Closer to “Crypto Capital” of the World
Rug Pulls and $100K Watch Parties
We have a close contest for the craziest crypto story of the day. First, following up from an item we had here on Monday…
The memecoin HAWK — a project of “Hawk Tuah Girl” Haliey Welch — launched on schedule yesterday, and it went about as expected…
In a “Readers added context” note on X, we’re told that “96% of the token supply has been sniped and is slowly being sold on the community. Buying this highly speculative coin might result in loss and high due diligence is recommended.”
No, really?
Meanwhile, the BBC informs us that as Bitcoin broke the $100,000 barrier yesterday, “millions of viewers even tuned in to online watch parties.”
Yes, really…
There appears to be a fairly clear cause-and-effect at work: The flagship crypto was mired near $95,000 yesterday when word came through about Donald Trump’s choice to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He’s Paul Atkins — who served as an aide to two SEC chairs in the early 1990s and later was an SEC commissioner during the Dubya Bush administration.
His pro-crypto credentials are impeccable — he’s co-chair of the Token Alliance, the lobbying arm for an outfit called the The Digital Chamber (formerly the Chamber of Digital Commerce).
To be sure, Atkins is no fan of the jihad waged against crypto firms by the current SEC chair, Gary Gensler.
“Atkins and other critics say Gensler’s approach was too rigid for cryptocurrencies designed to run over peer-to-peer computer networks,” says The Wall Street Journal. “The SEC’s approach drove increasing amounts of crypto-market activity toward Asia and Europe, where governments created regulatory frameworks designed specifically for digital assets.”
During a podcast interview last year, Atkins said, “If the SEC were more accommodating and would deal straightforwardly with these firms, it would be a lot better to have things happen here in the United States.”
Clearly that’s an attitude aligned with Trump’s stated intention to make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet.”
The Plot Thickens
The plot thickens in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Corporate media are chock-a-block with reports that bullet casings found at the scene in New York were inscribed with words starting with letter “D.” Depending on who you want to believe, they said “delay,” “deny,” “defend” and/or “depose.”
On the one hand, three of those words echo the name of a book about insurance companies that hose their customers who file claims. Which reinforces the narrative that Thompson was done in by a disgruntled UnitedHealthcare customer.
On the other hand… Bloomberg reported in April that Thompson was one of four senior executives with UnitedHealth Group who sold UNH shares during a four-month span before a federal antitrust investigation was made public.
Thompson sold shares and exercised options on Feb. 16, netting him $15.1 million. Less than two weeks later, The Wall Street Journal broke the news of the investigation.
As a result, Thompson was sued in May for insider trading by a pension fund that owned UNH shares — as independent reporter Ken Klippenstein writes. The suit alleges that the City of Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund of Hollywood, Florida “suffered damages as a result of the violations” of federal securities laws.
So now there’s all manner of online speculation about whether Thompson was cooperating with the feds — which would suggest the killing was aimed at shutting him up.
Whatever the case, somewhere out there the killer is undoubtedly getting a thrill out of all this.
Meanwhile, the murder has brought forth still another crazy crypto story: The bullet-casing inscriptions inspired the launch of a memecoin called “Deny. Defend. Depose.” — promoted with the surveillance-camera screenshot from Starbucks…
“Fortunately, it didn’t really take off,” Paradigm crypto analyst Chris Campbell tells us. “752 people are still holding and hoping it does…”
For whatever it’s worth, shares of UNH have given up all of yesterday’s gains and then some, down 3% at last check.
Elsewhere in the markets, the major U.S. stock indexes are just barely in the red after notching record closes yesterday.
Precious metals are losing ground, gold at $2,640 and silver at $31.14. Crude is up a half percent to $68.87 after the OPEC+ nations decided to delay a planned production increase by three months.
At last check, Bitcoin’s grip on $100K is loosening just a bit, down to $100,838.
Poland Is Stacking
We always knew that gold was a disaster hedge — but not necessarily like this.
“Poland was the world’s largest gold buyer in the second and third quarters of 2024,” reports the Central European Times website.
Poland’s gold stash now totals 420 metric tons — good enough to lift it into the top 10 gold-holding nations in the world.
➢ By the way, the United States is still No. 1 — at least officially. Unofficially, China’s holdings might be higher.
The head of Poland’s central bank, Adam Glapinski, says the country’s gold is kept “around a dozen locations… where our reserves are safe.
“Gold will retain its value even when someone cuts off the power to the global financial system, destroying traditional assets based on electronic accounting records.”
Hmmm… As you might be aware, Poland is lending considerable aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia. Clearly the government is loading up on gold in the event of Russian retaliation.
But more Russia-friendly countries in central Europe are also accumulating gold: For instance, Hungary’s stash now totals 110 metric tons.
And Serbia’s gold stash has tripled since 2012. The governor of that country’s central bank, Jorgovanka Tabakovic, says gold is essential “in times of global turbulences, especially in geopolitical conflicts and periods of high inflation [and] in recent years we’ve seen both factors at play”.
That’s Not a Gold Bar. THAT’s a Gold Bar
Behold, the world’s biggest gold bar…
Emirates Minting Factory — a privately held mint in the United Arab Emirates — recently took the wraps off a gold bar weighing 300 kilograms.
That’s 9,645 troy ounces — which at today’s prices works out to over $25.4 million.
It’s good enough for entry into the Guinness World Records. The Emirates bar is 20% bigger than the previous record-sized bar, made by Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials Corp. in 2005.
Mailbag: Murder in Manhattan
A reader writes to take issue with the colloquial language your editor used in yesterday’s edition to describe the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“Your banter was out of line. You are talking about a human being, American citizen, husband, father and a friend of many — NOT a Hollywood movie.”
Dave responds: Perspective, please.
I wouldn’t use language like that if the victim were a small-town shopkeeper or the owner of a big-city bodega.
But given the nature of his position — CEO for a major division of a $544 billion publicly traded company — Brian Thompson thrust himself into the public eye and opened himself up to public scrutiny.
Like it or not, he was a major figure in one of the most parasitical industries in these United States — a crony capitalist cartel that is, to borrow Jefferon’s phrase from the Declaration of Independence, eating out our substance.
Health care took up about 6.9% of U.S. GDP in 1970. In 2022, it took up 17.3%. Would anyone seriously argue that we’re getting 2½ times better “health outcomes” now than in 1970?
Per capita health care spending in this country now totals $12,555 per year — one-third higher than the next-highest country, Switzerland. Would anyone seriously argue American health care is at least one-third better than anywhere else?
UNH’s share price has appreciated 20X since passage of Obamacare in 2009. Is that because UNH has served humanity 20X better?
So yeah… When a major insurance executive is killed by someone whose MO lends a certain “John Wick-meets-Erin Brockovich” atmosphere to the whole thing… I might use more colorful verbiage than I would otherwise.
But in no way does that trivialize what took place…
