Payment in bitcoin?
Plus: post-relief markets, inflation expectations, the Brent index and more
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” – Mark Twain ||
Hello everyone! I hope you’re taking care of yourselves – it’s been a long year so far…
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IN THIS NEWSLETTER
Term of the day: Brent
Markets: now for the post-relief?
Macro: behind the inflation expectations
Toll payment in bitcoin
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Term of the day: Brent
(Earlier this week I introduced a new feature: definitions. With so much jargon floating around, I want to help clarify confusion while poking at semantics, and refresh overall understanding of relevant terms and sometimes phrases.)
Brent is much more than a light, sweet crude oil (“sweet” in this context means a low sulphur content, which makes the crude easier to refine). It is now also the global pricing reference for around 75% of the global crude trading volume.
How did this happen? In part, it’s down to geography and geology, and in part it’s due to blending.
Originally extracted from the Brent oilfield in the North Sea (which itself was named for the brent goose), today the barrels hold a blend of oils from several North Sea fields. For convenience, the name held.
Also, the other key index – West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main US benchmark – represents oil priced in landlocked Cushing, Oklahoma. Most oil trade today is seaborne, which makes the Brent index more relevant.
✨Introducing “Press Publish”✨
Come join me tomorrow for the first in a Substack live series – not on crypto nor macro, but on writing newsletters, the how, the why, the where and a lot more.
At 11am ET (5pm CET, 8am PT), I’ll be talking to my friend and former colleague Christine Kim, one of the leading experts on the Ethereum ecosystem, now also covering Bitcoin, and with deep experience in newsletters, podcasts and video.
Even if you don’t care about newsletters, come and cheer me on in my first Substack Live attempt? 😖 Friday, April 10th, at 11am ET - join us here.
Markets: now for the post-relief?
So, that didn’t last long.
