed “too big to fail.” Timeline ahead: Asian tiger crash in 1998, dot com crash in 2001, and then the big one– the sub-prime mortgage collapse in 2008. All caused by corporate criminality. All the big fish got bailed out.

By 2010, the Fed started printing money and gave it away to all its cronies for over a decade. Every other central bank in the world followed suit. By the end of 2021, after a few abortive attempts (Dec 2020 – March 2021, most notably) at quantitative tightening, the Fed has taken a hard line on raising interest rates to induce a recession and quell workers wage demands.

Inflation is caused by massively increasing the supply of money, without having the economic fundamentals to back it. By ‘economic fundamentals’ I mean, actual (real world) use value. The Fed, Wall Street, the White House & US Congress all believe that inflation is caused by workers’ wages going up. That’s the class war that’s always raging underneath the fake news.

With capitalism in its speculative death throes, crypto has emerged as the libertarian answer to the international currency question. As far a being real money, you can buy lots of black market things with bitcoin. Things you can’t do with crypto include: pay rent, pay credit card, pay taxes… pay for a Big Mac. It simply has no value to the vast majority, and therefore must be abolished.

Trotskyists are the only ones who have taken this intolerant policy towards crypto from the start. The SEC, DOJ, & White House have now pivoted to an anti-crypto policy since the Silvergate Bank collapse less than two weeks ago.

Slivergate CEO Alan Lane, second from right, rings the New York Stock Exchange opening bell before his bank’s IPO begins trading, on Nov. 7, 2019.

There’s been lots of talk about making depositors whole, making sure small businesses can make payroll, etc, in the wake of these US bank collapses, triggered by crypto’s meltdown. Everyone knows the FDIC guarantees accounts up to $250,000. For businesses with more than that, there is the Deposit Insurance Fund, which is a privately-owned, industry-sponsored insurance program.

The DIF’s purpose is to 1) insure bank accounts over $250K, and 2) resolve failed banks. If crypto start-ups like Circle ($3.3B in SVB) didn’t hedge with DIF and can’t make their payroll, etc, then the CEOs of these companies need to pay out of their own pockets– or else go bankrupt. Poor risk-management is on the CEO/CFO, and NOT the responsibility of the US taxpayers.

Why didn’t these smart tech companies with million$ & billion$ in venture capital money have a DIF policy to protect against a bank collapse? Corporate Leadership 101– FAIL. NO bank bailouts!

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Silvergate Bank now defunct only weeks after getting $4.3B bailout

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Silvergate Bank announced Wednesday evening (Mar 8) that it has collapsed, voluntarily entering bankruptcy liquidation after market concerns over its inability to file required tax documents last week. It will not survive. This is the biggest US bank failure since 2008-09. This is not even two months after it was reported that Silvergate Bank’s Q4 tax filings revealed a $4.3 billion bailout loan from the Federal Home Loans Bank (FHLB), a quasi-private consortium of banks & bondholders that are backed by US Congress– meaning the US taxpayers.

Silvergate was the biggest crypto-friendly bank in the US. Founded in 1988, Silvergate Bank got into crypto in 2014, and out of it in 2023. For as much as libertarian crypto fanatics scream about ‘de-fi’ & ‘independence from tradition finance’, these zealots are learning (the hard way) that even bitcoin can’t survive without access to banking services.

Lots of people, from venture capitalists to young kids, have put their money into crypto, but it’s much harder to get their money out. That’s the most valuable service Silvergate Bank provided to it’s crypto customers & clients, until it couldn’t anymore. Silvergate even ran their own crypto exchange (SEN) which has now been turned-off forever.

It’s been known since mid-January that Signature Bank received an $11.3 billion loan from the FHLB. Signature is now facing US regulator scrutiny as it inherits the mantle of crypto industry leader in banking. Signature’s stock is down 10% or so with the news of Silvergate’s collapse. Anyone who has been following developments in crypto knows, there’s trouble in the entire crypto banking sector, with banks facing massive liquidity issues as customers rush to cash out & put their money somewhere safer.

How is US Congress or the SEC going to help with all this? The Fed is raising interest rates, and crypto simply can’t afford that. Crypto needs free money from the Fed & venture capitalists for ‘innovative’ start-ups, and then taxpayer bailouts for when they crash.

Ally Financial bank (founded 1919, HQ Detroit) received $7.2 billion from the FHLB in Q4 2022, so they can been seen as the next disaster after Signature Bank. Provident Bancorp received $80 million from the FHLB in Q4 2022. These were massive (& secret) bailouts to crypto-friendly banks that didn’t help for more than a few months. Now the entire crypto industry needs another bailout to prevent bitcoin from free-falling.

Bitcoin & tether (‘stable coin’) are the top name brands in crypto. Their price must be maintained with massive injections of liquidity to re-inflate the bubble, or else it risks total collapse. This is the existential crisis the crypto industry (& capitalism) is facing now. Since the traditional financial sector is deeply implicated in the crypto mess, none of these pertinent facts are being reported in the corporate media.

Instead we get misinformation on the subjective price of bitcoin, as there is much stupidity posing as intellectualism. For example, Coindesk, the self-proclaimed industry leader in crypto reporting, just published a piece titled, “Price, Not Intrinsic Value, Is the True Measure of Bitcoin’s Success”, a fairly typical example of their muddle-headed libertarian thinking. It pontificates:

“My question is, what is intrinsic value? There is no such thing – value has and will always be subjective based on an individual’s need at the time. Demand drives everything and always has. The idea of intrinsic value is a fool’s errand. The question of whether a Rolls Royce is worth more than a bottle of water is subjective based on where you are and what you need. The demand for water in the desert is certainly going to be higher than that of a Rolls Royce. I exaggerate to make my point, but demand drives value. That’s unchanging over time.”

To clarify & correct the nonsense you just read in the paragraph above, the question of which is worth more, a Rolls Royce or a bottle of water, is NOT subjective. The Rolls is ALWAYS worth MUCH more than the bottle of water, no matter the conditions, because MUCH MORE human labor goes into making a luxury car. In a desert the Rolls can provide shade & shelter, If the RR is gassed-up, it can drive you out of the desert. That has much more value than a bottle of water, Only fools & liars would argue otherwise. There is nothing subjective about this, and there hasn’t been since Karl Marx explained it in Capital (1867).

Of course, libertarians don’t read Marx, they are only concerned with making money for themselves. So they make up stupid stuff, anything to justify their ends. Crypto needs another massive US taxpayer bailout, and it’s getting harder to hide them. That’s the panic in the crypto markets right now, the elephant in the room that no one is mentioning in the fake media.

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Bankrupt crypto bank Silvergate gets $4.3B US taxpayer bailout

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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.

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Crypto mining report

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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.

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