March 22, 2023
Banks, crypto, old rich people refusing new things to happen, and AI
Is SVB a canary in the coal mine?
Great article that's chock full of meme's about the Silicon Valley Bank situation and the three-way standoff between TradFi, crypto, and VCs/startups. Here's a couple teasers...
Is the call coming from inside the house?
Here's how banks are missing hundreds of billion dollars... which may or may not have contributed to the SVB, Silvergate, Signature bank situations.
For the unsubscribed: https://archive.is/AG893
Share fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie...
I'm hoping to do a full write up on this soon, but here's the short version of an observation from the recent banking situation...
On Jan 27, the Fed went after stablecoins in a coordinated attack, the same day they denied an application for a new bank by Custodia that had been pending for 2.5 years. And during "Fed blackout week" nonetheless.
Then the top banks for crypto get taken down... Yes, Silicon Valley, Signature & Silvergate Banks were the top 3 banks for the crypto industry.
Signature had Barney Frank on its Board, the one of Dodd-Frank fame... He's alleging it was seized "to send a message to get people away from crypto." because even though it wasn't required to take the stress test partially designed by Mr Frank himself because Signature was under the $250B threshold, the bank would have passed the stress test up until the moment it was seized.
It doesn't hurt his case that Silvergate is now being auctioned off but the buyer can't touch crypto accounts. Oh, and the bank was seized on a Sunday evening which has NEVER happened before - it's always on Friday at 5pm - and was then only announced in a PR about SVB with only two sentences! It looks a lot like the government seized billions of private property without due process or explanation. You know, as it does... in banana republics.
Some people called Nic Carter paranoid for saying the US government had begun Operation Choke Point 2.0 in early February, but it's only getting clearer and clearer. Oh, and the Chairman of the Board at the FDIC now? Martin Gruenberg, the same Martin Gruenberg that ran the original Operation Choke Point in 2013. He's not even trying to be creative.
The FDIC is using their power to control the "free markets" of this country, and you don't have to like crypto to see how that's bad news for everyone.
But why would the US want to be where new tech and financial industries are created anyways? /s
Bill Gates has only seen this once before...
The first demonstration of technology that blew Bill Gates' mind was when he encountered a GUI on a computer. The other is AI.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/The-Age-of-AI-Has-Begun
…and old things we’ll never have again.
Steel and lead recovered from ships sunk before 1945 is referred to as "low background steel" since it is uncontaminated from radioactive isotopes from nuclear testing. This website is "sinking" data and knowledge that hasn't been contaminated by AI-created content i.e. "low background information"