Sovereign Sunday: A Fugitive Black Bitcoin Billionaire, Chinese Maximalism & The Cobra Effect
Don't forget AI, Ketamine and more....And don't forget Valentine's Day!
Welcome to the 3rd issue of Sovereign Sunday!
The sovereign zeitgeist this week continues to be dominated by the 3 most important macro themes out there - China’s hegemonic success and infiltration of the U.S., Bitcoin’s accelerating adoption/impact, and the evils of networked totalitarianism as typified by woke identitarian politics and cancel culture.
Politically, it was a week of absurd distraction. Besides the Gina Carano hullabaloo, Biden trial ballooned a laughably unconstitutional travel ban of Florida (which I’m rooting for because much like HR 127, it would accelerate the coming Secession) and in response Florida’s governor allegedly told the old man to, ‘F*ck right off’.
The reason the mainstream media and Left hate Florida and fear DeSantis is simple. The state is a year long case study proving that the experts and media are lying to you. In real time. No masks, no hysteria, businesses open, no big deal. Florida is the proof. And that’s why it’s dangerous.
As a side note, Trump got impeached and acquitted again in more kabuki theater. The term escapes me for unintended consequences, but at this stage of the game there are probably many on the right celebrating Trump’s acquittal just like they celebrated last Sunday when MAGA man Tom Brady manhandled the Chiefs for his 7th Superbowl ring and celebrated maskless in a rare, fan-filled live sporting event.
While short term the acquittal probably feels like a nice victory and dunk on the libs, in the long run the anger of a conviction probably would’ve gone farther in motivating the efforts of a 3rd party or splinter cells to challenge the establishment. After all, it’s not like Trump is going to run in 2024. His last year in office and post-election were so bad and incompetent, that I think the post-GOP/America First electorate would probably split right down the middle if he were to run again. No, 2024 will be fresh blood with an important caveat - if we make it that far as a united country. If we do, DeSantis is the frontrunner at this point.
Speaking of unintended consequences, it might help to consider a real life analogy that has come to be called, ‘The Cobra Effect.’ The term is used when an attempted solution to a problem worsens the problem by unleashing those pesky unintended consequences.
The name derives from a tale originating in Delhi, India. The government’s concern about rampant venomous cobras prompted them to offer a bounty for each dead snake. Although the strategy initially worked well, citizens began to breed cobras for income. When the government discovered what people were doing, they ended the bounty program. The cobra breeders, with worthless venomous snakes on their hands, set them free. Despite the best intentions, the solution made Delhi’s cobra problem significantly worse. Consider in the coming months whether the demonization and attempted criminalization of differences of political opinion will actually make that problem better….or worse.
On the Bitcoin front, there’s an interesting Vanity Fair piece that elevates Dr. Doom Nouriel Roubini, a man who hasn’t been right about anything in a decade to the role of wise man. The article painfully illustrates what happens to mavericks who refuse to play the game with the gatekeepers and stay in their lane. As someone who’s ‘been there, done that’, the article is worth a read, even with it’s establishment spin.
The TLDR is that the US govt decided to press criminal charges against Arthur Hayes, an entrepreneurial black billionaire who created one of the most innovative crypto exchanges out there for failing to maintain a super strict KYC/AML policy (despite the obvious fact that the article fails to mention that the exchange and Arthur are located in Hong Kong, and the failure to maintain a proper compliance program is based on US laws…). As a former DOJ enforcer put it:
“The criminal case has stunned legal observers. “I’m not aware—and I’ve done this for a really long time—of any other criminal indictment, and certainly not one targeting individuals, that is solely based on anti-money-laundering-program failures,” maintained Laurel Loomis Rimon, an expert in financial crimes who spent 16 years with the Justice Department and prosecuted its very first digital-currency case. Now in private practice at O’Melveny & Myers, she advises cryptocurrency and blockchain companies. Like other DOJ veterans I spoke with, she was struck by the absence of more substantive charges. “In an indictment you usually see allegations of specific criminal activity, whether it’s fraud, credit card theft, child pornography, terrorist financing. You don’t see any allegation of any of those things in this indictment.” "
Remember, big banks have gotten caught actually laundering hundreds of billions of dollars over the past few years, and not a single executive has been indicated, much less gone to prison. Like George Carlin would have told Arthur Hayes had he asked “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.” The rest of the story is in the first link below.
Articles I’m Reading
**Two entertaining Ben Mezrich style ‘finance-porn’ pieces. Vanity Fair’s pro-establishment take on Bitmex and a sister story about an Australian bitcoin moguls role in Bitmex.
**You didn’t think exponential technologies were for plebs did you? Yet another step closer to an Elysium world. While there are certainly dangers in the rapid technological advances in AI and elsewhere, it’s clear that many of the most powerful technologies coming online are being subtly positioned for ‘elites-only’.
**I’ll probably stick with Del Frisco’s for now. Aleph Farms has unveiled what it describes as the world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak using 3D bioprinting technology and natural building blocks of meat.
**Interesting, and a bit scary. Dark personality traits predict cognitive and emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, study finds.
**Former NFL Star Brandon Marshall Battling Stigma of Mental Illness: 'We Still Have Work to Do' -
**Ketamine is Revealing a New Understanding of Depression - one of the most promising advances in resistant treatment depression is the field of psychedelics. Ketamine is a tool that provides a window into the brain and how depression operates. “I’d offer up that if depression makes you think you see everything the way it truly is, ketamine shows you, even if just for a little while, everything that could be.”
**This might be how law enforcement agencies break into the iPhone and potential vulnerabilities on Signal. - Tough week for privacy.
**Towards Detecting Deception: A fascinating older academic paper discussing models of deception.
**China has invested heavily to create an oligarchy of sympathetic American enforcers - can we please stop pretending we are NOT at war and NOT losing. Highly recommend.
What I’m Watching…
A Force More Powerful is a documentary series on one of the 20th century’s most important and least-known stories: how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule. It includes six cases of movements, and each case is approximately 30 minutes long.
Wokeism’s Postmodern Roots featuring Glenn Loury and James Lindsay
Benjamin Boyce and Jack Murphy talk Tonic Masculinity
Books I’m Reading…
Wild at Heart, by John Elridge
A formidable answer to an age-old question: How can a man make himself tolerable and useful while accepting and expressing his primordial maleness. The searching and aggressive urges to conquer what needs subduing, protect the vulnerable, fix what is broken, compete and risk what demands to be risked in himself and the world.
Podcasts I’m Enjoying…
Jordan Peterson chats with The Rational Optimist Matt Ridley about the current state of the world.
Twitter Octagon…
This Week’s Highlights from the Twitter Battlefield.
Parting Words….
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose —with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality,whatever they might be.” ~ James Stockdale