Wednesday, August 16, 2023

(sorry, sent earlier with wrong date!)

“I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undetermined and unpredictable, to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.” – Friedrich Hayek

Hello everyone! I have some personal news to share – Monday was my last chemotherapy session!!!!! 😃😃 It is hard to explain how excited I am by this, but I’m sure you can imagine. ❤ For new readers, there’s some back story here and here. I want to thank all of you for your understanding on the few days I’ve had to skip, and I know there were days when brain fog made some sentences a bit clunky. (Of course, I’d also like to blame all typos on brain fog, but unfortunately that wouldn’t be totally accurate.) Last night, I enjoyed my first glass of wine in over three months, and I drank a toast to all of you. I appreciate you very much. 😊

I have a bunch of stuff to do at the hospital next week to get ready for the next phases of treatment (which won’t be nearly as aggressive, the worst is over!!), and I could use a few days to rest and eat and drink and start to get back into shape, so I’ll be taking a brief holiday from this Saturday 19th until the following Saturday 26th, inclusive. 😊

Back to business: you’re reading the premium daily version of Crypto is Macro Now. In this newsletter, I give some depth on factors I’m keeping an eye on that highlight the growing overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes – my focus is on how crypto is affecting the global economy, and vice versa. There is often a market discussion as well, because that is an important piece, not just for the structural changes but also for investor sentiment, which impacts attention and funding. Nothing I say is investment advice!

If you’ve read this far and are not a subscriber, I do hope you’ll consider becoming one! It would help enable me to continue doing this, which I would very much appreciate because I really do feel that the intersection I focus on matters, more now than ever. It’s a privilege to be able to talk to you daily about what I’m seeing – I’d love to be able to make this into a viable concern.

And if you find this newsletter useful, would you mind hitting the ❤ button at the bottom? I’m told it boosts the distribution algorithm.

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

• Argentina: protest or revolution?

• US rates expectations are off track

• Finally, a crypto move

WHAT I’M WATCHING

Argentina: protest or revolution?

Argentina’s presidential primary elections on Sunday delivered a surprise win in the form of far-right candidate Javier Milei, who won over 30% of the vote, much more than the average forecast of 20% and comfortably ahead of both the incumbent Peronist party and the centre-right coalition. This threw markets into such a spin that the government was forced to devalue the peso by 18% and raise interest rates to 118% in a bid to “restore confidence” (um, yeah, that should work).

Why it matters:

This is arguably one of the clearest signs so far this year that current global economic system is fracturing. And that’s saying something, there have been many – but this massive protest vote from a country that is suffering triple digit inflation and is struggling to get out of the debt and devaluation trap screams a need for change.