“Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.” – Albert Camus ||
Hello everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. Sooo late today, apologies! Down a geopolitical rabbit hole, took much more time than I expected.
👀 You’re reading Crypto is Macro Now, which covers the role of crypto in the changing landscapes of finance, economics, politics, culture and markets. 👀
Tomorrow: the digital ruble, and a run down of interesting reads.
Production note: this newsletter will skip publication on Monday for the US Labor Day, picking up again on Tuesday.
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Every onchain analytics product runs the same four layers under the branding: ingestion, decoding, enrichment, and a query surface. Working out which of those a given vendor actually operates explains most of the confusion in the category, and most of the price spread.
Allium Research breaks it down: https://www.allium.so/blog/blockchain-analytics-stack-explained-architecture-layers-and-tools/
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IN THIS NEWSLETTER
Shapes in the fog
Term of the day: penny warrants
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WHAT I’M WATCHING:
Shapes in the fog
Every week brings startling geopolitical developments, but few go as far in outlining the new world order as this one.
Below, I cover the top three main signals I think have been overlooked, starting with the one that got the most attention, but aimed at the wrong signal:
G20
First, the G20 finance minister’s summit in North Carolina. Most headlines, by far, have reiterated the official talking point that China “derailed” (or similarly disruptive word) a group statement, painting them as the enemy of agreement without considering what in the statement they objected to.
Apparently there was a lot, but a key sticking point was the call to “eliminate non-market policies and practices that exacerbate imbalances”. China also objected to any mention of “critical minerals”.
I mean, we can understand where China’s coming from here – and it has a right to point out the hypocrisy. But rather than the substance of the non-agreement, I was more intrigued by the blatant bias in the messaging – US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, host of the meeting, wants us to see China as the “bad guy” while the US and allies are on the side of fair trade.
Much less attention was paid to the unexpected appearance at the event of the Russian finance minister, at the invitation of the US. China’s “uncooperative” stance on trade led to plenty of negative press, but Russia’s rejection of accountability for the invasion of Ukraine was overlooked and the aggressor was invited back to the big table. Meanwhile, the war itself has tragically but inevitably become background noise.
So, has Russia been forgiven, or is that being dangled as a reward for pressuring China? Has war in Ukraine become the “new normal”, or is there a backroom deal being negotiated as I type? Let’s not forget that last week, CIA John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow. We don’t have detail on what was discussed, but there’s no way Ukraine was not part of the conversation.
The geopolitical message is that the US may pay lip service to western “values”, but it’s actually fine with redrawing maps to suit the strongest. It’s not hard to imagine where this might lead next. It’s probably not a coincidence that yesterday Reuters reported that, for the first time in recent history, Danish conscripts were being deployed to Greenland.
Perhaps part of the lack of attention on the Russia angle can be attributed to the US Treasury denying press accreditation to journalists from several large media outlets, including Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times – the first time it has done so for a meeting of this stature. We have to wonder what it was hoping to avoid by doing so. And we have to raise a concerned eyebrow about the message that “uncooperative” media will be shut out.
True, this is not even close to the level of media censorship in authoritarian states – there was not, as far as I know, any direct attempt to influence coverage. But it’s a step in that direction, one that we can expect to see more of.
Venezuela
Another big geopolitical earthquake this week is the US-Venezuela oil expropriation, I mean deal.
Last week, Axios reported that the US Administration was close to an agreement to securing long-term access to some of Venezuela’s crude reserves via a type of lease to develop a number of oil fields.
After market close on Friday, President Trump posted that:
