Monday, May 20, 2024

geopolitics on the move, ETH ETF approvals, dollar vs gold, Turkey regulates crypto?

“The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.” – Karl Popper ||

Hello everyone! I hope you had a great weekend.

Many of you are new here (hi!! welcome!!), so I’ll take the opportunity to introduce myself again. I’ve been researching crypto use cases since 2014, and following institutional interest while writing crypto newsletters since 2016. After six years running research teams with an institutional focus at CoinDesk and Genesis Trading, in September 2022 I started focusing on the intersection of the crypto and macro landscapes. The result is the product you see before you. I hope you find it useful! And if so, I’d be thrilled if you could share it with your friends and colleagues. ❤

IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• Unforeseen events

• ETF approval comETH?

• The US dollar vs gold

• Turkey regulates crypto?

If you’re not a subscriber to the premium daily, I hope you’ll consider becoming one! You’ll get ~daily insight into the growing overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes, as well as some useful links. And there’s a free trial!

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Unforeseen events

Legend has it that almost 70 years ago, UK Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was asked what he saw as the biggest challenge to his government. His reply: “Events, dear boy, events!” I’m reminded of this often as I skim the day’s headlines, but rarely so strongly as this morning.

The death yesterday of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials is one of those events that was not at all expected and yet could end up having a deeper impact than we today realize, in places we are not looking.

For now, there are no credible allegations that the helicopter crash that killed them was the result of a missile or of sabotage. Nevertheless, a meaningful change of governance in an already stressed country that has a key position in a very stressed region is not exactly encouraging in terms of stability.

The new interim president, the speaker and the head of the judiciary have 50 days to organize an election. It’s pretty obvious that the winner will be chosen ahead of time. This makes it unlikely that a new president will change Iran’s support of Russia and China, its antagonism to Israel and the US, or its work on building nuclear weapons. What will be scrutinized is whether Raisi’s replacement is as much of a hard-liner when it comes to following cultural norms, and whether the Iranian people take advantage of this “interruption” to pick up the pace of social protest.

The change also suggests that Iranian allies will be jostling for influence in helping to select the new president. And questions will be asked about why Raisi and his entourage were in Azerbaijan anyway.

An intriguing twist is Interim President Mohammad Mokhber’s background in finance, combined with insinuations he has been instrumental in amplifying the supply chain of weapons from Iran to Russia. He takes over the Presidential office at a time when reports are circulating of joint Russian-Iranian work on a new BRICS currency to support trading outside of the US dollar system amongst the 10 trading group members.

As if that weren’t enough, what else is going on that might derail the current geopolitical course?